David Hall's Non-Duality Blog

My name's David Hall. I'm the creator of this web site and its content. I live in Wales in the UK.
I developed the Celtic design software KnotWorker, I create electronic music as Goldcup7, and I've written books on spirituality and non duality.

Hope you enjoy this Non Duality blog. New blogs are added on Fridays.
Please use the Contact page if you have any questions or would like me to discuss a topic.

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There is a Stillness that pervades the activity of the world.Life is full of activity, people busying about doing things, and if they're not doing things they're often sat watching other people on a screen busy doing things. We may take ourselves away from the busy world to somewhere tranquil, but still the mind can be busy thinking about things. Many people want to find some peace and stillness in their life.
 
The reality is, we won't find true peace and stillness 'out there'. The world is active. It never stops. The planet is continually spinning and orbiting around the sun, whilst swirling in a spiral galaxy, moving through the universe. The planet itself is full of moving life, flowing and changing, never staying still. If it seems to stay still it is either an illusion or only a relative temporary stillness. Nothing you can see is ever still. The ground beneath our feet is moving as the planet spins. Relatively speaking it seems still. Buildings seem to stand relatively still in their place but, as well as spinning through space with the planet, buildings move and shift slowly relative to the ground beneath them, which also moves extremely slowly. We don't notice the slow movement of the tectonic plates, but it's always slowly happening.
 
Stillness isn't 'out there'. It's important to recognise that when looking for peace. The peace isn't out there. If we find peace and stillness 'out there', it won't last. It may be nice to have a comfortable life, but don't expect to be tranquil right through. That's not the way of the world. But there is a Stillness that pervades the activity of the world. This is the Stillness we really need to find if we are looking for peace and contentment. I use the initial capital letter for a reason, to differentiate from the transient stillness, or fake stillness, that we usually associate with the term stillness. True Stillness is an unchanging timeless 'state' of being.
 
Where is this Stillness, and how can we find it? It's really right here, so we can't find it. This Stillness is everywhere we go, yet nowhere. The reality is that we don't really go anywhere. We don't move. We don't have arms and legs and a body. That's not who we are. We are the Stillness that perceives the activity of the world. I could say it is the core of our being, but it's not just the core, it is the whole. When looking from outside, from the world of activity, True Stillness is at the heart of where we are looking from. Yet in the heart there is no inside or outside, and there is no activity.
 
It is the still centre around which the world seems to move, like a black hole at the heart of the universe. But the black hole is a Singularity, where there is no inside or outside, no division, no space and time. Pure Stillness. The movement that is perceived from our centre of Singularity only appears to happen. The Singularity that is our true being has nowhere to go and nothing to do. It is complete unmanifest contentment. The manifest world seems to unravel for while from the Stillness, then returns to the Stillness, yet it never leaves the timeless Stillness.
 
So, in practical terms, how can we 'find' this peace, stillness and contentment? We need to let go of thinking that we are something else, and that there is indeed anything else. We need to see the activity of the world for what it is: One Infinite Unchanging Being playing at being many finite changing forms. See the world as a play. Forms, or bodies, will grow and fade away, but you are not this. You are the unchanging Stillness in which this seems to happen. Don't try to be still - know you are Stillness itself. Nothing is really far from you or close to you; that's just the play of separation. Let this understanding fill the mind and root out the errors it believes. The idea that you are separate and lacking something is an error. All ideas and concepts are inaccurate. The only real truth is an Infinite Indivisible Singularity, and we are That. But we need to eventually drop that idea as well.
 
No ideas or concepts are ultimately necessary for you to be as you are. Just be. Stillness, peace and contentment is not something you find. It's always right here.
Symmetry arises from an underlying pattern of reflection.There are a variety of patterns in the world, that point to the underlying nature of reality. Three primary patterns include 'Many from One', Reflection, and the Hollow. Let's explore these and see how they connect and hint at the unseen reality behind them.
 
We can see 'Many from One' almost everywhere we look. The human body, with its central torso, arms, legs, fingers and toes, shows many from one. A tree branching out shows it. Fork lightning shows it. Rivers and streams from the sea show it. The propagation of animals and plants show it: seeds are scattered and multiply. The evolution of species shows it.
 
We physically see Reflection wherever we look, as that's the way the eye works, inverting light that passes through the lens of the eye. What we see is also a reflection of light off surfaces. We can see our reflection when light rebounds from the face onto a smooth reflective surface. Sounds also rebound and reflect off surfaces. The symmetry of the human body is a form of reflection, where the left side is to some degree a reflection of the right side. This symmetry arises from an underlying pattern of reflection. Reflection underlies the appearance of opposites in the world, where we could say that high is a reflection of low, far is a reflection of near, and so on. Furthermore, Reflection and opposites give rise to fluctuation and vibration.
 
The Hollow is perhaps less obvious. The bones in the body are hollow. The lungs are hollow, as well as reflective, breathing in and breathing out. The throat and mouth cavity are hollow and allow the projection of sound as the voice. The stems of plants are hollow. Bubbles are hollow. Caves within the earth are hollowed out holes. Whirlpools, cyclones, and hurricanes are known for their spinning force around a hollow centre.
 
These patterns are all expressed in the natural world and in the human-made world. For example, in music making we have hollow instruments like the flute, the trombone and the drum, and we have instruments that use the fluctuation of strings (stemming from reflection), such as the violin and the piano. When we listen to a recorded piece of music we can pick out the many instruments sounding within it. Delay and reverb effects are used, giving reflective qualities to the sounds. One recording is made and distributed as many across the world. Actually, the delay effect used in music making demonstrates both the Reflection and 'Many from One' pattern, when it is used to imitate a distant echo, with the sound bouncing off 'surfaces' and seeming to multiply.
 
What do these patterns tell us about the underlying reality of the universe? They reflect the Oneness that is the core nature of reality. The Hollow hints at the Full-Emptiness of reality, where the total sum of all opposites equals zero. The hollow central cavity seems empty but is actually full, whether full of air or water etc. It points to the Singularity that was before the universe appeared, which contained all in an unmanifest unity, when everything was nothing. 'Many from One' is how the universe came to appear as it does now. The One seemed to divide itself into itself and its opposite (Reflection) and this bifurcation multiplied in the 'Many from One' pattern, creating a world of reflection and fluctuating frequencies. Note that 'Many from One' is itself a reflection, where the One reflects itself into its opposite, many. Or so it seems.
 
The crucial understanding is that although there seems to be many coming from one, they never really leave the Oneness. The Singularity that contained all in unmanifest harmony (Full-Emptiness) is still present throughout the appearance and disappearance of the world of opposites. The appearance of what is and what isn't (its reflection) is only a seeming separation of the Singularity, which remains timelessly full and empty. There is only ever What Is. Its reflection doesn't really exist, but reflection is the play of opposites which allows the Singularity to look back at itself, within itself. Reflection makes the world appear within itself.
 
Although space and time seems to divide the Singularity into many, rising out of the Full-Emptiness, the completion of space and time is its returning to unmanifest Oneness. All the while the Oneness remains as it is, seemingly at the heart of the universe, as the Hollow Hole, or rather the Hollow Whole.
 
Let's try to explain that a simpler way. What we call space and time is the seeming division of the primordial Singularity. Full-Emptiness seems to have divided into what it is and what it is not, its reflective opposite. Oneness seems to have divided into many, by aid of reflection. Yet the totality remains the same. The universe, or What Is, is timelessly always what it is. It seems that the Hollow, the Full-Emptiness, remains at the Heart of space and time, but it is the totality of space and time. The Singularity remains timelessly as it is.

We imagine that we know things, but if we look closely we find that we cannot truly define them.How to convey that the world is not made of many things? There is a general human assumption that there are many things in the universe and we can give them names, like stars, planets, mountains, buildings, plants, animals, people etc. These may be useful terms, and it may be useful to see and understand the world in this way, but it's not accurate.

The limits that we assume define these objects don't stand up to close scrutiny. For instance, we know the sun to be a star and we can understand the qualities of a star and the phases it will go through. We give stars different names dependent on their mass and evolutionary stage. Currently the sun is classed as a G2V type star, and in time it is expected to become a Red Giant, then later a White Dwarf, then a Black Dwarf. These are names given to different stages of stellar evolution.

But we can't give exact moments when the sun changes from one stage to another, because the change is gradual. All change is gradual. Even sudden change can be seen to be gradual if examined closely. There is no flip switch of change. Even a flip switch for a light involves time for the electric current to flow. It's not really Off-On, it's Off flowing to On. It's an important point. Reality may seem to be dualistic and based on opposites, but really there is a flow of change, a continuum. But that's for another article.

Let's focus back on what we define as the sun. We generally see the circular ball of fire in the sky and think, "That's the sun!" But the sun isn't wholly defined by its visible circular edges. In fact its circular edges are constantly flowing and changing, dipping and rising, and sometimes flaring out. From a distant it may seem perfectly round, but we know that this is not really the case. The sun is a flowing ball of energy. And not only that, it is an expulsion of energy. Animal and plant life on this planet are dependent on the energy from the sun. We can't say at what point the sun's rays are no longer the sun. They are a quality of the sun. A quality that interacts with all it reaches. Similarly, when we see a distant star at night, we see its light, which is its quality that stretches across the universe. Its light is not truly separate from it.

So you see, we imagine that we know things, but if we look closely we find that we cannot truly define them. The same applies to the human body. It is continually in a process of change and interaction with the environment. We can't define where the energy absorbed from the sun, from the air, from drinks and food, becomes the body. It is a continual process of change, structured temporarily as a seemingly finite form.

But the sun and the body are not finite forms. They have no limits. It is the same with all things. To use a less animated example, take a wooden chair. We know what it is, but when did it become a wooden chair? When the fourth leg was added? When its back was added? And at what point were they finally added? Is it when the final turn of a screw happens, that it is then a chair. No. And when does it cease to be a chair? Once some of its parts are removed or once all parts are removed? Once the final screw is released? No. Ultimately, our idea of what a wooden chair is is vague, and it is the same for all objects.

What we've done here is analyse our assumption that things are really what we think they are. We've examined the general human assumption that things are really separate defined things, and found that they are not. Our labelling of things is useful but not as accurate as believed to be. It's good to step back and recognise that assumptions are not necessarily accurate. Really what this all points to is infinity. Nothing can be define because the nature of reality is infinite.

There is one life force that expresses as a seeming multitude of forms.Part of human evolution has been to recognise or discover that evolution exists. It is evolution that has brought humanity to this point, and all other species to their respective points. It is a monumental discovering in the development of self awareness - to discover the source of one's being.

But there's more. If we analyse evolution, or more importantly analyse what we consider to be the limits of things, we find that really there are no limits. The limits that we have assumed are not accurate. What we describe as a specific species distinct from other species, is not the finished product. Evolution is continual. For example, what we may now label as the Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) continues to evolve, albeit slowly. At what point would we notice that this species is diverging. There are other Fox-like Canids that have diverged from an earlier source. We can't give a fixed point where an evolutionary leap takes place, because it is continual.

And there's more. Just as the apparent limits of a species can't conclusively be defined (because a species is always in a state of change), it can be questioned whether there are any limits at all. So the species Red Fox isn't fixed and limited, and is likely to continue evolving, and each apparently individual fox may not be as fixed and limited as is assumed. What I mean is that each animal form isn't a closed circuit. There are no real closed circuits. Foxes breathe and assimilate air, eat and assimilate food, drink and assimilate water. Although the fox appears to have a defined shape that we can say, "It's a fox!" and not something else, the fox does not really have a fixed stability in its form. What we call a fox is a form developed within the overall evolution of the planet, as the planet expresses through a seeming multiplicity of forms within its own form.

What this means is that there is a 'surface' appearance of many separate animals, but the reality is one life force appearing as if it is many. There is one life force that expresses as a seeming multitude of forms, that are assumed to be separate, but on closer inspection it can be seen that they are not truly divided. There are no clear divisions of these life forms. The air that seems to separate them actually flows through them, is assimilated and expelled, in a continual flow of change and interaction.

Why is this important to point out? Because there is a general assumption that when we describe something it is distinct from something else. Although this has its uses, it should be recognised that it is not wholly accurate. Ultimately the unlimited indivisible nature of reality should be recognised, as human evolution continues.

Recognising the infinite indivisible nature of reality breaks down the barriers that hold us back. It leads to a recognition that there aren't many life forms, there is just one, an infinite one. What has seemed to be other is no longer other. And what we assumed was our identity as a human being is not that. The human body itself is not as distinct and separate as the mind thinks it is. The mind also is not separate from the one infinite indivisible life force.

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