Question: I dabbled in tradition after tradition over the years, until recently throwing in the towel once again after an intellectual romance with nonduality.
Rodney: Nonduality can't be romanced. It is its own clarity and loveliness, and lacks for nothing. And neither can it be intellectualized. Well, actually, it can and is all-too-often the hallowed subject of comparative studies and abstruse spiritual tomes. But nonduality proper, that spiritual and philosophical tradition that points to the fundamental unity of all things, can only be known by direct experience, not by theories and treatises.
Q: So I'm right back to throwing in the towel, it seems. I still get "Nonduality Highlights" and read your blog. But I'm really at a lost these days.
Rodney: You've mentioned three laudable things: 1) You've thrown in the towel on your "intellectual romance" with nonduality; 2) You continue to read credible nondual publications and writers/teachers; and 3) You feel thoroughly lost. Only this last point requires a bit of explanation. Were you adament on your being an individual rather than something infinitely more than that, there would be little chance of your having any true perceivings of yourself. So being lost isn't synonymous with being without hope. Then again, hope is purely conceptual in this neck of the woods. For you are already that which you are seeking.
Q: What am I not understanding?
Rodney: Good question. Among other things, that there is no "I" or person there to grasp or comprehend anything. What is in ample evidence is a knowing, transparent spaciousness in which your body, thoughts, traits, and habits appear. This spaciousness is your own everyday awareness. You just have never brought your full attention to its profundity. Or you have never paused to grasp the fact that your thoughts, dreams, and emotions can't behold anything. So what is it that is recognizing all of this? You are that discerning presence that espies the coming and going of even consciousness.
Q: Thanks for the replies. I'm still trying to let go everything and feel the seamless fluidity of my thoughts and being.
Rodney: The registration of your perceptions is happening anyway. To add a "you" there only complicates matters, as it does for all meditators and spiritual "practitioners." Better to be attentive to the fact that you, as a person, do not exist. For you are awareness itself. There is nothing for you to see other than that. It is simply a matter of looking and verifying this through your own direct experience.
Q: Why do I have such an unquenchable urge to discover the truth of this matter?
Rodney: Such questions only take you from the matter at hand, which is your own incontestable presence of awareness. That, literally, is where the riches lie. A clear seeing and understanding is all that is required. You asked about your urge to discover what you are. I say, forget the "why." Just run with it. Or better yet, come to a Full Stop and see what is what. It is so simple, and yet, so extraordinary. But always, it is you.
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