The spiritual path can be a lonely experience, particularly when delving into the message of non-duality, which can seem like a specialised niche. Perhaps there aren’t many people with whom you can share your insights and experiences or gain feedback and guidance.
If you resonate with the message of non-duality but find it hard to integrate it into your daily life, Non-dual Mentoring can help you by offering a space to explore what’s holding you back from fully recognising the wholeness of all experience. I can facilitate an exploration of your questions and help clarify anything you’re struggling to understand.
During our time together, I’ll guide you through an experiential inquiry to release the self-concepts that make you feel limited and meditations to become more grounded in your true being. Sessions are entirely bespoke and based on your needs and goals.
Exploring the nature of experience is not about gaining new experiences or reaching some exalted state. It’s about recognising the ever-present reality of our being – awareness itself. Awareness is the unifying ground of all experiences, the essence of who we truly are. In this recognition, the artificial barriers we’ve erected between ourselves and the world dissolve, revealing the undivided wholeness of existence.
As we embark on our journey of awakening, we may find ourselves in a peculiar predicament where we sense a deep connection to the truth of life, but a detachment from the norms of society. We may feel disconnected from those closest to us, leaving us feeling isolated in our pursuit of greater understanding and without a space to unpack, navigate and integrate our insights.
Similarly, when non-dual spirituality is divorced from human experience, it may lose its vitality and become a tool for bypassing the complexities of the relative world. Conversely, personal life may feel constricting and distressing without the expansive depth and insight gained through spiritual realisation.
For spiritual seekers, the desire to alleviate suffering, find inner peace, and make progress on their path or end the search altogether is common. However, finding the necessary reassurance and simplification can be a daunting challenge. With an abundance of spiritual paths available today, it can be overwhelming to determine the clearest and most direct one to pursue. Often the more complex a spiritual teaching system is, the less wisdom and truth it contains. True insight comes from deep knowing, rather than just accumulating intellectual knowledge.
By engaging in experiential inquiry, you can identify the obstacles that seem to impede your awakening and dissolve them as you come to stabilise in consciousness. With this newfound clarity, you will witness the present moment as it is, discern all that you are not, and ultimately gain a deep understanding of your natural state. As you move beyond the ego, you will discover a greater sense of harmony between your authentic spiritual understanding and daily life. By freeing yourself from the influence of thoughts and conditioning, you can discover the unchanging, unconditional love and contentment, along with the other qualities of Self. However, it’s important to note that it’s not necessary to stop thinking or feeling. Even though facets of experience and conditioning may still arise, they no longer have the power to define or restrict us once we know that we are already Home.
This experiential inquiry will help uncover liberation without the adornments, trappings, methods, rituals, or distracting features within many spiritual systems. Sessions are bespoke, meeting you where you are and focusing on what is most important to you. Using straightforward English and a no-nonsense approach, I will keep bringing you back to the same core truth: your true nature is beyond the body-mind. And for this realisation, we ask ‘Who am I?’ in various creative ways. The answer is already within you, or more precisely, the answer is you. As Nisargadatta Maharaj said, you are That.
Spiritual “growth”, from this perspective, is not about self-improvement or becoming a better person in a conventional sense. It’s about seeing beyond the illusion of the separate self, and realising that our true nature has always been free and unbounded. This realisation can bring about profound changes in our experience and behaviour, but it’s not a result of trying to change or improve ourselves. Instead, it’s about seeing reality as it truly is. This is not about self-improvement in the conventional sense, but about a radical shift in our understanding and experience of who we are.
Is this you?
We perceive ourselves as distinct individuals navigating our way through an external world that is disconnected from us. However, this belief couldn’t be further from the truth.
In reality, all of life is one complete seamless whole, and it’s only our imagination that fragments it. Life is not divided, and non-separation is the natural way. The fundamental oneness of all existence is the very nature of this very moment. Every experience is an expression of the one seamless “awareness,” “consciousness,” or “experiencing.”
Your present, ordinary awareness points to the wholeness and completeness of life as it is. Experiences cannot appear within anything else other than your basic awareness. No experience is apart from this fundamental experiencing and each experience is made of nothing but experiencing. The divide between self and other, subject and object, is only a conceptual story. There is no material universe beyond your awareness. There is only awareness.
However, when you experience a sense of self, an ego, that seems to navigate an external world, it feels like there is a centre of subjectivity from which you look out at the world. But really, the ego is an experience among other experiences within YOU, awareness.
The essential assumption about our life, that we are separate, is an illusion. In truth, there is no separation because all is reality. We are already what we desire – love, connection, wholeness, peace, joy, and every quality of Self. This experiential recognition is the ultimate secure foundation.
This is the realisation of our true Self. It is the natural outcome of seeing through all that is false or illusory (maya), all the self-concepts that don’t define you. This realisation is what has traditionally been referred to as “enlightenment” or “awakening.”
But enlightenment is not a transformation into an improved ego, but a natural transmutation of the ‘base materials’ of desire and fear back into the golden qualities of Self. It is not something that is hidden from us, nor is it only gained in moments of clarity and peace. Enlightenment is life itself.
You are the enlightening factor that manifests the experienced, and nothing obscures this vivid, open, infinite awareness, not even the ego. Awareness is both the path and the goal. It is the home you seek.
The ego is nothing but ideas of desire and fear which seem to form a separate ‘me’. Desire and fear end through the recognition of the unconditional qualities of Self. The ego need not be defeated but relaxed or unravelled through realising that there is nothing lacking and nothing threatening. All is you. All is yours. All is home.
In this contemplative exploration, we find a dance of thoughts and sensations, and the world we perceive gives rise to a sense of separation and duality, where we perceive ourselves as distinct individuals within an external reality. However, this inquiry challenges these conventional notions and invites us to question the true nature of our selfhood.
By peering beyond the veil of illusion, we begin to recognise that awareness itself is the foundation upon which our experiences unfold. It is not confined to a particular location or limited by the boundaries of a body; rather, it permeates the entirety of existence. As we delve deeper into our own consciousness, we discover that the perceived divisions between subject and object, knower and known, are but illusions created by our own thoughts.
This inquiry urges us to reconsider the nature of our identity and our relationship with the world. It invites us to transcend the limitations of the separate self and recognise the inseparable oneness of all things. As we unravel the threads of dualistic thinking, we open ourselves to a profound realisation – that our true self, our awareness, is boundless, unified, and intimately permiates existence.
Like clay taking on shapes, the pure light of awareness moulds into thinking, seemingly becoming a mind. It moulds into sensing, appearing as a body. It moulds into perceiving, transmuting into a world. Our dualistic concepts, though entrenched, are like castles built on shifting sands. The notion of an external world is but a flickering illusion projected within our Self.
Non-dual inquiry challenges our traditional views of the mind, body, and world, inviting us to reconsider our established notions of selfhood. It illuminates the illusory nature of these constructs, revealing them as transformations of fundamental awareness.
Ultimately, we find that the perceived division between the experiencer and experience is a figment of our imagination. As we delve into the depths of our consciousness, we are guided towards an understanding that our true Self is not confined or separated, but rather the very lifeblood that flows through every expression of itself.
“My home is in the unchangeable, which appears to be a state of constant reconciliation and integration of opposites. People come here to learn about the actual existence of such a state, the obstacles to its emergence, and, once perceived, the art of stabilising it in consciousness, so that there is no clash between understanding and living.” “The Supreme State is universal, here and now; everybody already shares in it… Who does not like to be, or does not know his own existence? But we take no advantage of this joy of being conscious, we do not go into it and purify it of all that is foreign to it. This work of mental self-purification, the cleansing of the psyche, is essential… It is useless to fight the sense of being a limited and separate person unless the roots of it are laid bare… Clarification of the mind is Yoga.” – Nisargadatta Maharaj
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