Non-duality as devotion or concentration

[winter light]

Typically I see non-duality is presented as something like the absence of self. Where nothingness is some kind of ideal state that one tries to attain. And discussion progresses to be impersonal and abstracted away from human existence. Or even expanded into some cosmic ideal state that could be reached in the distant future.

That perspective has never sat well with me. For reasons I don't really want to dwell on. But I have noticed that every time I have tried to identify the problem it has been like sparring with a ghost. Always out of reach and two steps ahead.

Now I'm considering a completely different perspective of non-duality that occurred to me recently and seems to work. For me at least. Where the experience of non-duality is one where you are completely immersed in some devotion or concentration upon either the presence of another sentient being or to a worthwhile activity or cause.

I don't know of any significant examples of non-duality being presented in this way. I think it brings non-duality down to earth. Or to wherever else you may be. So that it can be experienced in any aspect of existence. That non-attainable image is replaced with any activity that can be done in the here and now. Becoming very personal and intimate with our deepest self.

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by winter light

So that it can be experienced in any aspect of existence. That non-attainable image is replaced with any activity that can be done in the here and now. Becoming very personal and intimate with our deepest self.

It sits well in me, in what you’re sharing. I’m consistently aware it’s both transformative and integrative as a whole mind/body experience on this earth, living a normal life.

I’ve resided in higher faculties only to be shown in this way of myself, there was no where to go but back into the body and integrate.. the transformation process, took me to the highs, but the lived experience took me back into my body.

Most people I’ve related too as you’ve described as ghosts, often feel very ‘out of body’ not connected at the earth level of spiritual transformation. I’ve resided there myself..

Your only as in touch with the real world on this earth plane as deeply rooted you are on the earth.

Our foundations are the earths expression.

Our higher centres are recognition we are the universal expression.

They are not seperate embodiments..it’s your wholeness, your true state and expression encompassed.

[Unseeking Seeker]

Let us investigate -

Here, in mind-body, as long as we operate from the fulcrum of a separate entity (us) disconnected from the all-that-is, we are in duality. There’s nothing wrong with this of course. The Self in singularity wishes to descend, that it may ascend and re-cognise itself.

On earth plane, two people in love, they become one for the time-dissolved moments their attention is held thus. Both are, in that continuum, in the heart, not in the head. So we may say, mind is in duality and heart in singularity. But there is oscillation. If we can remain heart-centric, in purity of being, acting spontaneously without fragmented thought, moment to moment, all moments entwined, then the doer, the ego, disappears, does it not? But if we engage in devotion or philanthropy as an activity for a feel-good factor, then we are as yet in lower mind.

Now, to be egoless, effectively we are a conduit through which divine (agape) love can express itself in this density. We speak of all embracing, unconditional love, an eternal effervescence, that has no opposite.

If this be so, in my view, we have then embodied the light of Self within this earth vessel.

[Starman]

I don’t see how it can be codified. Every time I think of a model or impetus of non-duality my model gets destroyed by some experience I am having. Yes, I concur, non-duality, and even the infinite, can be experienced right here right now. You do not have to wait until you die to see God or experience what many call “heaven.” It can be experienced right here right now.

Is non-duality abstract, in my opinion yes, is non-duality concrete and ordered, in my opinion yes. Non-duality is not one thing or the other, in my opinion, it is the foundation of duality, comprises and forms duality, and non-duality, in my opinion, creates and causes duality to exist. They are not separate items, one is a reflection of the other, although it may be a skewed reflection.

Non-duality can exist without duality but duality can not exist without non-duality. One literally is dependant on the other. One is temporary and the other is permanent, but one is not higher or greater than the other. In my opinion, we all come from non-duality and exist at this very moment, at our core, in non-duality. Just my perspective.

[JustBe]

But egoless does not mean less than personal, it means more than personal. Not personal minus, but personal plus all the normal personal qualities, plus some transpersonal ones. Think of the great yogis, saints and sages from Moses to Christ to Padmasambhava. They were not feeble-mannered milquetoasts, but fierce movers and shakers from bullwhips in the Temple to subduing entire countries. They rattled the world on its own terms, not in some pie-in-the-sky piety; many of them instigated massive social revolutions that have continued for thousands of years.

And they did so not because they avoided the physical, emotional and mental dimensions of humanness and the ego that is their vehicle, but because they engaged them with a drive and intensity that shook the world to its very foundations. No doubt, they were also plugged into the soul (deeper psychic) and spirit (formless Self) the ultimate source of their power but they expressed that power, and gave it concrete results, precisely because they dramatically engaged the lower dimensions through which that power could speak in terms that could be heard by all.https://www.lionsroar.com/egoless-means-more/

I like this view in this article

[Unseeking Seeker]

@ JustBe ~ going by the article you referred to, we are caught up in semantics of what ego is. Taking ego to be the mistaken belief that we are only mind-body, we are in delusion. If however we say our true being, the Self or soul, whatever we wish to call our eternal presence (soul is incorrect actually), is the fulcrum of our moment to moment awareness, then the body is instrumentalised. But how many of us are as such? We tend to oscillate. That’s ok but just saying, awareness of truth is not seamless.

As an illustration, how do we look at other forms? Outer appearance, intellect or the spirit in-dwelling it? What about gender, age, social status, colour etc.? Are we free from fetters? If not, we are in lower mind, ego-driven.

Until the ego is not subservient to our Self, we are in bondage. That’s my view.

[JustBe]

Originally Posted by Unseeking Seeker

@ JustBe ~ going by the article you referred to, we are caught up in semantics of what ego is. Taking ego to be the mistaken belief that we are only mind-body, we are in delusion. .

I’m not focused on ego in this article, is that where you’re looking?

I’m looking at a view that speaks about the fullness of self immersed fully in the fullness of being. It’s not lofty, playing out like a ghost. It’s a very deep and meaningful experience expressed in all facets of one’s life.

I see that this article relates more to what winter light is conveying..

[FallingLeaves]

yeah that is one of the things i identified early on... in addition to just trying to drift into a state where I am just resting, reacting to the things presented, or even trying to get rid of everything whatsoever and be nothing, there is the possibility of tryiing to interact with life. Trying to learn about the things that are there and maybe play with them a little bit instead of remaining forever 'hands off'. I call it the 'active' ingredient....

the main reason such things are difficult is because everyone wants to go off and shed their own personal viewpoints, their own personal way of wanting to relate, entirely, and it is hard to go against that kind of grain....

one of the stories given early in the bible, is that god actively did not want us, the people of the world 'to become like us'. Meaning to become like the gods... peopel who see that statement sometimes seem mad, like they are denied a toy they really want.

the reality is, the gods can do anything they want, but I perceive they don't always have an idea of what they WANT to do. It is like a big white room, whatever direction you go in is the same color, white, so which direction are you going to go in? You don't know what to do and in some sense any choice you make is totally random....

personally I'm kinda glad I don't gotta face that kind of ridiculousness. That god spared me that. But that is just me.

Meanwhile though I can be devoted to what I actually want to be devoted to though... and so far I haven't wanted to be devoted to a lack of devotion. Lol.

[JustBe]

Your first paragraph in your post falling leaves that’s how I see this also. You have to stay hungry for life and feed yourself in all ways of life. I’m not dismissing my total being in this way. I’m diving into life letting life open me, shed me, understand me. Understand life as myself.

We are human, designed in all manner of ways. The physical, emotional, spiritual is a totality. When you leave nothing out, everything opens together..it’s not higher, lower or focused on other worldly, it’s a human-spiritual system designed to work together, here on earth.

[FallingLeaves]

justbe - my 'life' as it is is the result of a realization that I don't HAVE to get rid of various feelings just because others call them undesirable and want to make them go away, nor do I HAVE to grab hold of other feelings just because others call them desirable and want more more more.... nor do I have to just always be reacting to what the feelings 'say' in the proper way- there is something more, a way to interact with the feelings themselves, to relate to them in other ways than the ones people are telling me to relate. Sometimes yes maybe listen to them, other times vibrate them a slightly different way that what I was given to believe was possible????

I think, if there is actually a way to 'abilities' after all that might be the path... that 'feeling' itself is an interaction perhaps with something like the energy fields in and around the body and if one simply knew how to align feelings in some unbroken way who knows what would happen?

I suppose I could be wrong about that, but, meanwhile I've been having a lot of fun studying how broken I am lol!