Transcription
Vivid non-dual experiences are prominently displayed. They are self-obvious. They are fully self-enclosed and autonomous, and they contain everything. They don't partition reality.
What makes this way of describing it, or actually the way of experiencing, um, obscure is the tendency we have to pull back from experience to extrapolate a background. If you can feel into that, it's a little hard to do with the imagination because the imagination itself is kind of has that spacious quality of pulling back and visualizing or something.
But if you were to consider a vivid non-dualistic, non-dualistic meaning, no outside, no inside, no other, no self, uh, closer than close, more real than real, more intimate than intimate. That's what I mean by non-dualistic appearance that is self-obvious, prominently displaying itself clearly. Uh, then there's no perspective from which that is viewed or experienced, right? Specifically, the non-dualistic part says that, but experientially, it's obvious. So if there's no perspective, then any tendency to form a perspective will be illusory or will be extra or added or distorting.
Now, this isn't philosophical. This is exactly what happens, and you see it in real time. It's very obvious with the non-dual shift. It's very obvious what gets added because it's crystal clear that non-dual appearances are always non-dual, that they aren't, uh, they aren't received by someone. They aren't received by awareness or consciousness. They aren't reflected by mind. They aren't appearing within some universal consciousness or a background or a baseline or a source. They're not a result of a source. They're not, they're not a result of anything. They're just everything. It's that clear. Yeah.
So from that perspective, in a sense, just to put it in words that kind of loosely make sense about this, when you're on the other side of that, of course, there's no "you" and there's no "other side," but on the other side of that shift, then it is kind of obvious to look back and see, "Oh, I can see what was added." What was added was a sense of pulling back and having a sort of spaciousness in which to construct a three-dimensional world. Because what I'm talking about is not three-dimensional. It's like non-dimensional or infinitely dimensional.
But the three-dimensional experience, I would say the four-dimensional temporal-spatial experience is constructed in terms of, like physics, it would be said to be relative, right? Meaning not fixed. So experientially, this is clear. With non-dual realization, that the tendency to form a world in which things happen, and when I say "world," I don't just mean planet Earth or even a universe, I mean a world of any kind, no matter how it's extrapolated into a spiritual concept like awareness or consciousness, all of that is seen to be a construct, and it's not intrinsic to the appearance, the non-dualistic appearance.
Now, I don't know how this lands if you haven't had that experience. Many, many people watching this have had the experience. Many people watching this live this way. They've had the realization. Um, but if you haven't, I really don't know how this lands. It may sound psychedelic or, I don't know, like science fiction or something, but I will say this: It's so damn obvious. It's so clear and intimate when the collapse of that pulling back, I'm just going to call it a pulling back. It's like a tendency to pull back, a tendency to subjectify. I talked in my book about subjectification. That's exactly what it is. Um, when that collapses or stops happening or settles, let's say, because it's a kind of tendency, then what remains is so pristine and crystal clear. It's kind of like Eckhart Tolle described when he woke up one day and everything, all objects in the room took on this kind of sacredness, like they had just come into being or they were pristine. That's exactly how it is. Uh, I would even say there are not objects, but that's neither here nor there with this conversation. It's really pointing to the fact that there's something just being added.
And you won't see this super clearly with the first shift, although you may experience it very seamlessly for a while. It'll feel very free for a while for many people, but you won't see it as such. Um, because it's a subtle insight that comes later, usually. Um, but once, once you see it in its own right, and the only way that happens is to die into it in a way, or to suddenly have that which is viewing life and viewing reality just not be there. That's really what it is. Um, and that has a strong texture of self. That's why shadow work is often necessary to get to this stabilized realization. Um, but from there, it's just so damn obvious that it's the most natural thing. It is the most natural. It's so natural, so simple, so clear, so settled, so unaltered. It's unaltered. You can see then everything else is altered.
In one sense, this is a bit of an aside, but why psychedelics can be helpful for some of this stuff, for certain breakthroughs or certain, you know, just to really turn your Etch A Sketch over and shake it and kind of shake up the world you think you see. But it's really, they're not often great at deeper realization. They're not. And this is why, because they create altered states in addition to breaking you open to a little taste of the unaltered. But it's just altering normal consciousness. And normal consciousness, structured in mind identification, is already altered. Does that make sense?
So, so this just, I'm using that contrast with psychedelics. I don't have anything against them, but as a contrast, this is so not psychedelic. It's so clear, obvious, natural, and it's also like, holy [ __ ] It's really awe-inducing, humbling. It brings gratitude. It brings settledness, clarity, peace, and then freedom. Freedom follows, but freedom is ultimately, it's freedom from the, it's freedom from suffering, right? Which is the tendency to react, the tendency to avoid, the tendency to, um, bury, to go unconscious, to dissociate, all those more energetic tendencies underneath the self-structure. That's when those settle, then. And this is unbroken clarity and peacefulness.
The non-dual aspect and then the freedom and the experience of outflow of love go hand in hand as a result, because that is your true nature. Well, I'm not going to say you have a true nature, but, um, but I'll say this: to live out of your true nature, the outflow of love is very natural. It's just, it's a natural effect of being in the, in the relative world, so to speak. Interacting in the conventional. Yeah. It's an outflow of love for everything.