Nonduality is not an attainment.
Of all the things I have to teach about nonduality, this is probably the most important one, because this is the number one thing that keeps you from understanding what the nondual state is—what enlightenment is.
I always like to say: if you had even the slightest idea of what nonduality is, you’d be it, because it’s that obvious. Stepping into the completely obvious is not an attainment.
The idea of enlightenment as this fabulous attainment has enslaved huge populations of people. So, it’s a very dangerous idea to be thinking about too. Hierarchy itself is very dangerous for human beings because it’s dangerous for both sides. It’s dangerous for the people who manage to get themselves “up,” and it’s dangerous for the people “down below” who honor these fabulous rulers we create.
We create the idea that somebody is better than us. And then all of broken psychology is based on that, because any sort of hierarchy has the higher and the lower. If you are living in a hierarchy (and you are) you constantly have the feeling of not being good enough. There is no way out of the idea of “better than.”
Getting rid of this one idea is probably the most valuable thing you can do on your spiritual search. I like to make jokes about it, because humor is the total equalizer, right? So I like to be snarky about Buddha and knock him off his pedastall.
In fact, I wrote a book—Retelling Buddha, reframes him as having made a big mistake in the way he taught and in some of his basic concepts about things. Buddha came from a society completely embedded in hierarchy, and he came from the top of the hierarchy, right? So it was totally reasonable that he would see his own enlightenment as an attainment, even though he kind of talks about how it wasn’t.
The infinite loop of “better than.”
It’s so hard to get away from the psychopathy of hierarchy once we’re in it. So, enlightenment is not an attainment.
If you want to give it any sort of quality inside the hierarchy, then say that enlightenment is the exact opposite of attainment. It’s like giving up. It’s like complete failure.
When you reach that moment of complete failure in trying to become something other than you are—then that is enlightenment. And that’s no attainment, right?
Nonduality, enlightenment, is not an attainment. It’s the exact opposite of it.
Also this week:
Next Week: Nonduality is your Birthright