In Advaita Vedantic traditions, there is a heavy focus initially on the neti neti process – whereby all experience, in the sense of thought, feelings, sensations, and perceptions – are recognised to be ‘not what I am’. From this activity, the nature of awareness as 'myself' shines forth as the source of the sense 'I Am'. It is a backward flow for the sense of itself out of the sense of limitation (binding through concepts and interpretation) into its limitless, infinite potential. We recognise through this process that we are not limited to any experience and strip back all that is in the experiential field as a means of coming to what is our essential nature – that which remains beyond experience. This is a very powerful and enlightening process where it is recognised, viscerally and with great clarity, that:

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- all needs are met unconditionally as the very nature of the self

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-no experience (or ‘thing’) in and of itself is that upon which happiness and wholeness depends

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-there is not a separate entity named (insert name here) from which consciousness is arising, but that the experience of this separate self is appearing in myself, awareness/beingness.

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In tantric traditions, there is a focus upon experience. Whereby through experience, we recognise its nature, and the self as the totality of experience and the appearance of all form and patterns.

 

There is a movement towards:

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- embodying all aspects of experience as myself.

- experiencing the equanimity that permeates all experience (fusing opposites in the field of appearances/in awareness)

- embracing all appearances in the subject -object experience.

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This is not only deeply healing, but also allows the embrace of all of life.

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The nondual exploration requires both – to know the nature of awareness as that which creates all but is not affected by experience, yet shines upon and creates all experience, completely inseparable and everchanging, is the movement through which it is recognised that we are all experience and the creator and transformative power of that. The convergence of wisdom and love is happening constantly through experiencing.

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From here, life shifts from an experience of doing and controlling to being, experiencing and exploring. However, this is not a passive way of being and living, but a wholehearted dynamic engagement with life as the heart and source of reality and existence itself. This is an incredibly healing and creative movement as the flow of experience – and one that needs first to be clear on the nature of our very awareness and attention (focused awareness) as the eye and expression of all creation.

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See blog post: Finding the source of the sense 'I Am'.

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The 'no more suffering' falsity

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Peppered through western interpretations of nonduality there appears to be misunderstanding around the nature of experiencing ‘pre and post enlightenment’ which points to a fallacy that suffering ends and that if one is suffering then they are not yet ‘enlightened’, have not realised the self. The opposing extreme to this is that as the self is realised, suffering goes on and there is nothing that you can do about it. A bowing out from the human experience as rejection of life in the name of radical acceptance of what is (popularly expressed as 'there is nobody here to suffer and no world to suffer in'). 

 

My position here is that this is misunderstood and misguided and is reflective of a deeply rooted pattern culturally in the movement of the denial of suffering – through conventional means such as therapy to be free from suffering, pharmacological interventions to dampen or be rid of unwanted sensations and perceptions, and a notion that to be realised is to no longer suffer. Both, I believe, are rooted in a core wound of unworthiness that permeates our culture, and incredibly painful contractions around the qualities of authority, power, abundance, and belonging. It is an incredible denial of experience as the whole, which patterns through the many activities and conceptualisations of nonduality (and spirituality) within teaching, community, and coaching circles, creating more stuckness, more spinning, more division, and more pain.

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Freedom within suffering – and the transformative by-product: A Personal Spiritual Emergency

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I found nondual therapy during a time of immense suffering. I had experienced deep union with myself as true nature and the incredible fruits in experiencing that such ‘wakefulness’ brings. Deep connection, deep love, deep compassion, awe and wonder…infinite, boundless abundance, and a falling in love with the simplicity and simultaneous ecstasy and bliss in living as life itself beyond the experience of separation. My body was everything and felt incredibly beautiful.

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And then the awakening started to change. It had been a sudden energetic awakening following moving away from a difficult romantic relationship and so eventually, as the awakened energy ‘got to work’, a profound experience of trauma (separation and disconnection) became my experience, characterised with an unbearable feeling of rejection. Despite my deeper knowing, in my human experience, I had been not just separated from God through the experience of ‘being in a physical body’ but rejected on the psychological level for being totally unworthy.  In addition, my ability to be able to ‘access’ true nature through direct experience in the natural world had shut down. I had gone from being able to use the sensory experience of worms, soil, the sounds of a hedgehog, and the experience of a waterfall as portals, to hitting everything as rock solid. The energetic heart had contracted through the bodymind accompanied by a belief that the natural world had rejected me too, all doors closed – and it was my guru.

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Disconnection from god, disconnection from myself, my truth, my work (psychology no longer made sense to me at this stage so I couldn’t practice), and disconnection from nature as my guru – this all reverberated with a collective experience of alienation in a western industrial and economic growth society and ‘neti neti’ was making it worse.

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I felt incredibly lonely and isolated in my experience. My sense of trust and truth was being morphed through self-gaslighting – largely through the denial of experiencing the human need for healthy and secure attachment in relationships. This was being conceptualised as ‘unenlightened’ as a massive spiritual bypass. When I looked to ‘spiritual’ communities and coaching I found linear ‘actualising’ and ‘expanding’ offerings at a high price, and in nondual communities – the experience of separation, and indeed, experience itself, was being denied through “neti bloody neti”.

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 My experience of ‘neti neti’ is that it is a stunning process when anchored in safe hands and a healthy attachment relationship on the level of being human - but my goodness can it further distort around our core wounds, and those of our teachers, mentors, friends, and partners if not in awareness. The web, inside and out, was wild with the denial of experiencing, and suffering, and I just felt more and more ‘wrong’ in myself.

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Landing in a Nondual Therapy session changed everything. Not only was my experience deeply understood and welcomed, but I was pointed to the need to include everything – shifting from the ‘not this’ to ‘this too’ movement. I was also given a clear model through which to work with integrating through the nondual therapy qualities and contractions. My experience started to open again and I was accessing space and immense relief. I also had a model and therapeutic relationship (a healthy and secure attachment relationship) to anchor in through which life felt safe and made sense.  Through the nondual therapy system, I was now also empowered to return to nature as my guru and play with a new richness and authority of experiencing in a safe, all encompassing space, through my experience of the body (rather than a denial of it). This was the movement of Belonging and the freedom within suffering that had been so deeply needed – and to top it off, I didn’t need to sit and meditate anymore to ‘be enlightened’ or ‘get rid of my ego’. I had been invited to dance.

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See blog post: The Qualities of True Nature: Finding freedom within Suffering

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Presence as the Radiant Parent

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My own experience of working within the Nondual therapy frame therapeutically as well as deepening into a direct experience of living, unbound by concept and interpretation, has been supported through the frame of presence as the radiant parent, and the need to support the ‘body-mind time machine’ to ‘reparent’ to the present moment in stabilising itself into self-recognition as this actuality and flow of experiencing. It became clearer and clearer to me that minds’ activity was all pointing towards a yearning for sacred safety in this everchanging wildness of experiencing, a search for the groundless ground, and an attempt to create a ‘false ground’ in its seeking for its’ source, the absolute. The presence as the radiant parent is a frame that allows a wide scope of understanding and inclusion of all experience and recognises the core wound of unworthiness and cultural trauma that permeates the consciousness of ‘separation’ in western culture.

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See blog posts: Presence as the Radiant Parent

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Deep alignment as presence and the play of creation

going nowhere, being everything 

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During experiencing states of very clear seeing (little awakenings) over the years, there has been one desire that has permeated my  field of experiencing –

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“I just want to play with form and share the love that I am”.

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As realisation has deepened, and my recognition of being the totality of experience – this has refined to a more simple –

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‘I just want to be myself’

 

(the play of form as the love that I am and the source from which this all arises – to try to explain the immeasurable and unexaplainable).

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I speak of this as desire because this is the feeling and sensation – the field of experiencing is pure love making love to itself, and this is me as rock solid ‘space’ - realness. When I have ‘come out’ of these states, the yearning that is left is more of a desiring for this – and I know that this is here, when I don’t set conditions on what this should look like. And so from this, I recognise a pure desire. A desire that embodies the expression and love of the whole as the whole, in embrace of all experience. When I am feeling ‘off’, I come back to this desire and I explore this moment with the wholeness of heart, and the desire is met immediately as myself. I be myself, and the manifestation (opening of patterns and infinite possibility) appears to me directly.

This doesn’t mean I’m not feeling sadness, pain, and confusion sometimes, it means that this is all me and I am free within it. I notice the freedom within it, and I rest in gratitude for what is appearing to me, as me, to show me where patterns and qualities need integration through experiencing. Awareness, as life, is directing its own attention towards and within its own freedom to explore itself, create itself, and renew itself simultaneously.

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This awareness is me. I am the play of creation…..and so are you!

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