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 Tuesdays and Fridays.
Please use the Contact page if you have any questions or would like me to discuss a topic.
- Category: Non-duality
- Hits: 396
Rene Descartes was a French philosopher who stated in 1637 in his Discourse on the Method, "Je pense, donc je suis." In Latin it is the concise, "Cogito ergo sum." The English translation is the famous, "I think, therefore I am."
In Non Duality we go a bit deeper than thinking. Thinking is known. We perceive thinking, as we also perceive the movements of the body. There may be an assumption that we are moving the body and that we are thinking the thoughts. But that is a thought assumption that we also perceive. To find our core nature we need to look deeper than what we can perceive. We need to look where we are perceiving from.
Essentially we can affirm that thinking is known, and thinking is secondary to knowing. Knowing is closer to the root of our being that thinking. All thinking, perceiving and feeling is known. Knowing is our core experience of the mind and the world. We could say, "I know, therefore I am."
How do I know I exist? Because I know. It should be clarified that this 'knowing' is equivalent to 'experiencing', and doesn't refer here to 'having knowledge'. Knowledge is something the mind acquires, whereas here we mean the pure knowing of experiencing. I can affirm that I am aware. It's useful to explore this awareness yourself. Are you aware?
Of course, the answer should be yes. You are aware that you are aware. You know that you know. This awareness or knowing is a core attribute of our being. It's difficult to go further back than being aware of being aware. But in Non Duality, our aim, for clear recognition, is to find that point where the world is experienced. Who is aware? Who knows knowing? Is there one who knows and a separate one who is aware of this?
Although we seem to have turned our attention inward to find who knows, we find that there is not a separate one knowing that we know. We are self aware. Our core nature is self aware. We are not really looking inward. Our self awareness is right here all along. But in searching for this core of our being, that part of us that seemed to be out there looking in is drawn inwards to the heart of being. The sense of being a separate self is drawn to the realisation of self awareness. This is the path of Self Enquiry that leads to what some call Enlightenment, Moksha, Nirvana, or Self Awareness.
This Self Enquiry leads to the dissolving of the false identity in the clear, unconfused, natural state of Self Awareness. I know, therefore I am.
- Category: Non-duality
- Hits: 396
Stillness is fascinating. Things seem to be still around us - the ground, buildings, our furniture, parked cars, mountains, and so on. A lot of things just seem to stay where they are, completely still. But that's only how it seems.
Really, the ground, the buildings, our furniture, and so on, are part of a spinning planet. The stillness we perceive is only relative. The base of the planet appears still relative to us. The sun seems to spin around the planet from our relative viewpoint, but we know that it is the planet spinning around the sun. It is the sun that stays still. Well, not really. The sun, the planet, and the rest of our solar system is swirling in a spiral galaxy, which is also on the move.
Everything in the universe is moving. Any apparent stillness is not true stillness. It is an illusion of stillness. But there is a True Stillness that cannot be perceived. True Stillness is the heart of the universe, the heart of perception, the still centre of the world of motion and change.
Movement and stillness are the opposites that we perceive. Together they express and reflect the true nature of reality. The opposite of Stillness allows it to be perceived. Motion is the means by which we can know stillness, yet it is not the true stillness. The illusion of stillness is the best that True Stillness can be expressed.
Let's understand what I mean by True Stillness. Imagine a complete singularity, formless, invisible, indivisible, without time or space, without change, without movement. No things, but complete. No beginnings or ends. Infiniteness. This singularity is truly and perfectly still. It's still beyond any comparison. It's unmanifest stillness. There's no change in it and there's nowhere for it to go. There's nowhere inside it or outside it. This is what I mean by True Stillness.
It is this True Stillness that the world is expressing through the medium of opposites. From the timeless Here and Now the world of space and time appears as a dispersion through reflection (like how a rainbow appears by the dispersion of white light through a prism). True Stillness is then expressed as the appearance of motion and stillness (or indeed the spectrum of motion). In this way we experience the nature of the Singularity via this appearance of opposites. This Singularity, the True Stillness, remains as it is. It is the one and only being. We are the Infinite One.
- Category: Non-duality
- Hits: 391
The world appears as a flow of continual movement and change. Where stillness appears in the world it is illusory. For example, if you're sat at home on a sofa or on a bed, sat on a bench in a park, or even if you're sat on a train, there is a sense of stability and stillness. But the stillness of the sofa, the bed, the bench or the seat on the train, is illusory. It is a relative stillness. The seat on the train is relatively still in relation to the train, as it maintains its steady motion with the train. The sofa is relatively still in relation to the Earth, whilst the planet spins around. The Earth is continually spinning and swirling through the universe, and the universe is in continual motion.
This illusion of stillness in the world of motion is merely a play of opposites. What we see in the world is a reflection of the truth. Stillness is the reality, and motion is the illusion. But I don't mean the stillness that you can see. True Stillness is an infinite Singularity that has no form, no outside, no inside, no distance and no change. It is Stillness beyond any appearance of stillness, beyond space and time.
The appearance of The World of Opposites is the way in which the Singularity becomes visible. So the illusory world appears as the opposites motion and stillness, where motion is the opposite of the Singularity and stillness is its likeness. Yet the appearance of the world of opposites is itself the opposite of the Oneness of the Singularity. Hence the stillness that appears is not true stillness.
It is in this way that space and time appear as the opposite of the unseen Singularity that has no form, location, separation or change. This World of Opposites or the World of Motion is wholly illusory, yet infused with the reality of the Singularity. Space seems to stretch out indefinitely within the Hereness of the Singularity. Time appears to stretch out within the Nowness of the Singularity.
Distance and change appear within the Here and Now of the Singularity. So the illusion or maya of the world is itself illusory. There is only Reality. The illusion is held by the belief of space and time over the truth of the Singularity. Where is this Singularity, this True Stillness? It is right Here and Now. Wherever you may seem to go, however you may seem to have changed, you remain here and now as the True Stillness witnessing the world of movement and change.
- Category: Non-duality
- Hits: 393
The ego is the sense and belief of being a separate self, being a human separate from the rest of the world. The ego forms in the mind as a child develops, where the mind thinks that this body is me and these things are mine. Often as the ego grows, it develops its sense of separate self by belonging to a group and embracing that identity, or being distanced from a group, which also strengthens its sense of identity.
In human society identity is super important. We identify with our gender, ethnicity, nationality, political view, or religion. But truly none of this is who we are. The ego isn't real. The ego is a mistaken identity assumed in the mind.
Just because the mind perceives the human experience and identifies as a human, with a human history, it doesn't mean it's true. And just because the mind also holds on to objects and calls them mine, it doesn't mean they really belong to it. We need to go deeper than the mind to find the truth.
Truly we are Consciousness perceiving human experiences. We perceive the mind, the ego identity, the thoughts, the human feelings and sensations, and the perceptions. We perceive the ego identity saying I am this, these are mine, and I did that. We perceive the ego assuming identity and assuming separation is real. Separation isn't real. There is only One. There are no separate objects, and there are no separate identities who own them. It is all a play of separation.
Recognition of this understanding leads the ego to a deeper understanding of reality. As the truth dawns, the ego fades. Its ways of selfishness are no longer relevant. The phantom ego effectively disappears, but it was never a real thing anyhow. This realisation will come to the soul, to the human and to humanity. Humanity will in time awaken to the realisation of not being separate. It's spiritual development will bring it to the realisation of Oneness.
- Category: Non-duality
- Hits: 389
The world appears as an interplay of opposites. We've all experienced opposites: near and far, hot and cold, light and dark, clarity and confusion, freedom and constraint, love and hate. The Non Dual teaching recognises this interplay of opposites in the world, but we do not accept it as true. There is not two. There is only one, but it's not even one, it's an infinite one. One without limits.
In light of this reality of oneness, we can understand this appearance of opposites more clearly. It is not that there truly is a separation, where the world split from one into many. It is rather that the world appears as if this has happened, whilst remaining as one. This brings us to understand opposites as a continuum, where they are not truly separated, but range from beginning to end within infinity. So we can say that hate is at the far end of the Continuum of Love, being far removed from it, but of the same nature.
We can understand distance as a Continuum of Separation. Although humanity may cleverly create divisions of distance, so that we can measure and communicate distances with an agreed scale, distance is not truly divided. What I mean is that we have a shared understanding of what 10cm is and what 1cm is, but there is no real divide of distance into centimetres. It is a human tool. There is more like an undivided span of distance that humanity labels with its measurements.
The Continuum of Separation takes us past understanding the world in fixed limited terms, to the closer understanding of an undivided range. We can say the Continuum ranges from oneness (or no distance) to near, to fairly near, to far, to very far. Again, we are using labels to describe it. But hopefully you get the idea of the unbroken range from oneness to separation, whilst remaining one.
It seems a paradox to say that separation is an undivided range. This is because there really isn't a separation. It is only an appearance of separation, because separation is impossible. It is more like a seeming stretching of oneness from itself to far from itself, whilst remaining as itself.
Maybe you see the implication here. The Singularity appears to have split into a world of many, whilst remaining timelessly a Singularity. We see ourself and the world, but it is the Singularity stretching itself into 'me' and 'others' whilst remaining one. The closest we can know is the heart of being, that point where all is experienced. It's the point where we feel 'I am', and if we look out from there we see objects or people that are close to us, and objects or people that are further away from us. But it is only the appearance of Oneness stretching.
The Continuum of Separation gives the appearance of distance between beginning and end, as it stretches from oneness and remains in oneness. The initial point of the Continuum is oneness, and as the stretching appears we reach the opposite or reflection of the prime quality of oneness. In this way we experience here and there, now and then, clarity and confusion, love and hate, peace and war, one and many. Within the spaceless, timeless Singularity appears the stretching out of space and time, without division, without beginning or end. It is an interplay of opposites within the infinite singularity of oneness.