There is a Choice We Make

There is one body and one Spirit . . . one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all (Ephesians 4:6).

According to the nondual understanding, this verse expresses a truth that, when understood, uproots ignorance, the belief of being a separate entity in the world.

In life, we have a choice. We can invest our faith in a personal identity believed to be separate from God, or we can find our true nature in God’s presence. But what does this mean?

Traditional Christianity is largely focused on personal devotion to Christ. The path of devotion is rewarding in itself, but a spiritual framework built upon separation is incomplete. (This article explores the concept of devotion in more detail.)

The traditional view presumes a personal identity or separate self—a constellation of perceptions, thoughts, memories, feelings, bodily sensations—and projects that apparently separate self somehow away from God in order to work its way back to God. But in what larger reality (larger than God) would this allegedly separate self and God co-exist? (See this article for more.) And what exactly do we mean by “God”?

In monotheistic religions, God is defined as the ultimate reality or supreme being. Our ultimate experiential reality is awareness, or being*, by which everything is known and outside of which nothing can be known. Using this definition, the experiential essence of God, supreme being, is awareness, or aware presence. (The aspect of will is explored here.)

So, provisionally, (1) God is aware presence, (2) aware presence perceives, and (3) God is one. Therefore, God’s aware presence is experiencing itself in the world of perception through our senses, moment by moment. It is God’s aware presence that knows these words. The case of mistaken identity is created in the ego-mind by the content of perception, by that which is known. Aware presence, the true self, is the knower of the known. In this sense, supreme “being” is a verb. It is an activity, a doing, a knowing.

To be knowingly aware of this innermost and omnipresent essence is to be present as awareness.

In this way we approach, to use religious language, oneness with the Father, oneness with the Spirit, oneness with Christ. We see the Kingdom of God in ourselves, in one another, and throughout. ⬚

*Here, “awareness” and “being” are used synonymously and are not mental states. Mental states appear in and are known by awareness. See this article for more.

When We Fall Asleep

In order to experience the imaginary world of our dreams at night, we must fall asleep.

Within the dream state, direct knowledge of our sleeping self recedes as we assume a point of view from which we experience new environments, characters and objects, but the dream stuff is the manifestation of a singular consciousness. In other words the dream is one seamless whole with no real, independent parts separate from the witnessing presence.

Likewise, the infinite, indivisible awareness or reality behind the concept of God knows the world in subject-object relationship by spontaneously and simultaneously generating a world and manifesting within that world as a finite, aware being, as an apparently separate subject of experience.

By perceiving the world in subject-object relationship through the necessary limitations of a finite mind, infinite being temporarily sacrifices direct knowledge of itself in order to experience a multiplicity of localized perspectives within itself. Without the temporary veil of ignorance, the drama of separation and the rediscovery of oneness would not unfold.

Infinite being, then, finds itself again through spontaneous acts of grace, when the mind glimpses the oneness of being beyond the illusion of separation and gets a taste of this unity. From the relative point of view of the finite mind, this unveiling, this collapse of separation, is experienced as the fullness of love.

Using religious language we could say: Once I was lost in the drama of experience, in a felt sense of separation, but now I am found. I was blind, but now I see that the ultimate reality of what I am, aware presence, and the ultimate reality of the Father are one and the same.

When Jesus cites Psalm 82:6 in John 10:34 and repeats the statement, “You are gods,” he is not referring to a separate self attaining godhood, for there is no such self. The reference is to our shared being of the one, ever-lasting Self, infinite awareness, in which we live and move and have our being. ⬚

When We Wake Up

When the body dies, awareness doesn’t go anywhere—although, like in a dream, it may appear to—for there isn’t some other separate, independent space outside of awareness to which awareness can relocate. When the body dies, awareness simply loses the limitations imposed by the body-mind.

Think of the space in your room. That space is not separate and independent from the space outside your room although from a limited point of view it may appear to be. If the building collapses, the space in your room will not go anywhere; it will not return to its source. The space in your room is the source. The walls and ceiling are just a temporary enclosure within a single, physical space. So in the broader context, the perception of separate space is an illusion, and the vast, physical space only appears to be divided from a limited point of view.

In the same way, feelings, sensations, thoughts and perceptions make up the temporary enclosure of the body-mind. When we wake up from the dream of separateness, our true essence as infinite awareness will shine.

Jesus did not come to redeem our true essence because the divine presence of awareness doesn’t need redeeming. Rather, Jesus shows the way for the troubled mind entangled in thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations. Jesus experienced directly the oneness of being, which he called the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven, and he sought to liberate others from the bondage of perceived separation. ⬚

Facets of Presence

When we understand the nature of each other’s being, we do not become so enmeshed in the content of experience, in attitudes, actions, narratives or relationships. When we not only understand but feel that each and every other is simply a different facet of a shared being, enclosed in a temporary collection of thoughts and feelings, and lost, perhaps, in the everyday drama of the self, when we fully understand reality at this level, our attention isn’t so constrained, and we are granted access to our inherent freedom. ⬚

The Substrate of All Experience

Jesus, speaking as awareness or aware presence, says, “I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me” (Thomas, verse 77).

There is a total, embodied awareness of oneness happening here. Everywhere Jesus looks he sees utter unity, including in the “you” to whom he speaks.

Jesus, as awareness, the play of consciousness, recognizes himself as the world. ⬚

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