The Art of Non-Duality

I keep coming back to this "non-duality" concept, because it is so much at the crux of creation, and indeed, why we as infinite creators continually choose to participate in such an extreme form of duality.

It is a dramatic world of opposites, contrasts, and all the messy grey areas in between. Don't we have something better to do than to get all tangled up in this morass? Well, no. You see, by experiencing and being these extreme states of opposites, we come to know ourselves as infinite beings. By the sheer contrast of the non-being and solidness represented by life here on Planet Rock, it reveals to us our infiniteness.

Most of what we experience is what we are subconsciously co-creating with all these other infinite creators. It doesn't seem like we are creating the universe of our lives because most of what is being created is what we subconsciously agreed to be a part of coming into this life. As we "wake up", or become aware of this fact, we can then start making conscious choices about what we prefer to experience.

What it takes to wake us up, though, is usually a carnival ride of torturous swings from one extreme to the other. We are seemingly tossed back and forth from dark to light, hard to soft, easy to difficult, and everything in between. The bewildering input of contrasts assaulting our senses seems to be more of an attack against us, throwing us into defense mode.

Is it any wonder that most of us just put our heads down and take the path of least resistance, complying and compromising our own preferences in the hope of "getting by", "fitting in", and fergawdsakes not rocking the boat. It seems easier, or at least a whole lot less threatening to find a somewhat comfortable niche, and dig in, hoping to avoid any real revelation of the infiniteness of who we are, and the crushing responsibility of our own creations.

With the advent of the the planetary information web (the Internet), and the inevitable development and involvement in "social media", or what I call selective hive minds, we can compartment and validate our own value systems, creating our own self-bubbles that shut out dissenting views or emotional conflict. This serves to amplify our responses when we stick our heads up every once in a while and are bombarded by the seeming insanity of an opposite world assaulting us. We either quickly duck back into our comfort zones, or take up arms to attack those opposing our niches we've become so attached to--mostly in self-defense.

There eventually arises a desire to "rise above it all", to transcend the hive minds, and get beyond all the conflict of this Opposite World. This is Nature's way of squeezing our consciousness into present time awareness, and drives us to be mindful and non-judgmental about everything around us. It's the only way out, really, and even though it's difficult, it's certainly preferable to living in a hole in defense mode.

Our lives then become a series of self-awarenesses about our automatic responses developed in self-defense to assaults on our personal values and ego attachments. The door has opened, and now we cannot go back--what is seen cannot be un-seen, and leads to more awareness and more clarity. At some point, there is a reckoning, and in a slow flash we start to see this conflicted world as the birthing of something greater, something inherently beautiful in its becoming--a world where polarities merge into a continuum of necessities, much like the birthing process where writhings of pain morph into the beauty of a new life.

It all needs to be there. It's all happening because it's supposed to happen. All the suffering, pain, agony, joy, glory, and poignancy coalesces into one immense, amazing and glorius birthing event. There are no longer opposites, but spectrums of being--none better or worse, or righter or more wrong than the other. Without the one there cannot be the other, and both are required for what is being wondrously created.

It becomes a matter of dropping all our requirements of what "should be", un-creating all the evaluations, judgments and conclusions about what we see and experience "out there". And by doing so, "out there" becomes "in here", and at last we have a shot at truly creating the glorious world we've always known is possible.

The Quantum Impossibility of Aloneness

We are at a pivotal time in human history. Science is in the process of proving that there is a single matrix within which all things are affected by all other things. There are hypotheses that what is called "quantum entanglement" is not just for the smallest of of the small, but that it is a central feature of ALL the physical world.

Let's sit with that for a second... The butterfly flaps its wings and volcanoes erupt on the opposite side of the planet; a fly is caught in a spider's web, and half a world away, a quarter mile of glacier calves into the sea; a wolf howls in Alaska, and a geyser erupts in Borneo. These images convey the oneness of a whole system--a system with an infinite number of moving parts, yet each part holographically existing as part of each other part.

Science experiments have been underway to verify that what we used to think of as mechanistic, unconnected, random events are, in fact, very much connected. And we, as points of conscious awareness, have the ability--as do all living things--to tune in and experience any and all of it.

After working for a while with these concepts, it's certainly not a stretch to see the world as a sentient being, reacting to and reflecting back to us our own intentions, feelings, and desires. It is ONLY our choices, decisions, judgments and conclusions that make life seem so distant, so disconnected from us, and so completely reliant on the application of our personal energies for anything to change.

Of course, the universe is nothing BUT change, each quantum bit, subatomic particle wave, atom and molecule has a purpose, an intelligence that is moving to our beckon call, should we desire it.

As psychologically complicated as we like to think we are, we are experts at making life a problem--a hell hole of pain and suffering--where nothing goes the way we want it to, and misery is the over-arching theme of this gawd-awful cesspool of life. With each new tragedy and drama, further proof is set forth about the "TRUTH" of this.

We are, simply, excellent victims. It's so much easier that way. You can avoid responsibility for creating anything, and then get to wallow in sumptuous self-pity until the cows come home--and they, tragically, never do.

The point I want to get to is that we are not islands. We are not separate "points of light" scattered across the void. The "void" is very much an ocean of connectivity, communion and consciousness. Our very atomic structure is intermingled with that of exploding stars, whirling galaxies and all the sentience that created it.

It becomes nearly impossible to feel alone if you embrace these concepts. In fact, do this thought experiment: Close your eyes. Now, in your imagination, imagine another being is sitting next to you. It can be somebody you know, or not, and they don't have to be human. Now, ask this being some questions, such as, What's your name? Where do you live? Do you know who I am? What is you main talent? What do you see that I'm really good at?

Shortly, you'll realize you've been having a conversation with this "imaginary friend", and notice that you didn't know the answers to the questions you were asking them--they did. This being exists .

You've probably heard about people having "guides" or "angels" that show up at crucial moments in a person's life to help make a pivotal decision or bring about a revelation. Well, this is how you can find your own guides. Just "imagine" them beside you, and begin to have a relationship with them.

There have been theories tossed around that the imagination is really a sort of clearing house, where our desires meet the sentience of the physical world. That sentience is constantly engaged in partnering with you to construct your life based on your desires, conclusions and judgments. I tend to agree (and this has been posited by some scientists) that the sentience of the physical world is amoral--that is, it has no judgment as to what is "right" and "wrong". It's humans that are excellent at doing that, and we do it almost automatically. Why? To make a story. To show ourselves how good or bad we are, and thus, create the matrix for games and adventures, either sorrowful or exciting.

So, choose to embrace this Oneness of Life. Reach out for it, interact with it, experience its deep sentience and observe it responding and reacting to your intentions and desires. Soon you will discover the perfect partner you never thought you had--the most intimate confidant; the most empowering coach, and deeply loving lover. And all it has ever taken--all it ever takes--is making that choice.

Mindfulness and Habituated Thought

My friend and consciousness coach, Janet Barrett, recently wrote an essay about "habituated thought," and how we so naturally and easily lay down in a thought groove and then solidify that with justifications and conclusions and use those to not be afraid, insecure or powerless.

Habituated thought is how we cope with the infinite-ness of ourselves. We narrow down the bandwidth using judgments of right or wrong; we then justify those judgments by tying our experiences to them. We then leave it there--a nice comfortable little rut of unconsciousness.

We then continue packing these ruts around every facet of our lives until we can barely make out how we actually fit into all this. We lose ourselves in our own choices, judgments and conclusions.

It's not really our fault. We're trained in this way of thinking from the moment we learn the language, and from the role models of our parents who pass down various modules of habituated thought from their ancestors--and so it goes.

Humans are really good at spotting patterns, assigning meaning to them, and then encapsulating those meanings into definitions and ramifications. The problem with this innate genius is that we so rarely turn it in upon our own thinking. We get fleeting glimpses of patterns of behavior in ourselves and others, but once spotted, we rarely follow up because the illusion is that it really doesn't matter that much.

News flash: It does matter. Mindfulness of oneself does matter. By simply being aware of how we are thinking and feeling, and being able to catch ourselves at those moments where past conclusions and judgments take over, we can, by using this as a tool, completely transform our lives beyond what we now think is possible.

Here are some easy-peasy, split second practices from Access Consciousness you can use that short-circuit habituated thinking and feeling patterns. By applying these tools, you free up creative energies and unburden yourself from heavy conclusions and judgments that just don't serve you.

Recently, I had an occasion to experience some pretty significantly deep self-doubt. It came in the form of a habituated thought pattern that was something like "Nothing is going to change / I don't see it changing / Maybe it will never change", and then the accompanying feeling was a knot in my solar plexus and a deep flash of discouragement and fear.

As soon as I became aware of the thinking pattern, I chanted to myself several dozen times (sometimes out loud). "Interesting point of view I have that point of view." I did this with the feelings, too.

I also asked, "Is this mine? Whose is this? Return to sender!"

Then, I topped off this series with the statement, "All of life comes to me with ease, joy and glory."

At first, it took about an hour of doing this to finally notice that the thoughts were beginning to lose their impact, and those feelings of discouragement and fear were fading. I continued with the series every time I spotted the thinking pattern start up again, or the feelings begin again.

After about three days of this, I woke up one morning and felt much lighter and actually hopeful, and usually the waking up hour or two are the most filled with this hopeless thinking and feeling. Yay!

As the day progressed, I continued with these processes, and then added the question, "How does it get any better than this?" and "What else is possible?", along with creating feelings of gratitude. By the end of the day, my strength returned, the knot in the stomach was gone and I found myself saying, "I've got this. No problem."

Using these mindfulness tools is a matter of making them a priority in your life. Since you create your life with your awareness, choices, thoughts and feelings, it makes sense that making sure those activities are in good working order is a top priority.

We want to be able to spend our lives as the highest and the best creators we can be, and that takes the mindfulness necessary to keep the crud and crap cleaned off those creative jets. Who knows what amazing creations we are capable of?