We are everything. In typical spiritual teachings we would tend to say we are a part of everything. This is what’s fabulous about nonduality. Because nonduality is always specific. That statement is dual. We are part of everything. Like I’m a little piece sitting inside of everything.
Nonduality shows how that’s dual. You’ve taken this vast reality and you’ve turned it into little sections. There’s everything, and there’s me, and I’m in it.
This is the beauty of nonduality. So instead, if we look at the statement “we are everything,” now don’t go all crazy. So many people say, “I am God.” It’s like, no, you aren’t. First of all, you’ve taken reality, you’ve turned it into all these little sections. There’s God, and then there’s things that aren’t God, and then you put you in there. So, Duality always makes more Duality. But we are everything, and notice I’m not even saying “I am everything,” we are everything, everything, because it includes you and me as well.
Right? This is why in Native Traditions “All My Relations” that’s not a saying, that’s actually a way of life. That I am one of many creatures living here on the earth, I am one of many living and unliving things, rocks, the Earth is seen as alive and sentient, and here I am in it. We are everything. So I think nonu teachings should come from this outside point of view, rather than constantly focusing on the experience of the person.
This is one of the reasons why meditation is good, but it can people get lost because they’re sitting there meditating within themselves. Works great when you suddenly reach that expansive understanding that you are everything, but until then, meditation is always about your experience. So I think that if we start coming from the outside, the vast interconnectedness of everything, like even science, the way that science does pick things apart, but what it’s picking apart is this huge vast wholeness to look at how does it all interact together.
If we come at ourselves from this point of view of vast, expanded experience that we are, and you’ll find that there aren’t very many words that describe it very well, but it’s an experience that you can actually sit in very comfortably if you allow yourself to do it. We are everything, and from there, we become exactly who we are as this expansive awakeness of a human being, of a human being alive within this vastness that is you and that is me here solid in this place.