Nonduality: The Wholeness of Experience

Randall Friend's website: http://avastu0.blogspot.com/ 

The Nonduality Podcast with nonduality author and nondual therapist Nic Higham and Paul Dobson. In a sense, desire was the principal “big bang.” It’s a mystery why or how such a powerful explosion of passionate desire developed out of unspeakable completeness! One can only wonder: “Life desired, therefore I am.” Thus, in partnership with imagination, it created your personal world along with your hopes and fears and everything in between. Life often seems random and chaotic, and sometimes misaligned with our desires or needs. The ego thinks it is supreme and that everything should comply with its viewpoint and purpose; it can never be peaceful and harmonious because it’s the opposite of peace and harmony. Part of its nature is an unwillingness to be one with life and a refusal to live in alignment with the inevitable. If it saw that it was one with life, it would instantly perish because its pseudo-existence is based on separateness and it likes it that way. Thankfully, the ego isn’t a permanent entity and its insubstantial nature offers openings to a greater order. When we say “greater order,” we’re not describing a higher purpose removed from the human paradigm; we’re pointing to life’s unavoidable “isness” or intimate actuality. Events are inevitable, though they’re not preordained by an egocentric, aloof god. This greater order is not something mysterious or nebulous; it’s this here, right now—this flawlessly emerging moment we’re married to. We can feel it, see it, smell it, taste it, and hear it in everything, wherever we are. We can realise that we are always in alignment with it because we are it. Such a realisation transforms our expectations to work with reality, and teaches us that although events may not unfold as we expect, there’s a certain equanimity in honouring the inevitable. When we allow this insight in a natural and unforced way, a pro- found peacefulness amidst the imagined duality communicates itself to us as our unshakable Aliveness. A changeless tranquility, an unqualified gladness become evident amidst the mind’s habitual judging. It’s all-pervading perfection that dawns when life is seen through the lens of Being instead of through the intellect. This insight, this clear seeing is the only real way to make peace and uncover genuine connectivity with the One Life. http://nisargayoga.com/ Music by Scott Buckley - https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/library/

We are aware. We are experiencing. This reality is obvious and irrefutable, yet we habitually overlook or bypass this basic fact and instead focus on fleeting facets of experience. Our unlimited experiencing is the constant, unshakable background; we are never not conscious no matter the quality of our experiences. Simultaneously, this awareness is the ever-shifting foreground. Our present experience, despite its flavour, colour or mood, is nothing but experiencing itself. You are not simply ‘aware of’ things; there are no things separate from nondual awareness. All you ever find is the perpetual process of awareness or experiencing, as seeing, feeling, smelling, tasting, and so on. These modes seem to be separate but are actually expressions, or modes, of a singular sentience. You never find something divided from this fundamental and omnipresent fact, only this dynamic aliveness appearing as all. There is, therefore, both an ‘awareness of’ and an ‘awareness as’, and you are these boundless capacities. You are at once every thing and no thing. You are the eternal nondual celebration of ephemeral duality.   Our site: https://nisargayoga.org/Music by Scott Buckley - https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/library/

Randall Friend shares the message of nonduality in this recording of a Second Life meeting. Nonduality is not hidden, it’s not a mystery. It doesn't require effort. The reality you seek is already here as this seamless, unlimited, timeless moment of experiencing. So this message is only about the peeling back of the concepts that have been built that seem to obscure our appreciation of life as it is. Nothing is needed. Nothing needs to change. What really is enlightenment or awakening? Reality is simply no longer taken to be made up of separate parts. We no longer imagine a world outside ourselves. There is only the wholeness of what is. Randall Friend: http://avastu0.blogspot.com Our site: https://nisargayoga.org

A talk by Randall Friend on the essential qualities for the pathless path of self-realisation and discerning the nondual nature of reality.  http://avastu0.blogspot.com

Paul Dobson and nondual therapist explore the truth of infinite non-separation once again in this episode of the nonduality podcast. We typically think of ourselves as people aware of other people and things: “I am a finite individual in a world of other individuals experiencing separate finite phenomena, none of which are me.” Said simply, “I am aware.” With an enlightening shift of appreciation, we might come to recognise ourselves, not as limited entities who own awareness, but awareness itself: “I am the unbounded context of experiencing within which phenomena come and go.” Or essentially, “I am awareness itself aware of all that arises.” But this is still not the whole truth because there is a hint of duality. As our awakefulness unfolds and deepens, we eventually find that this interminable awareness, or experiencing, that we are is the very essence of each passing experience. There is no thing that isn’t this wakeful presence. Indeed, there are no things whatsoever. The subject-object story collapses. Now, our clarified conviction becomes: “I am seamless and infinite experiencing and every experience within me is nothing but me.” Said simply, “I am awareness appearing as all.” Our site: https://nisargayoga.org Music by Scott Buckley - https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/library

We feel that our unquestioned and inherited beliefs are evidence. The question is, what is evidential? What is factual? What is actual? Dive into those beliefs. And actually, you'll find nothing but the absolute. We're coming back to a very simple way of looking at phenomena, asking ‘What is the nature or anything?’, going on direct investigation. We're not throwing out our assumptions, we're simply seeing if those assumptions have any empirical basis in experience. If find yourself lost in suffering, stuck in your interpretations, you’re overlooking the immediate light of experiencing or nondual awareness itself. That light is fact, and it’s our rock. It’s the ground and the lifeblood of all we know. Our site: https://nisargayoga.org/ Music by Scott Buckley - https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/library/

Paul Dobson and Nic Higham talk about the nondual realisation that we are timeless infinity knowing ourselves through the temporary imagined play of duality. We assume we are subjects in relationship with other limited subjects and objects. But upon close investigation, we find that all we know is unlimited knowing, experiencing or awareness itself. I don’t know of an object, but only knowing. I don’t experience you, another, but only myself, experiencing. And we find experiencing to be seamless and unbounded. All we know of any apparent thing is the obvious awareness that is all things. We can admit, with considerable ease, that we don’t really know the ‘why’ or ‘how’ of anything. But knowing itself is irrefutable. Our site: https://nisargayoga.org/ Music by Scott Buckley - https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/library/

Randall Friend speaks about Vedanta, a "nondual" tradition of self-inquiry from Hinduism. Randall’s site is: http://avastu0.blogspot.com/ Randall describes Vedanta as: similar in many ways to other nondual traditions like Zen or Dzogchen Buddhism, Taoism, Christian Mysticism (Gnosticism) and Sufism from Islam.  Advaita is a "sect" or branch of Vedanta which says that there is a singularity of reality, a "Oneness" or one essence underlying all that appears to be. Advaita means - not-two. This is not a path, not a practice. Advaita is a direct description of reality as it is. Vedanta means - the end of the Vedas - the end of all knowledge - unlearning - not-knowing. Through investigation into the nature of Reality, called "self-knowledge" - the seeker comes to the realization of the nondual nature of Reality. Advaita Vedanta does not seek to impart a new set of beliefs, but to rip the rug out from under all beliefs, all assumptions, including the assumption that there is an individual entity or person who exists, who was born and will later die. In the direct recognition of Reality as it is, the seeker falls away as the root or foundation of all false translations. Our problem is that we feel limited, we feel isolated and small, temporary, insignificant.  Therefore we seek to fill that hole with either things from a material standpoint or states from a spiritual standpoint. Yet it is this inherent feeling of limitation from which we cannot escape.  My belief about myself is that I AM limited, therefore to seek the limitless is always quite frustrating.  If my belief about myself is true, if I am in fact limited, if reality is in fact made up of separate existences, then spirituality really is a fantasy.  This means that bondage and suffering is the truth of existence. Yet there is another possibility.  That possibility is that I was never limited to begin with, reality was never made up of separate existences.  If that is the case, then the only problem is my own ignorance of myself, ignorance of the truth of reality as whole.  That ignorance can only be corrected by knowledge of myself, of reality as it truly is.  Vedanta is a means of knowledge to know myself.

Nondual therapist speaks with co-host Paul Dobson in this episode of The Nonduality Podcast. You seek that which you believe is not already present. You fight that which you believe shouldn't be present. In this cycle of grasping and aversion, you are trying to get out of this moment because it seems unacceptable. Despite appearances, what is this moment, really, but the one reality you seek? When this is recognised, there's an opening into what already is and what you have always been. Knowing that reality is all, we stop getting into arguments with its unfoldment, with the inevitably and actuality of life's expressions. Reality is a perfection that embraces our ideas of both perfection and imperfection. Reality, therefore, transcends all ideas about perfection and imperfection. Life is free to express in every possible way; everything is the shining forth of itself. It's infinitely pregnant with possibility. All we are ever seeing is the actualisation of all these possibilities. What is arising, precisely? When you investigate, do you find anything other than aliveness, beingness or consciousness? Without referring to any memories or notions, what is the nature of anything present? The nature of every transient occurrence is the one eternal life we all are. In this sense, any arising can serve as a way into the heart of reality. Even the things that we habitually deem as unacceptable serve as a portal into this truth. Our site: https://nisargayoga.org/ Music by Scott Buckley - https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/library/