How to Practise Non-Duality

Your fingers are all made of the same substance. They are made up of similar tissues, cells, atoms, and at the deepest level, subatomic particles. Similarly, when your experience of reality becomes more subtle, you discover that everything is just different expressions of one field of nondual Being.’ – Nirmala

There are various degrees of mindfulness out there; most of which interweave mindful analysis and reflection of one’s life with pure presence through meditation practices such as repetitive work, yoga and silent Vipassana. But there is one thread to the mindful patchwork that is becoming increasingly popular. That of Non-duality.

The word duality conjures the Buddhist theory of integration and the path that bridges two supposedly opposite factors, such as gender, race and religion and dissolves the apparent differences before your very eyes.

This is a place of complete non-judgment, where the practitioner takes their celebration of the present moment to extremes, shedding all knowledge of the law of attraction, past life theory, any healing technique they have ever experienced, and perhaps most importantly, their spiritual path up to this moment.

As James Eaton explains, we will never know if these things are true, so why bother yourself with the idea of them? Dropping, dropping, constantly letting each moment drop away in strict-honouring-presence can be daunting for some – especially in such an ego-centric society – yet for many, especially the traumatized, it may offer the only way out. No matter how much analysis, therapy and alternative therapies you undergo, at the end of the day this level of presence found through meditation is the thing that’s going to help you move forward, if only to help you cut the cord between forward and back.

As Gautama Buddha taught it, egolessness is born out of the raw and unadulterated moment. Non-duality is the path to egolessness. Duality causes suffering, or grasping as the Tibetan Book of the Dead names it, and it is only when we let go of a dualistic mindset that we might hope to glimpse an experience of God; the Now. If humans’ flaw is desire, then the only road to overcoming it is to completely shut off all past and future longing.

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