Exploring Non-Duality

Non-dual experiences are experiences of feeling like the self/other boundary has thinned dramatically, or even dissolved. Non-dual practice is a way of intentionally bringing about this quality of experience, increasing its depth, and, eventually, perhaps, after some amount of practice, installing it as the default flavor of consciousness

Can you really separate the two? Where do you draw the line? Have you ever had a sensory experience without awareness? Have you ever experienced awareness without a sensory experience? There is no line, no way that we can separate sensory experience from awareness. We must therefore conclude that awareness and sensory experience are in fact the

If everything you’re perceiving is a cinematic production optimized for utility, then when you look at this page, you’re not really seeing a raw report of the light hitting your eyes, you are seeing what’s coming out of your mind. Therefore, everything you perceive as “the world” is a perception of your model of the world, which is to say, you.

Anecdotally, though, people experienced in non-dual states tend to report:

• Less emotional activation

• A greater sense of sacredness

• More absorption in surroundings

• A heightened sense of interconnectedness

• Less preoccupation with neurotic thoughts

• More available feelings of meaning and purpose

My sense, based on personal experience and observing others, is that you taking to the practice depends on your ability to catch a glimpse of non-duality. Try it out, and if you don’t experience an opening in any way after some exploration, I advise to return to a “bottom up” approach, with my usual recommendation being Vipassana practice as it’s

During non-dual experience, there tends to be a de-emphasis of that stressed-out inner monologue, and—as we all know—the stressed-out inner monologue can help you remind yourself of things like, “Fuck, fuck, I hope I don’t forget the milk, if I forget the milk again, I’m a fucking failure.”

Qualitative research has shown that people who have

In other words, there is a network in the brain devoted to inner experience, and a network devoted to exterior experience, and usually activation in one is associated with reduced activation in the other. Typically, being lost in your interiority means being less attuned to exterior experience, and vice versa. But during non-dual experience, when

it’s possible that you’ve already had a non-dual experience, and you just didn’t recognize it as such. Lots of people spontaneously have moments of mystical connection and then don’t systematically investigate it, or don’t return to it for one or another reason.