Three ways non-duality will ruin you.
I’m going to talk about motivation, your teacher, and your context. Stick with me to the end, because it’s not going to be what you think it’s going to be.
First: your motivation. This is the most important part… and note that this is about you!
If your motivation is to escape the world, to escape reality, then non-duality is going to ruin you, because every teaching you hear about not non-duality is going to reinforce the idea that you can escape and that escaping is a good thing.
The worst interpretation that we can give to non-duality is that it’s about disappearing into some blissful nothingness. That’s so attractive to our modern minds because we’re not happy with ourselves. We’re not happy with who we are, we’re not happy with our communities and our cultures. We take that deeper and deeper and deeper till we’re not happy with the world itself, with the universe itself.
This is why we’re destroying the world.
Until we truly want to be fully here 100%, we’re going to always be destructive. We’ll be destructive to the people around us. We’ll be destructive to ourselves. We’ll be destructive to our environment.
If this is your motivation for nonduality, you are going to ruin things. You’re going to ruin your personality. You’re going to ruin the way that you interact with the world. You’re going to destroy your relationships. You’re not going to have a good job. Everything is going to go bad because it is pure ego to what to get away from life. Believing you are separate from the world is toxic.
You can’t get away. Think logically about that for a sec. You can’t get away from something that you are. If you are intricately interconnected to the world, you can’t get away from it.
Escapism is believing a story that we come from somewhere else.
The worst one is that we come from somewhere else to learn a lesson here or to serve here. Like… literally it’s a punishment to be here. Like being on the earth, being alive is a punishment.
If you think being alive is a punishment, you’re going to want to get away from it.
This motivation is the easiest to drop, and the most critical to drop. You just have to decide. And it’s so easy to decide for life… because look around you. Obviously, we belong here. Obviously, being here is what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re not supposed to be learning some mystical lesson. We’re supposed to just be here, participating, and relating in this world that we are in.
So examine that motivation inside yourself.
What are you trying to get away from? And this is not specific to non-duality. You can use the same idea with Buddhism, with Christianity, with drugs, with workaholicism, with anything.
This is the number one motivation that causes pain.
On the other hand, if your motivation is to participate fully and find the truth of existence, the. non-duality is going to help you and not hurt you.
Number two, the teacher.
Now, almost everybody thinks that I am going to say that if you have a bad Nonduuality teacher, you’re going to be ruined. Not true at all, because this has everything to do with you.
My teacher, Osho always used to say that the pure, innocent, disciple, Sanyasin, could go to the worst teacher and still find enlightenment, because they have what we were talking about before, a pure motivation. If you have wrong motivation, it doesn’t matter what teacher you go to.
The real danger is that you’re going to blame the teacher, right? You think the teacher is somehow supposed to give you something. But the teacher can’t do that because it’s your inner being, your motivation, your reaction to things and your interpretation of things that is going to determine what happens.
Blaming the teacher will ruin you because it takes your responsibility out of it.
Third is the context that you’re doing this in.
If your context is that something is wrong with life itself and you’re trying to get out of that, then non-duality is going to ruin you.
If your context is that life itself, existence itself, is a marvelous interplay of connection and beauty, then you’re going to find that.
You’ll find it in whatever you do: In non-duality, in Buddhism, in Sufism, in Christianity.
Context is very important. How do you see this universe that you’re in? How do you see the world itself, the earth itself? This context bleeds into everything. What’s your context in your family? What’s your context in your job?
The way you see your connection to all is something you choose. There is no enemy to your inner being. The earth holds us. Gravity holds us down… it never fails. All we have to do is find our place within it.
With this context of seeing yourself within the interplay of existence your non-duality studies will lead you to a deeper and deeper place of inner being and connectedness.
Non-duality will ruin you if your motivation is wrong, and if you blame the teachers, and if you context is one of separation itself.
And these three things are all in your control.