NONDUAL MENTORING
Nic Higham offers one-to-one experiential inquiry sessions and nondual mentoring, in person (Leicester, UK) or via Zoom.
Meeting you where you are, these sessions are tailored to your needs. We will explore your present experience and identify the blocks to living the Life that you are
I’m here to help you reconnect with yourself and discover the nondual qualities of Self, to remember you are an expression of love and wholeness.
Experiential Inquiry with Nic Higham
From an intellectual understanding to a deep knowing of nonduality
Nondual spirituality, when removed from personal life, can become dry and a means for bypassing the relative, just as personal life can be painful and limiting when removed from the expansive depth of spiritual realisation.
Many spiritual seekers want to know how to stop suffering, to find peace, and how to progress in their life or path, or to stop seeking. Simplification and reassurance can be invaluable here but are challenging to find. There are many spiritual and nondual paths offered nowadays, and it can feel overwhelming to fathom which one to take. Often the more complex a spiritual teaching system is, the less wisdom and truth it contains. And as most find out, there’s a big difference between mind-based knowledge and “deep knowing” (jnana). Once it does, however, it will touch you profoundly. Such is the stunning simplicity of the realised state.
Through experiential inquiry with Nic Higham, you will learn to identify barriers to awakening and dissolve them as you come to stabilise in consciousness. Greater harmony between authentic understanding and daily life will blossom. Moving beyond the ego, you will witness the present moment and discern all that you are not so to have clarity and conviction about your natural state (what Nisargadatta Maharaj calls ‘Nisarga’). When liberated from thought and the subtle layers of conditioning, you will discover the unconditional love and contentment of the changeless. However, it isn’t necessary to stop thinking or feeling or even to become free. When we know we are already nisarga, facets of experience and conditioning still arise, but they no longer define or restrict us.
“It is important to take this inward-facing path. To recognise, not just that I am awareness, but the infinite unlocated impersonal nature of awareness, and then to discover everything is that.” – Rupert Spira
“Inquiry is not a kind of analytic digging… In contrast to the approach of Western psychology, in which we might delve into further stories in order to understand what caused a current situation, the intention of inquiry is to awaken to our experience exactly as it is in this present moment.” – Tara brach
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, Nic 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.
Is this you?
- You’ve read some nonduality or spiritual books and have listened to many spiritual teachers talk about awareness and awakening.
- You’ve had some glimpses of insight but feel lost or stuck.
- You want to move beyond an intellectual understanding.
- You’re not sure if you’re meditating or inquiring “correctly”.
- You want to stop searching.
- You want to discover what seems to veil deep knowing.
- You want to take a deeper look into this stuff, get some clarity, and work through what seems to hold you back from knowing, being and living your true Self.
- You want to embody the Truth pointed to through the message of nonduality.
- You want to cultivate a meditative state of mind in all areas of life, not just while you are meditating.
- You want to understand what is meant by the ‘I Am’.
- You’d benefit from ‘post-awakening-integration.’
- You need practical and clear spiritual guidance.
- Need help with clearing up spiritual inconsistencies and contradictions you’ve been confused by for some time.
- Need spiritual / nondual teaching simplifying.
Nic is down-to-earth, caring and devoted and will hold space that is heart-opening and transformative while you reflect, explore questions, and inquire into truth.
What is nonduality?
Nonduality is about the profound recognition that all of life is a complete seamless whole – it’s only imagination that seems to fragment it.
Life is not divided, it’s “Advaita” (not two) and non-separation is the natural way of life.
This state of fundamental oneness of all existence is the very nature of this very moment. Nothing needs to change since every experience is that one seamless “awareness”, “consciousness” or “experiencing”.
No object or person is really disconnected from anything else.
Your present, ordinary experiencing points to the wholeness and completeness of life as it is. Experiences cannot appear within anything else other than your basic experiencing. Experiences are not apart from experience.
You experience a sense of self, an ego, that seems to navigate an external world. A seeming personal ‘me’ separate from other selfs. It seems as if there is a you, a centre of subjectivity, from which you look out at the world. This ‘me’ feels deficient and incomplete.
Really, your self-sense is an experience among other experiences within YOU, the one Experiencer, isn’t it? And each experience is made of nothing but experiencing, which is equal to reality.
All you (experiencing) know of anything is sensation and perception – experiencing. You, therefore, are meeting yourself through the play of duality. Everything you sense and perceive is made of the One Reality that you are.
So, this is both the recognition that ‘I am no thing’ (discernment, emptiness) and ‘I am everything’ (love, fullness).
This means 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.
The most essential assumption about our life that we are separate is an illusion. In truth, there is no separation because all is reality. This experiential recognition is the ultimate secure base.
We are already what we desire – love, connection, wholeness, peace, joy and every quality of Self.
This is about the lived experience of ourSelf as made of this unbroken, unlimited consciousness which through nondual inquiry and nondual meditation, are experienced as the healing and nourishing qualities of Self.
This realisation 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 nothing but the existing light of awareness that not only illuminates the known but creates it. It’s you: Self, ‘I’.
There is only wakefulness – your present experiencing. As awareness, you are already and always awake. You are the enlightening factor that manifests the experienced.
And nothing obscures this vivid, open, infinite awareness. Not even the ego.
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 there is nothing lacking and nothing threatening. All is you. All is yours. All is home.
Enlightenment is not the transformation into an improved ego, but a natural transmutation of the base materials of desire and fear back into the golden qualities of Self.
Your true nature is not something hidden from – not even in moments of fear or desire; nor is it gained in moments of clarity and peace.
Enlightenment is life itself.
Your existing awareness, consciousness or experiencing is both the path and the goal. It is the home you seek.
What is nonduality?
“Nondual wisdom points us to the original wound of the apparent splitting off from the fabric of wholeness, the flow of life, and the shared beingness with everything and everyone. With an ever deepening and never-ending exploration we find that as we are not separate from the world, and that while bodies can be hurt, become sick or injured and eventually die, and finite minds are limited, we know and feel ourselves as not two, not separate, and in this way, we come to know that there is not me and other, us and them, or me against the world; and ultimately, as such, we are ultimately safe everywhere…”
“Coming to know the Self as the ground of being through self-inquiry, unburdening the parts, or any other means, allows the activity of mind or ego to drop off or dissipate, allowing the Self’s qualities of clarity and courage to radically shift our perspective.”
“[Our] inner and outer lives align with our felt knowledge of shared being and carry with them a universal clarity and power that guides us and includes all.]”
– Monique M. Verrier
“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
“I can’t emphasize enough what a profound effect your podcast had on me. It’s not just the highly articulate and precise conversation you manage to have, over and over again, but the vibe of it, the sense of just how remarkable this unnameable, unknowable, utterly extraordinary thing is that’s going on all around us, and through us, and is us. That vibe, or feeling, or sense of wonder communicates so much more than words… They provoke thought. Yours provoke feeling…which I find takes me right into the heart of this mystery. Please keep up your work… listening to you on the other side of the world, you are having a huge impact.”
“Your book has touched me deeply. I read it three times. I live this ‘I Am’ and resonated with how you articulated it in such detail and depth… The truth as you describe it embraces manifestation of the human conditioning, which I find refreshing that it’s not being bypassed.”
“I came to know of you thru your podcast… and was refreshed by the simple clarity of understanding expressed in your discussions… your podcasts have already provided a stepping stone to my meditation on and in the source which is a remarkable gift in itself… Thank you again and I look forward to hearing more from you on your podcast.”
Book your appointment
These sessions are for anyone who has a resonance with nonduality (Advaita) or feels curious or compelled to pursue Self-realisation.
You can ask any questions, talk about your insights, blocks and areas of confusion, be guided through nondual meditations and experiential inquiry and listen to Nic Higham talk about the timeless Truth of nonduality.