The spiritual training and teaching I have been engaged in for most of my life comes from the ‘non-dual’ teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism. I notice that most people’s eyes go a bit glassy when I mention the word ‘non-dual.’ It’s a difficult concept to grasp with the mind, because the mind functions in the field of polarity, of opposites. I’ve found the simplest way to approach the non-dual understanding is to invite people to let go of their ‘either/or’ thinking. Non-dual is more like both/and. Either/or thinking is black and white thinking. AA calls it ‘stinkin’ thinkin’, because it leads to pain, suffering and confusion. Why? Because it divides our world and our experience up into opposites that oppose one another. And this opposition exists only in our conditioned mind. When we confine ourselves to a world that exists only in our minds, we run into trouble.
I began to contemplate this many years ago in India, after having a conversation with my teacher one day. We were standing on a mountain road, looking down at the great river Vyas, roaring through our valley. I was asking him to help me deal with a situation in my life. “I can’t help you in that way,” he told me, “that’s not the way human beings are. What you are now calling your greatest strength, will one day be your greatest weakness. And what you call your greatest weakness, you will recognize as your greatest strength.” I was stunned by that, and spent many years exploring the depth of it. But it wasn’t until I left India that it really came home to me. Then I started to hear it everywhere: “ Find your true weakness and surrender to it. Therein lies the path to genius. Most people spend their lives using their strengths to overcome or cover up their weaknesses. Those few who use their strengths to incorporate their weaknesses, who don’t divide themselves, those people are very rare. In any generation there are a few and they lead their generation.”
- Moshe Feldenkrais
It was like waking up from a dream, realizing that I had been living in a black and white world. At first it was confusing and frightening to leave that world behind. Then I began to appreciate the depth, complexity and richness of life when I was not putting everything into those boxes of human/divine, good/bad, strong/weak, matter/spirit. In the non-dual understanding, your true nature is something that embraces everything as it is. As long as we live in a world of polarities, we cling to one side and try and push the other side away. Life becomes an endless struggle.
There is a myriad of ways to explore this. One of the most powerful for me is around our notions of love. We’ve been conditioned in our society to think of love and relationship in an either/or way. If I love you I want to live with you forever. If I want to leave, it means I no longer love you. We ignore the possibility that I could leave you and love you at the same time. This misunderstanding creates enormous pain in the field of relationship. It takes us back to the days when we were teenagers, struggling to define ourselves in relation to our parents. It seemed the only way to do that was to decide that our parents were total jerks, instead of fallible human beings.
The very way we think of love itself is usually very narrow: love is kind, generous, compassionate. All of this is true, but we forget that love is much vaster than our little black and white concepts. Love is fierce as well. Love is wild. Love does not play by the rules.
I give sessions in something called ‘Human Design,’ which is a combination of astrology and the 64 hexagrams of the I-Ching. (I know it sounds strange and complex, but it is actually provides a very clear mirror of our human nature-our gifts, challenges, turning points, and opportunities.) Each person has specific hexagrams that express the inner qualities of their being. I was preparing a reading for someone a while ago, and discovered her two main hexagrams:
The shocking and arousing force of thunder was the first one, and the soft and gentle penetrating power of wind and water was the second. It became clear as we worked together that the mind experiences these as total opposites. She realized that her essential being was vast enough to embrace them both.
The non-dual understanding is not intellectual- it’s a living thing that transforms the whole way we live. It allows us to be compassionate and forgiving with ourselves and others, because our dualistic judgments no longer make sense. How can I call myself ‘stupid’ when my wisdom is hidden within my so-called stupidity? How can I call you weak, when I know that strength is not the opposite of weakness?
Ultimately, either/or, black and white thinking is the basis for all fundamentalism. Most of the conflicts, war and terror being waged on our planet right now are based on this way of thinking. My enemy is bad and I am good, your way is wrong, my way is right. It takes a great mind and a vast heart like Mahatma Gandhi or Nelson Mandela, to lead people into another way of looking at things. And it’s never too late for each one of us to open to this way of being. In each moment that you are willing to stop dividing, you call the sweet fragrance of peace into this world.
Try this:
You can approach this in a very simple way. Whenever you find yourself in conflict or struggle of any kind, get curious about what is going on in your mind. Are you engaging in either/or thinking? Are you seeing something (either inside you or outside you) as an enemy? Would you be willing to let this way of thinking go, just for now, and see what happens? If it seems too difficult, sit down with someone you trust and respect, and explore this possibility with them.
Resources and References:
· The ‘I Ching’ is an ancient Chinese sacred text, known in English as ‘The Book of Changes.’ There are many versions of it. One of my favourites is the Wilhelm/Baynes translation.
· Moshe Feldenkrais developed a revolutionary way of working with the body, a system of healing and integration based on gentle and subtle movements http://www.achievingexcellence.com
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