Non-dual coaching

I notice that the word ‘awareness’ often conjures up the feeling of something detached, cool and abstract. Totally uninvolved. Whenever we think of awareness in this way, we have limited its unbound and indescribable nature.

It is uninvolved, but it’s so much more that that. It does not witness from a separate place. How could it? Awareness doesn’t have a location, a position. .

It witnesses from inside, from the heart of everything. 

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An email to a nondual coaching client:

Dear -----

I realized that when you were expressing your longing for a direct experience of the unconditioned ground of your being, I did not have time to fully respond to you.

I spoke to you about gentleness, and just resting here, in this moment, without looking for a better or bigger experience. Without worrying about whether or not you are ‘on track’ or not, letting go of the need to know that.

I have a very strong sense these days of the infinite spaciousness of being, and how we are permeated in each moment by this, and at the same time, turning away from it, towards what we can know, or hold onto, or feel comfortable with. That’s why I appreciate so much the nondual principle of ‘nowhere to land.’ And I sometimes feel that the restlessness and anxiety you struggle with is just the conditioned nature of the mind, still hoping to find some solid ground to rest on. And there is no ground like that. We just have to relax into the spaciousness, into not knowing, over and over, as much as we can, and be grateful even for small moments of wide-openness.

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Email to a nondual coaching client:

I want to begin by focusing on and acknowledging the power and force with which you are willing to inquire into your own true nature, into awareness itself.  As you told me on the phone, you thought, in the beginning that this practice was all about losing weight, and now that does not appear to be true at all!

So the nature of inquiry is very very simple, because it is not happening in the mind. And it is not based on anything you think you know, because whatever you think you know is a concept, a mental formulation, and not awareness, which is unknowable by the mind, because it is not an object.

I suggest you begin your inquiry, every time, with this: Do I really understand that awareness is not an object? What kind of assumptions am I making about the nature of awareness?

And then, when a thought feeling of emotion arises, just ask, “What is feeling this?” or “What is perceiving this?”

And if you want to approach it from a slightly different angle, just ask, “What is this awareness? This awareness that is right here, now, that I cannot taste or touch or grasp with my mind? What is it?”

And notice that any ideas you have about where it might or might not be located are simply ideas..and come back to resting in not-knowing..Just resting in the simple feeling of not-knowing.