What we’re talking about this week is history and how it informs our worldview. A worldview is our deepest views of who we are, including how we fit in the world.
We’re talking about the history we have been told, the history of who human beings are, and how it comes from a place of internal division. Our worldview comes from what we would have to call the conquerors. European ancestors who have been conquered themselves, thousands of years ago, and then went on to ‘settle’ and conquer the entire planet.
When you listen to Native wisdom, there is always a story of how the people were living, and then the conquering people came in. Now don’t get confused… every single person alive has ancestors who were once native and then suffered the conquering hoards. What we have today, though, is a small handful of people left on the planet with close enough native ancestors that they can remember the old stories and ways of being.
This is for the conquered/conquering people – you and me more than likely. We are talking about the fact that our worldview has been set by our ancestors. We’re talking about the necessity to get out of that.
I’m sure it’s possible that some truly indigenous people might watch this video, but I doubt they will get confused. This discussion is for us, the people who come from these conquering cultures. Specifically those of us who are searching for spirituality. Many of us are searching for non-duality through the Enlightenment traditions because we know something’s wrong and we’re trying to get back to a different state.
We are trying to find a way to make that work better.
It’s important to know that just thinking about it, wishing for it, or pretending that we know and are spiritual, isn’t going to do the trick. We need to first admit our worldview so we can see it. Our history, our beliefs of who we are, are so deep that it informs how we seek spirituality. It also informs how the enlightenment traditions, tell us to search. All the enlightenment methods come from this conquering worldview. That’s why it’s so mixed up.
It’s like that famous statement from Einstein: you can’t fix something using the same ideas that created the problem in the first place. You need something totally new. We’re talking how to jump completely out of that conquering mentality.
Here’s something important to understand… even a completely enlightened person can still interpret things wrong. AND even if an enlightened person interprets it right… when the seeker hears it they are going to translate it wrong because they will be using their habitual worldview. To be specific… You will always hear it wrong and turn it into a belief.
In my email, a few minutes ago, I got something from Echart Tolle on manifesting and I got something from Osho International on, ‘The Alchemy of the Self.’ Both of these are perfect examples of how ideas go wrong. If you try to use ideas that are born out of deep division to cure that same deep division, you always create more division.
First let’s talk about the idea of manifesting – Echart Tolle is really big about this because he managed to manifest a whole bunch of stuff just by becoming enlightened, right? That is a perfect example.
Now stop! Full stop. Many people will argue, ‘Oh, well, he’s not truly enlightened,’ or ‘Oh, if person was truly enlightened, they would do this or that or this or that.’
No. That’s so untrue because he is obviously completely awake. He woke up instantly on one day and has never gone back to sleep. But (and this is the point) the only tools he can use to speak to us is the same language and the same history we share together. He’s trying hard.
Unless a person, like Echart Tolle, is capable of jumping out of our divided worldview paradigm, the same things are going to be talked about over and over and over. We’ll continue to use the same worldview to try to cure our worldview.
It’s can’t work.
Manifesting – I mean, it’s huge, right? Everybody wants to manifest this, manifest that. The easiest way to become rich, apparently, is by teaching people how to be rich. Talk about a vicious circle. If I teach you how to be rich, I’ll make a lot of money. Then I’ll say, ‘Oh, I’m rich.’ And so now I can teach you how to be rich.
Or say someone happens to accidentally get rich (which is very much the story of Eckhart Tolle) then they teach all of the rest of us how to manifest. You can’t blame him for being stuck in that Paradigm. It’s everywhere. The spiritual world we live in today is completely enveloped in this ‘I’ of manifesting.
In this series, we are talking about non-duality and how it intersects with Native wisdom. In Native wisdom, the Earth is alive and full of gifts. Human beings are of the Earth. We are so intertwined with nature that the idea of manifesting could never, would never exist.
Humans are enveloped in the lush garden of earth. Everything we need already exists, we only need to know how to follow the signals of the seasons, work together, give thanks, and sing in our garden.
Imagine a native existence: anybody could stand up and go off and get something to eat, or make the things they need. You don’t have to earn money and go to the grocery store. Most important: You never did it by yourself either. There was no such thing as a loner. No such thing as you by yourself doing something. Not only was every person enveloped in the garden of the earth, we were enveloped in the community of each other.
Groups of people would move here, groups of people would move there, and everybody was intricately involved in feeding and caring for each other. We made the clothes and the housing and everything that needed to happen. Human beings were intertwined with each other exactly the same way that the Earth intertwines with trees and air and sunlight coming in and wind blowing and water flowing and water evaporating and coming down and raining. Everything was so intertwined that the idea that an individual person would need to manifest something simply could not exist. That idea couldn’t happen.
Our discussion now is about becoming a completely integrated human being. It’s about fFalling into unity where the divisive mind is completely gone and you know who you are. If you are in that place you don’t need to manifest because you’re literally sitting in such an abundant world that the only thing to do is give thanks.
Let’s don’t drift too far into fantasy land. The society we live in is difficult. There’s the way human beings used to live on the earth, and there is now this society which has been created on division and ownership. It’s hard. We have to earn money in order to buy things.
I live in a situation, you probably do too, where I can’t just walk out my house and just start eating things. I mean, first of all, houses are in the way. The places where everything used to grow, or where animals to run around, is gone. If you just walked out of your house looking for something to eat you would only find houses. So you just can’t do it.
Our society is everywhere. We’re so completely intertwined inside of it that we have to live within these rules. It’s perfectly legitimate for a spiritual teacher to help us live within this human world. But it seems like it should be some useful information at least! How about teaching that if you want to manifest something in this world that we live in, you’ll need to get a job, earn some money, cooperate with people, do the things that are necessary to live in this world. You’ll need to have relationships, have families, be involved in the things of our lives in the most beautiful way possible. You don’t just sit and try to dream up life. Life is about being involved.
Instead of teaching, “Do what you love and the money will follow.” (Which is a total lie.) Why not teach, “Learn to love everything you do.” If you are washing dishes, love washing the dishes. If you are working on a computer, love working on the computer.
This idea of manifesting things, is just crazy. This idea is what I have to call a conqueror’s idea. It completely based on ownership. This is the kind of an idea that people who believe they’re divided and living in a divided world would come up with.
So Poo! on manifesting. Let’s get past that.
On to the the email from Osho International. I love Osho. He was my teacher. He was a fabulously eloquent speaker. Check it out yourself. Sit down and read anything he said. Every time I revisit his words I’m amazed. If I could even get a small spattering of his ability to speak that would be wonderful. But he only had the tools that he had to describe his experience.
Sidebar: I’m striving to come up with some different tools for us to use. Hopefully having some different tools will make a real difference for people.
The talk that Osho International sent to me was on the alchemy of self-transformation. The very idea that the self has to be transformed goes into our worldview brains and gets mixed up. To most people ‘self’ is this individual separate thing. You have one. I have one. It’s a noun, if you want to go back to what we were talking about last week about languages.
Self is a noun. It’s a thing. Then we think, “Here’s this thing and I must transform it.” The irony of it is that in Osho’s way of describing things the self transforms into nothing. So why not just start at nothing?
We get so confused. We start with this invented idea of the separate self and then try to transform it into nothing. Why not just admit that these ideas of separation are not useful. These ideas come to us from a several thousand year old history of individualism and separatism. It’s deeply entwined with our vision of who we are.
This is why I’m talking about Nonduality and Native spirituality. Returning to the native worldview is the goal. This is where we want to return.
We got some work to do. We are beginning to get the resources. Hopefully understanding this can help us listen better. When we encounter a native teacher we know, ‘Oh yes, I can help here by listening.”
Collectively we can start to bring this into the reality of the world. It takes all of us paying attention in a new way so we can start living our lives with this deeply interconnected self as part of our reality.
Native spirituality is where we’re trying to get to and where we started from many thousands of years ago. This is our natural self. We have to first acknowledge that our habits will always send us into more division. We need a tool to bring us from this divided fantasy, from this imagination that we’re divided, back to the normal place. We’ve been hypnotized into believing these subtle stories of division. We’ve been hypnotized by individualism.
Our question today needs to be: How do you bring yourself out of the fantasy and into this circle of life that is the natural place where we live?
Nonduality is the tool that can slice through division. And Nonduality is a very, very simple tool. It’s simply this: no matter what comes up, stop and go, ‘How is that divided?’ This is always within the context of finding out, “Who Am I?”
The reality of who you are is completely undivided. The seerer within is so completely blended into all of existence that there’s no edges. It can only be experienced as nothing. When you are standing there in a total vacuum the only thing left is who is noticing. That’s who you are: the spark of noticing. It’s me. It’s who’s driving this vehicle. Who you are.
Right now, who you are is hypnotized into believing that the chattering going on in your mind is real. The chattering is not real, but you are.
Nonduality is this very simple tool. Don’t make it any more complicated than it is. It’s simply a tool that says you are not your thoughts. Getting consciously caught in that loop can help you step out of it.
Thinking about it is mad; If you think “I am not my thoughts” then you just thought a thought, right? It’s a loop. Osho called it the Razor’s Edge. This practice is like a little knife you use to cut through the illusion of thought.
You may think: I’m trying to figure it out. But wait… you’re not your thoughts. You can’t figure it out. How many people are there inside you? Who is this one figuring it out? Take a breath and pause. That is the place. That’s you. No words needed.
So native spirituality is the goal, Nonduality is the tool to get there.
The one thing that native spirituality does not have is a tool, or a strategy, or a technique, to get from being divided back to being connected. What Native Traditions do have is tools for staying connected once you are connected. These are the ceremonies and the stories of a particular place. These are the stories of how people would integrate and work with each other.
We can’t manifest a new world into being because the very idea of manifesting comes from a place of division. Manifesting doesn’t exist when you’re in a world that is full of giving. Transforming the self doesn’t work: there’s nothing to transform.
Manifesting and transforming are examples of the illusion that has been created through our conquered consciousness. That’s why they aren’t helping us. This is why it’s not working.
They say people need to search for lifetimes. One life is too much! You should be able to get there pretty darn quick once you realize that you are looking for the normal, not the exotic. You can decide: I want to be an normal human being. You should be able to go from making that decision to being there fairly quickly, simply and easily–because you are going into normal.
Advaita (Not two) is a scrub brush to continuously scrub at the story of division. Check out my book page. Start reading this real stuff. Don’t sit around and and listen to dumb gurus talking about stuff. Get real. Read real history, real stories. Read Native wisdom.
Let’s close with Rumi, ‘There is a field beyond right and wrong. I’ll meet you there.’