Actually, this is going to be the story of two light bulb moments because the two of them fit together to create a new paradigm that I can talk about in Nonduality teachings.
The first one, many years ago, was running across Jill Bolte Taylor’s story of ‘My Stroke of Insight.’ It’s best to see the real thing, so before reading onward, please go and find it on YouTube. Search for ‘My Stroke of Insight,’ and you’ll be able to see her TED talk, if you haven’t run across that before.
What happened with Jill is that she had a stroke in the left side of her brain that shut off the part of the brain that’s capable of doing language. Yet, she was still completely aware and awake.
This is fabulous to think about from the point of view of nonduality because in enlightenment teachings we’re always talking about turning off the mind. if you’ve done any studying on nonduality then you know the rap: the mind is an illusion… go beyond thoughts. All that.
Jill Bolte Taylor scientifically and medically proved this. You can physically shut down the part of your brain that talks and still be conscious. The storyteller is language. The thing we call the mind, that critical, always-talking part that we “hear” internally, is not consciousness. That critical mind can shut down and consciousness continues along, happily aware.
In the teachings of nonduality it is said that the mind is the thing that makes us feel like we’re separate from other things. This is because the mind makes labels. The mind defines things.
Definitions are not consciousness.
Like the word ‘cat.’ I can say the word ‘cat’ and because of the apparent solidity of that noun I can start believing that a cat is something separate from me — when, in reality, we’re so intertwined that any perceived separation is nebulous. It’s only in thinking of ‘cat’ as a noun that we can think of it as other.
This is an inverted way of seeing that all is one.
In the story “My Stroke of Insight” Jill’s brain shut down, and yet she was completely aware. She went into what we call the non-dual state because of a medical condition.
Don’t think it’s too magic and mystical, however, because during this time she was completely incapable of taking care of herself. Fortunately, she had people who took care of her. She had a great medical team, and loving family, who helped to rehabilitate her back from this state– because actually, it was a broken state.
You can’t be completely mindless like that and still be a functioning human being. It took years, but she comes back and tells us the story of this state and how, once the critical mind was gone, all she saw was the unity of everything. She tells how it was instantaneous and full. The mind was gone, she was still there.
After her rehabilitation she was able to remember being there. She was able to piece it together and see that the mystical connection was there all along. It’s just that the noisy brain seems so noisy and we get addicted to it. We start thinking that that noise in our head is us. We start believing that we’re separate.’
She describes nonduality in a perfect, medically proven way. Don’t take my word for it. Follow her and read all her books, ‘My Stroke of Insight.’
Jill’s story completely changed the way I was teaching nonduality. Before that, all I had was the same tools that everybody else had. You know the drill: try to calm your mind. Go beyond your mind. All the useless trappings of eastern spirituality.
With the old tools we get trapped in the endless loop that comes from using words for something that is beyond word. Then there’s all the crazy questions of, ‘Is your mind still there?’ (Yes, your mind is still there, you’re just not attached to it, etc., etc., etc.) It’s why nondualy sounds so nebulous.
Powerful moment number two.
Powerful moment number two came to me from the writings of another woman. Aren’t we glad that women are starting to get a voice?
The book was, ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’, by Robin Wall Kimmerer .
I read the book only a few years ago. It’s been out for years, but one day I came across a quote from the book and saw immediately that the writer was speaking and writing from a clear space of nonduality and enlightenment… though she didn’t use either of those words. When nondualy is a living reality it’s easy to see these things… because it’s obvious.
Get a copy of Braiding Sweetgrass and read it. It’s the clearest description of the nondual state I’ve ever seen.
I’ve talked to a lot of people about this since then and the response is often, ‘Oh yeah, I started that but I couldn’t finish it.’ You need to read it all the way through. It starts out really fun, then it goes through a dark area in the middle. I think that’s where most people quit. But then the story turns and comes back with a poetic weaving of how water, grass and trees brings her to unity with nature as it is.
It’s woven with the difference between nouns and verbs.
The story, for those of you who don’t know, is that the author is part Native American and she’s also a scientist, a biologist. It’s about her relationship with plants as a scientist, but always with a twist. From birth she has also carried the Native perspective that helped her always see deeper into the connection between plants.
Slowly the book weaves the threads of being plants and being human together into a vision of the awakened earth that we are living within. Or maybe I should say she braids this story together, because it is ‘Braiding Sweetgrass,’ right?
The story moves along and intertwines with the native perspective of life from the point of view of a person who is also a scientist. Here molecules, and cells and spirit are all naturally interconnected. Science is the eyes and terminology, but her seeing comes with an idea of interconnectedness. She is able to use the native wisdom that had come to her, even faintly, from her distant family. She wasn’t full 100% native blood, so she was raised in both worlds. But the native world was always was there percolating underneath.
This story is also about the journey she took in learning her native language which is a language of interconnection. The language itself braided together stories of connection in her consciousness. Visions that are impossible to express in our language were normal, everyday, in the native world. It was the difference between a noun-based language (English) and the verb based native way to speak.
Once we touch the interconnection of all we never lose it. Seeing the native perspective is so strong that even a tiny seed can grow in anyone’s consciousness.
In Braiding Sweegrass, through learning her native language, Robin Wall Kimmerer was able to see how everything’s interconnected and, with her scientific training, find this non-dual state naturally.
I was amazed. Or perhaps I should say… Again I was flabbergasted!
Native reality and the Non-dual
After this I started searching for other native writers. I don’t want to call them Shaman, because that’s a buzzword that’s been totally overused and is always stuck in hierarchy (We habitually believe that Shaman are special… powerful… mystical.). So I call them philosophers. Native philosophers and wisdom keepers.
Now I’m seeing them everywhere!
The thing about Jill Bolte Taylor, and her stroke of genius, was that she was one woman with a very unique experience. Her story is life changing and I’ve used what has come into consciousness from that to create awakening in my workshops since then. Life changing. But it’s not enough for world changing.
The native perspective changes everything. Suddenly true nondual voices are everywhere. Ripe. Living. Eloquent and speaking to each other across the globe.
What’s amazing is the timeframe. I’m doing this video in 2023. In a very short time, maybe five years, ten years, numerous native people have been finding a voice to bring stories and books and wisdom to us about the native perspective on life. And every single one of them, no matter where they come from, is describing living in the non-dual state.
They are better than traditional Nonduality! What they are saying is not only more eloquent, it is more doable than the nonduality that comes to us from Hinduism. This way to describe the nondual state is more focused and real than traditional nonduality is able to tell us. The big difference is that in the native perspective, you can’t be non-dual all by yourself. And that only makes sense, right?
You can’t be in Oneness all by yourself.
In native cultures you always had your whole tribe and your family. There was, and is, no such thing as individual enlightenment. There was more intersection than even that. Each person wasn’t just in a small tribe but everybody moved around and they interacted with each other in intricate ways. Tribes would come together and do ceremonies, and then walk back to different lands.
Native stories describe a way to live in a non-dual state related to everyone and everything, not only the people but the plants, the rocks, the trees, the earth itself, soil. The soil is alive. Everything is alive from this perspective.
Both ‘My Stroke of Insight’ and this deep native wisdom is telling us that the non-dual state is our natural state. It’s our natural place to be. It’s already there.
This makes all the difference. This totally changes the nondual search because we’re not looking to attain something and become something better. We’re looking to go inside, into who we’ve always been: To shake off the layers of dust and reveal the unity within.
This is what every nonduality teacher has been telling us in their obscure words about Brahman and merging into nothingness, but it’s been impossible for most people to understand it because we don’t have the stories and the perspective to put this together.
Traditional Nonduality is a tool to completely erase the stories we are consumed with to bring us to a place of freedom. Few people are willing or able to make that shift. Traditional wisdom shows us that it is much better to start with stories of the truth of interconnection.
So, from now on, I am going to attempt to talk about this in various different ways. Let’s see how good I can do bringing this new idea into the consciousness world.