While
it is perfectly natural to prefer silence over noise, oneness over
multiplicity, and harmony over chaos, actuality appears to not share this bias.
A star appears to not share this same view.
The
natural world and energies inherent in the human spirit are creative,
destructive, alive, and full-spectrum. Love is equally prepared to make use of
the noisy, the multiple, the dual, and the confused to seed the relative with
its qualities. To come at times as uncontaminated dualistic rage, bewilderment,
and disordered wildness, so that form can come into being.
The
unfolding of form is not always the expression of a clean, nondual view:
untainted, invincible, and safe from reorganization, deflation, and the
exposure of pure human vulnerability in all its dimensions. At times, the
articulation is of a messy untamed ragingly empowered union of ascendant and
descendent currents, heaven and earth, sun and the moon.
It
is common to have a dualistic understanding of “nonduality,” where it has
become synonymous with silence, stillness, clarity, and transcendence, in a
subtle war with confusion, activity, and the chaotic purity of emotion,
imagination, the body, and the heart. Implied is the unexamined belief that the
formless is more pure than form, spirit is more pure than matter, and silence
is more pure than noise. But this is not nonduality. This is fear. It is not
possible for there to be division in that which is nondual.
Let
us reclaim the essence of nonduality by seeing that it is not opposed to
duality, would never be at war with it, and end the dream of a conceptual
spirituality. Let us re-enchant nonduality and infuse it with life, holding it
loosely in one moment and discarding it the next, staying with the magic of now
as it erupts in and as our lives as they are.
As
we cultivate the courage to travel inside the opposites, hold the tension in
balance, and compassionately confront the entirety of what we are, the
inseparability of form and formless will be laid bare. The curtain will come
down behind the Wizard of separation and the purity of the human form will be
revealed.
Photo:
holding field of Heart-Nebula, seeding essence
My new book – The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – is now available
The Way of Rest summer retreat – registration open now (we're about 85% sold out as of June 1)
The Way of Rest summer retreat – registration open now (we're about 85% sold out as of June 1)
