Non-duality means how to live a real life. It’s real simple when you think about it, the definition that way, because the prayer with non-duality is lead me from the false to the real. So you’re just trying to go from what’s wrong, false, to what’s real.
So it’s just how to live a real life. And you can’t live a real life when you’re living in pretence, when you’re pretending. And there’s the rub right there.
We’re taught to pretend from the day we’re born. If we don’t pretend, we don’t fit in. If we don’t pretend, we get in trouble, right? You have to pretend like you’re something or other all the time.
We’re not really pointed in the direction of truth; we’re constantly pointed in the direction of pretending. Even our language itself is a language of pretending, because it does not do a good job of describing the truth. Like here I am, I’m sitting here, I’m talking in English, right? You’re listening in English.
No matter what I say, the very language that I’m using has a structure that divides things into pieces, and so it just does not thoroughly or softly describe reality as it is. But we can still kind of muddle along a bit, can’t we? We have to.
So how do we step out of the constant pretending into being the most real person that we can be? And it’s pretty easy, actually. You just have to have moments of silence and not really, really trust your thoughts.
Trust your impressions. Next time you’re having — you’re trying to figure something out — kind of just try to slow those thoughts down and let it just build in as impressions, and see where you get. Einstein discovered this.
He would actually go to sleep when he had a really bad problem and sometimes wake up with the answer, because the trying to work it out through the thoughts in his head would stop, and he’d be able to actually get the impression and the feeling and the sense of what’s real. This is where E = mc² came from. He figured out first that energy and matter go back and forth.
Then from there, once that’s figured out, he’s like, “Well, yes, obviously that’s true. You can see it happen in the world. So exactly what’s the formula that explains it?”
But if you start with the formula, you don’t easily get to the sense. If you start with the sense of it, then you get to the formula. So what we’re looking for is to drop the pretense — and the pretense comes with all the shoulds that we’ve been taught our whole life.
Some of them are good. Don’t just throw them all out. Take the time to examine them.
And you’ll find that there’s a human reality within you that just knows things, like “Honesty is better,” “Being kind works a lot better,” “Being open and cheerful works a lot better than being grouchy and horrible.”
These things are just obvious; we can find them out for ourselves when we’re not pretending. If we spend the whole time pretending, then the only thing that we feel will save us is enough rules to live by. And rules make us crazy, because we don’t need them.
We’re smart enough to know the sense of what’s going on. So non-duality is about living a real life. What is it in you that’s just absolutely real?
You know it. It’s you. Your thoughts aren’t real.
They come and go. You are real.