The world that we perceive with our physical senses and experience through the filters of our conditioned mind is a world of dualism. What does that mean? It’s the world of this or that, black or white, good or bad, me or you… Everything is held as separate from, and different to, everything else. Dualism.
In the Christian context, you might say dualism sprung from the moment Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the so-called ‘tree of knowledge’. From that ‘moment’, they were robbed of their innocence – their in-essence, what they truly were/are – one in and of God. No separation. No ‘us’ and ‘god’. No ‘me’ and ‘you’. From that moment, they had ‘knowledge’ of separation, of good and evil, of right and wrong, of innocence and guilt and every conceivable thought or idea that has ever occurred in human consciousness.
The story of Adam and Eve is not over. We enact the story in every moment that we lose our sense of oneness with God – the ultimate and all-encompassing presence/intelligence/cosmic order (or whatever word/s is commonly used).
You see, paradise is our original and natural state but it is not one that you can see with your physical eyes, no more than you can see ‘God’. It is a state of consciousness you can only ever experience and that experience only ever happens when the mind of dualism is still. When all the story-telling, the judgements, attachments, aversions and resistances which are what stories are built on, cease.
Mindfulness is the practice from which we can enter into a state of stillness and thereby experience our oneness in and of god. In this state of bliss or paradise, all dualism collapses, including the separation between ‘me’ and ‘you’. Now, this is the part that I want to draw your attention to this week. Let me explain.
Most of us in the western world and/or who have been exposed to the Christian tradition know we are in the season of Christmas and most of us associate this season with gift-giving. But gift-giving only makes sense in a dualistic framework because only when there is separation can one person give/gift something to another.
However, if we accept that in our fundamental or essential reality, we are one, that there is indeed no separation between you and me, then ‘giving’ is not only impossible, it is meaningless. After all, we are the water of the ocean of god in which all the goodness and greatness and abundance of god is equally available, without limit and without condition to ‘each one of ‘us’.
If we accept that in our fundamental or essential reality, we are one, that there is indeed no separation between you and me, then ‘giving’ is not only impossible, it is meaningless.
But, back to the physical world we live in. Can we make use of our experience of our non-dual reality or at least our intellectual understanding of our non-dual reality to make our Christmas season more meaningful? Instead of, or at least in addition to, our material gift-giving, is there something else that we can do that would help return all of us to the paradise we never actually left? To our state of oneness with each other in god? A state in which we can experience all the peace, joy, harmony, power, beauty, ecstasy, freedom, wellbeing and so much more that is our natural state? Goodness knows how much we need it, how much our world needs it!
Well, there is. And it is this: BE the gift. Be the presence. Be the peace. Be the joy. Be the kindness. Be the freedom. Be the abundance. Be the ecstasy. Be the wonder. Be the limitlessness…Yes, no gift to give. Instead, be the gift.
Mindfulness practice takes us from the thinking, dualistic mind to the non-thinking, non-dualistic state, some would say from the head to the heart. It is this state of being that we can gift the world this Christmas and throughout the year. And in this state of being, anything and everything is possible, including peace and an end to all forms of suffering. Indeed, in this state, it is not only possible, it is inevitable.
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