True Nature Is Life Affirming
If we were to stop identifying with the body-mind, never touched and impervious to events, would life not become dull? Is losing the opposites condemning us to a slow decline into serene neutrality where purpose, relationships, and everything become relatively meaningless? Are we in danger of losing our vitality? Isn’t the challenge of living and meeting needs what keeps us alive?
If we are used to living based on emotion, then all the above may seem true, which is indeed why so many minds have a stilted view of non-duality. This is not always helped, as non-duality is sometimes reduced to sound bites, and the richness of its profound and deep tradition going back centuries is lost. Sometimes, its teachings are taken out of context and cherry-picked in a reductionist manner.
The path of non-duality, as far as I can see, is a natural path that enables us to be in touch with what we discover are endless resources of life-affirming qualities, too many to mention, but including courage, love, wisdom, gratitude, patience, faith, and so many more. Non-duality points out that these qualities are hidden by reactive emotional reality, which, whilst intelligence in its own right, has severe limitations.
Non-duality points out that these life-affirming qualities are revealed as we open to the possibility that what we are is the source of all phenomena and not just a single mind and body. With that appreciation, the true power of the non-dual revelation is felt. To tap it, we don’t have to believe anything, such as that we are “infinite or eternal”, even though we may intuit that. We can verify, based on our experience, that this is the case. Though specific methods may vary, essentially, all we have to do is recognise that we don’t know we are not the source of all phenomena. Therefore, we can be liberated from any belief that limits us to being small, reactive, emotionally driven being.
A famous Buddhist quote says, “The ignorance and dust of desires are enlightenment, and the sufferings of birth and death are nirvana.” In other words, we do not have to reject desire or the challenges of living, all of which are the fertile ground for us to shine our energetic, life-affirming true nature. Sometimes, it may seem like non-duality removes us from the world. Still, its most profound teachings take us passionately into the heart of it to share courageous, wise, loving reassurance with all minds that we are safe and, by tapping into the place beyond the psychology of the mind, there is the possibility of bringing powerful, fearless, courageous love into the midst of the drama of daily existence, irrespective of what our emotions are saying.
Love,
Freyja
