If you can see it… it’s not you
Two is not you
Here’s another way to think about it: If you can see it, it’s not you.
A good analogy is a cell phone. If you pick up your cell phone and try to take a picture of your cell phone you can’t do it. Your cell phone can’t take a picture of itself.
I can use my cell phone and take a picture of me. I can use it and take a picture of the room I’m sitting in. But I can’t use my cell phone to take a picture of itself. Yeah, it can take a screenshot, but that’s not the same thing.
It’s the same with you. Anything that you can see is not you.
For instance your hands. Hold your hand up and look at it. Are you looking at your hand? Can your hand look at you?
Obviously it’s you looking at your hand. Your hand is not you. You can feel your body. So your body is not you. Not you entirely, not the consciousness that is looking.
A good example is your hair. You can cut your hair off and drop it on the ground. It is obviously not you even though it was attached to you. Cut it off and it is clearly an entirely different thing.
Your hand, actually, can be cut off. You are still you even if your hand is cut off. Those things are therefore not you.
Anything you can name is not you. This is one of those things that makes non-duality really tricky because we have to use words in order to talk about it. But the words are not it. It seems to get more and more obscure the more you get into it.
Emotions
What about your emotions? They feel very much like they are you. Your emotions are very compelling. Suddenly you feel afraid, or you feel love, or anything. It captures our attention very effectively. But emotions come and go. You are you when you feel love. Then the emotion fades and you are you when you don’t feel love. So the emotion is not you.
Your thoughts aren’t you. Thoughts also come and go, yet you remain. You can have a good thought, and then it goes. You can have a brilliant thought, and then it goes. You can actually see and hear the thoughts as they happen. You are the one looking at the thoughts, feeling the feelings. But they are not you. They come and go. You remain.
So your hand isn’t you. Your hair isn’t you. Your emotions aren’t you. Your thoughts aren’t you.
What are you?
How did we forget ourselves?
How did we forget ourselves?
Was there ever a time when you just naturally knew yourself? Did you know who you were as a child? Was there a time where human beings naturally knew ourselves?
How did we get into the situation where we need all these spiritual teachings to help us to find what should be a simple thing. Who am I? What am I?
Mysticism
How in the world did we get in the situation where we need mystical traditions to tell us who we are? It’s like we are living in the dark. We question who we are, we question where we come from. There is even the idea that we came from someplace else and have been sent here to learn a lesson.
Tip: Take your nondual razor and cut that one out. Thinking that you come from some place else and have been sent here to learn a lesson is clearly two things: The someplace else is out there somewhere… and now you’re here. That’s two things.
So how did we forget ourselves?
It’s like everybody has been hypnotized. Right? That’s easy to see. Our brain is designed to make sense out of things so we end up making stories, whether or not they are crazy or not. And then we get lost in the stories.
One good analogy I can think of is when you get new shoes. Imagine that you just got bright, shiny new shoes, and you’re walking along. All you can see is the new shoes. Right? They capture your attention as you walk. Especially if they make a sound “Clip clip clap” on the ground. You walk along and in every step your attention is drawn to the new shoes. It’s all you see as you walk.
This is exactly how we’ve been hypnotized by the concepts we have about the things around us. Our mind is constantly going and going with stories, and worries and thoughts about things that seem to be happening. And it’s like the new shoes. We get entranced by it.
We can wake up.
You’re walking along with the new shoes and all the sudden you’re like, “Oh wait, I better look up or I’m gonna bump into something.” Then you remember that these are just new shoes. They simply captured your attention. But you’re the one here walking along.
Then, you can walk along for a while and next thing you know you look down and you get entranced by the shoes again.
This is how how we’ve managed to become entranced by the things that are happening in our brain. We never look up.
This is particularly true because we live in a society where for thousands of years the answers about how the world works are so of off-base that they are literally lies. Most of the stories about god and life don’t make any sense. This is our base of reality, though, so we have to constantly fool ourselves into believing that we can figure it out. We get stuck in a loop. We constantly fool ourselves into re-creating the stories inside your brain. And then, trying to make sense of nonsense.
It’s no wonder we are so confused.
The Razor of Non-duality
Cutting with the razor.
Don’t get confused at this point. This is the point where it’s easy to take something that’s simple and get it confused in your brain.
Keep going and it will get more and more clear as we go on, but we often have to go through the stage of confusion in order to work past it.
Remember the razor of non duality is about finding who you are. It’s not about analyzing the world. It’s not about the outside world.
There are actually two apples out in the world. There’s more than two apples in fact! There are many varieties of apples and millions of apples are grown every year. There’s your computer and there’s my computer. Two things. You are sitting in a room. I’m sitting in a room. There’s actually two hemispheres of our brain (we will be talking about that later so don’t get confused about that.) We have male and female, and yin and yang.
The real two
Throughout this course I’m going to be talking about two different things from within the realm of non-duality.
There are more than two emotions. Emotions come and go and we have many names for emotions. We can constantly analyze them, but they’re still not you. We’re trying to find out. What are you.
So don’t get too confused about dealing with the outside world. You can own two pairs of shoes. You can own two houses. There are lots of things in the entire world that are dual, triple, quadruple… even more than that. It’s infinite, but we’re not looking at that.
We are trying to find out who you are.
The razor of non-duality is to cut out all the things that you are not. It’s obvious that you are not an apple. You are not an emotion. You are not the house that you own.
Start from that simple point.
Pause For the Beauty
As we work through ideas on non-duality, it’s important to very regularly pause and experience the beauty that we live in. We are cosmic beings in a cosmic cosmos. Imagine, just for a moment, the vastness of the universe. You are sitting here experiencing this unity as an amazing complex of molecules and electricity. Every atom of your being is intricately involved in and enveloped in the cosmos.
Pause regularly and imagine all the stars twinkling above. Imagine the beautiful swirling lights of the universe. You are an amazing, swirling mix of molecules and electricity firing within this cosmos. Your consciousness is a spark of life.
Working through Nonduality can feel stressful. But the stress drops away any time we pause and trust in this cosmos that envelops us.
What we’re trying to do is remove a very thin veil from our eyes that keeps us in an illusion of separation. It can feel very annoying, like fingernails scratching on a chalkboard… because we’re scraping away at the thing that we believe is protecting us. But this veil is actually the thing that is hiding us from the beauty.
So it’s good to, every once in a while, stop and pause. Notice the beauty that we live in as human beings… and the vast beauty that is within you as well.
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