Revealing Nonduality

Paul Dobson speaks with nonduality author John Astin.  We have language and concepts to describe the myriad things we experience, including ourselves. But the inquiry in the exploration of nonduality is: let's start with present experience. What is life experientially? What is the actual experience of this moment? That's all we can actually investigate - what's actually here. After all, it can't be denied that something's present, actual and palpable. What is it that we're experiencing when we describe any element of life or existence?   There's really no answer to these questions, ultimately. But it's powerful to see that we don't arrive at a final conclusion when we feel our way into what's here, what's present. What's actually palpably here is just here, with no precedent. And so, in a sense, that which is present is without context. It's free of any prior knowledge framework to contextualise it; the starting point is 'This.'   It’s really fun and illuminating to come back to the barebones actuality of this instant, of this explosion of reality. It's a state of constant becoming and opening. But it actually never quite becomes anything definite because this emerging doesn't stop. And it's astonishing to just feel into the expressions of life this way, including what we take ourselves to be. Our beingness is alive and always flowing. So how could we define anything that we call ourselves? We can't grasp this self-sense because there's not something solid or fixed to hold. Just look and see: the ways we categorise people, places, and things is a nice fantasy, but it's not an actuality.  John Astin's site: https://www.johnastin.com/mediaOur site: http://nisargayoga.com/  Music: Scott Buckley - https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/library/

Paul Dobson and nondual therapist Nic Higham talk more about nonduality. 

You are the light of experiencing or awareness. Are you not experiencing or aware? You are conscious and your consciousness enlightens each expression of itself. It illuminates the known; this seamless display of experience, expressions of the same light that you are. Everything is enlightened and enlivened by your experiencing. So you're already enlightened, in that sense. It's not like you have to attain experiencing or awareness. What else is there? This awareness is what you are and it’s full of potential - absolutely brimming, overflowing with possibility.

This awareness is freedom. There's nothing to cultivate. There's nothing to do or undo. Presence is always what is regardless of what's going on, despite what is present. We cover presence over with thinking and interpreting and overlook the presence of awareness. But even distraction occurs within presence. So there's nothing but presence. It turns out that all our ideas about life, all our interpretations can't be verified ultimately. But we can be certain that all appears from and within the one, seamless experiencing that we are.

Nic’s site: http://nisargayoga.com/

Music by Scott Buckley - https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/library/

Here's another episode of the nonduality podcast. What is nonduality? What is life? Who am I? 

Our usual orientation is one of being a separate limited ego entity within a boundless universe, feeling very small and powerless, always craving a deep connection with the entirety of what is. We seek a way to heal an imagined divide through clinging and pushing away certain experiences.   

There’s another way: waking up to the reality of non-grasping. In truth, reality does not grasp nor reject any manifestation of itself.   

As the great nondual commentators have always said, you are open and undivided awareness - reality itself - and within you, as the great meditator, are many objects of meditation which are nothing but you. Rather than trying to accept and accommodate you can simply notice the actuality of your existing ungrasping nature. There’s nothing to remove or include. Nirvana, or freedom, already is, but you've tricked yourself into thinking that you're not this unbounded awareness.   

If you investigate the quality of your direct experience, you’ll find that it’s saying nothing but “This”. Like the sky it's open and completely ungraspable, yet it appears tangible and split up. It’s an ever-moving river, always shifting, always changing, completely fresh and new, while utterly constant and dependable.   

Nonduality author and nondual therapist 

Nic Higham's website: https://nisargayoga.org/ 

Music by Scott Buckley - https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/library/

Nonduality author and therapist Nic Higham speaks with co-host Paul Dobson about all things nonduality.    In his book, I Am That, Nisargadatta Maharaj says: "No thing in existence has a particular cause; the entire universe contributes to the existence of even the smallest thing; nothing could be as it is without the universe being what it is. When the source and ground of everything is the only cause of everything, to speak of causality as a universal law is wrong. The universe is not bound by its content, because its potentialities are infinite; besides it is a manifestation, or expression of a principle fundamentally and totally free. Every event is the effect and the expression of the whole and is in fundamental harmony with the whole. Reality is simple — all is one, harmony is the eternal law. The law of balance reigns supreme."   https://nisargayoga.org/  Music by Scott Buckley - https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/library/

In this episode of The Nonduality Podcast, Nic Higham and Paul Dobson speak with Cormac Doherty.   

If this present moment isn't reality, then what is? What else is there? Why is there the intimation that there's something that we're yet to obtain beyond here-and-now? Why is it that we look for something outside presence experiencing? After all, all we ever find is this moment. All we ever encounter is experiencing. No matter the mode or extent of our search, whether a nondual path or an everyday pursuit, we come right back to where we always are.   

When we acknowledge that timeless existence is all there is, we can then look at the way it is. We find that this moment of reality is changing and dynamic. There's an ever-shifting nature to the play of form. Yet, it is simultaneously a changeless ground of being.  

"I take reality as totality," says, Cormac, "I can't find anything else but this. So, I don't assume that this isn't reality. What else can I find? I don't know about origins or genesis, but there is this. There is this in its irrefutability, and there's this in its dynamic."  

If we look, we see that we don't have any existence independent or separate from the functioning of reality. We are looking for reality, but this is reality. We are realty intrinsically. We can't avoid the fact of occurrence; we can't refuse it.  

In this episode of the nonduality podcast, we discuss the very simple acknowledgement of the immediacy of reality. We explore how we apparently overlook it when we're looking to gain something. We might ignore it while on a spiritual path, in thinking that somebody else knows a higher truth or has access to some secret knowledge of the universe. The great spiritual teachers, however, will deflect back and point out, "Look, this is it! Maybe you do not appreciate it, but what you're searching for is the extraordinarily ordinary fact of existence, and it's here and now. It’s what you are."   

Nonduality author and nondual therapist Nic Higham's website: https://nisargayoga.org/ Music by Scott Buckley - https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/library/

Here’s part two of Paul’s conversation with nonduality author and teacher John Astin.   Our primary idea is of being separate from the whole of reality. We imagine we exist as independent creatures like waves imagining they are separate from the sea.   We’re searching to feel at home. Our habitual instinct, however, tells us, “This moment isn’t home. It doesn’t look or feel like my idea of home. I’m going to do all these spiritual practices and inquiries and I’m going to find home.” In actual fact, there is only home. Home is reality; it’s the reality of home.  We are the expression of some indivisible ocean of existence. Conceptually we can conceive of distinct objects, but experientially we don’t actually experience separation. We only ever experience experience itself and experience doesn’t have boundaries.  We can see if our unquestioned ideas have an empirical basis in experience. When we explore with care the field of experience, we discover the nature of life and find that it doesn’t collapse into definitions. We find that life is not actually divided in any way, and we realise this fact by simply looking here and now within the unlimited field of what is.   There’s the possibility of a relaxing of the search for something else, for answers, for solutions to apparent problems. Real equanimity is in the discovery that there’s only equanimity.   The wave-like movements of the mind are being moved by the ocean of reality. The one reality is moving all waves, each manifestation of itself. Everything is that totality. We are never not at home. We are the home we seek.   Our site: https://nisargayoga.org Music by Scott Buckley - https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/library/

Paul Dobson speaks with nonduality author and teacher John Astin.   

If we want to find wholeness, we have to look somewhere other than within our habitual perception of distinction and differentiation. We have to discover the nature of all beyond characterisation.   

There’s always a relentless constancy, a fact of beingness, of the existence of everything no matter the descriptions. This immediate actuality is where we discover the totality that shines forth as what we characterise in different ways. The totality is that which is inclusive of everything.    

What we call the interpreting mind that seems to split and divide and turn the totality into seeming pieces, is actually the same totality. It’s the fundamental basis of everything and it gives rise to this moment, including any dualistic conceptualising.   

There's a beauty in ‘what is’ even when the present moment feels difficult. That beauty is transcendental, and it doesn't have an opposite. It's a beauty that's inclusive of all things because it is all things. There's nothing else but that, the one reality. It's an unthinkable energy that’s bursting forth as each instant and it’s unthinkably intelligent. It’s the pure presence of this radical open-ended, unstoppable, embrace of apparent multiplicity.    

What we think of as our little isolated separate ego-self, is absolutely none other than the boundless absolute reality. That's what we are.  

John’s site: https://www.johnastin.com/  Our site: https://nisargayoga.org/  Music by Scott Buckley - https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/library/