Category: Non-duality

Published: 05 February 2026

Hits: 224

People might ask, "Are you a glass half full person, or half empty?" This, of course, refers to whether you have a negative or positive outlook on life. When a glass is half filled with a drink, do you focus on there being an amount of drink there, or do focus on there being an amount missing? Really, the glass is neither half full nor half empty.

Why so? To see the glass as half full or empty is to mistake air for nothingness. It belies a way of looking at the world that is dualistic or divided. Truly the glass is always full, even when it's empty. Well, it's never empty. It only appears empty because air is invisible. But invisible isn't nothing. Air isn't nothing. Whether the glass has liquid and gas in it, or only liquid, or only gas, doesn't really matter. It's always full of something.

So that can be a game changer. It can change the way we view the world. Suddenly we see the unseen. The focus isn't on this and not that. The focus takes in the whole picture. In effect, we can move from being negative or positive to just viewing it as it is. We change from dualistic thinking to non-dualistic or holistic awareness.

Let's take a more useful example than glass with liquid and gas in it. How about when plans for meeting up with someone get cancelled? Some may see this as negative, in that something that was supposed to happen doesn't happen. Some may see it as positive, in that it frees them up for something else to happen. The Non-Dualistic way is that it is neither negative nor positive. It just is what it is. It's not that something doesn't happen. Something is always happening in the world, even when it seems that there's nothing going on. The planet continues to spin its swirling path through space. But we don't really notice that.

If we go back to the glass being full, half full or empty, there is a further step of recognition. It's what we might consider as the Zen way of looking at it. There is no glass.

How so? Can it be true that there is no glass? Yes. Truly 'the glass' cannot be defined. The glass is something like a solid form that can hold liquids and gases. But it's all vibrating energy, just at different densities. The glass may seem to be more solid that air, but it's not completely solid. Its apparent solidity is temporary and dependent on environmental conditions. At certain temperatures its solidity will turn to liquid and then to gas. And we know that although objects may seem fixed and permanent, this is only a relative appearance of permanence. All form in the universe is changing. It's just that some forms change more slowly than others. Although, to be more accurate there aren't really many forms. There isn't really a glass and water and air. It is all a flow of vibrating energy that the mind gives temporary labels to.

So there is no glass, only the temporary appearance of a substance standing out from the rest of the substance. That substance we can call Consciousness. It is Consciousness in which the apparent solids, liquids and gases are known. The glass that we know is only ever known in Consciousness, made of Consciousness, known by Consciousness.

It is all Consciousness. Consciousness is always full. Full of Everything, whilst its sum total is Nothing. Full and empty don't really apply to the Singularity of it. It just is what it is. It is for this reason that the apparent duality of the world can be understood to be a Non-Duality, then Non-Duality can be known to be just What Is.

Category: Non-duality

Published: 20 February 2026

Hits: 186

Imagine a projector screen and projected upon it is the moving image of water. The water could be a turbulent ocean scene of rocking and rolling waves, rising up and crashing down. It could a flowing river, with swirling eddies, as it flows outwards then inwards to and from the sea. It could be a calm pond scene, tranquil, with only a hint of the breeze blowing across the surface.

Although we may view these scenes and consider them to be different types of water, either relatively still, flowing or turbulent, it makes no difference to the screen. The screen remains unchanged whilst these different scenes may appear on it. Furthermore, there could be any kind of scene projected upon the screen, such as a forest fire, erupting volcano, or exploding bomb. The screen is just fine.

This is how it is with Consciousness. The moving, changing world appears within Consciousness. The world comes and goes, and Consciousness remains as it is. We may experience terrible events or beautiful scenery, but Consciousness remains as it is. We may consider that terrible events can have lasting psychological effects, and this is the case. But it doesn't change Consciousness. The mind or mental activity is also perceived to come and go in Consciousness.

What this means is that there is a deeper layer than the perception of the world and a deeper layer than the perception of mental activity. There is a core or supposed centre of perception which is not perceived, but is naturally perceiving. That is Consciousness. So we can rest assured that despite what may happen in the world or in the mind, the heart of our being is Clear Calm Consciousness.

Well, it's not really the heart of our being. It is all there is. It only seems that Consciousness is at the heart. Truly there is only Consciousness. Consciousness is our being. To use another analogy: consider Consciousness like a blank sheet of paper and upon it are drawn many circles. It may seem then that each circle has its own centre of consciousness. It could also even be considered that the heart of each circle is the shared Consciousness. So when we get to the heart of our being there is One Consciousness. Yet, as good as that is, it's not wholly accurate. Better to say that there is only One Consciousness Being, there only seems to be many beings, and there is nothing other than this One Consciousness.

So how does this help? Well, when times are tough, as they will be, we can know that we are unharmed. We can see that there is nothing other than the Consciousness that we are. We can recognise errors of thinking that lead to entanglement and suffering. We are not that which appears. We are that in which all appears. We are not a body, a mind or a soul. These are all names for movements within Consciousness. We are formless Consciousness.

Category: Spirituality

Published: 13 February 2026

Hits: 200

You've probably heard of Collective Consciousness or Shared Consciousness. What does it mean and is it real?

Collective Consciousness refers to a wider consciousness that is shared by a group of seemingly separate beings. The seemingly separate beings have their own point of consciousness or awareness within the collective. The individual consciousness is like the crest of a wave. It is at the forefront, but there is a great depth behind it, so to speak, the collective consciousness.

Understood this way, we can see that the individual consciousness isn't really individual. It is a focused point of the collective. It's worth sharing the sheet of paper analogy again, as it shows how the seemingly individual points of consciousness work. Consider a perfectly clear sheet of paper, which we can understand as Consciousness. Consider then that numerous circles are drawn on the sheet and represent multiple perspectives or points of awareness. We may then consider that each circle or point of awareness has a core consciousness of its own. But really its own consciousness, if it were to turn and look at it, is the one consciousness of the whole sheet of paper. Each apparent centre of each circle of awareness is the same one consciousness. We can say it's at the centre of each circle of awareness, but it's not really the centre. The Consciousness is the whole sheet.

So that is considering Consciousness as a whole. It's a way of understanding the nature of Consciousness in which many seemingly separate conscious or aware beings appear. They are not truly separate, although their circle of appearance may make them seem different to each other. Seemingly at the heart of each apparently separate being is the One Consciousness. I use the terms 'seemingly' and 'apparently' because that's not really how it is. There is just One Consciousness. Not really many beings.

So the One Consciousness is like the Supreme Collective within which the multitudinous points of awareness appear. And this example branches out through the play of the universe, like a tree branches out. There are clusters of points of awareness from one branch and clusters from another, and so on, and so on. It is in this way that the pattern of many from one multiplies through the appearance of points of awareness or seemingly separate beings. Each 'branch' stems from a collective point. So the collective consciousness of one group is shared and seemingly separate from other groups. Yet all groups stem ultimately from the same One Consciousness, like great branches reaching outwards from the main trunk of the tree.

When people gather under a certain heading or group there develops a shared consciousness where seemingly separate individuals within the group begin to co-ordinate with the whole group and work as one or with the same purpose. This could be a family or a football team, a business or a nation. Admittedly, there isn't always cohesion in a family, football team, or even a business or nation. This is a play within the world of opposites, so there is always imbalance. There will be those in tune and those not in tune, and they will clash. That's a simplified way of putting it. It would be more accurate to say that those within a collective are more or less in tune, so there will be a variety within the collective. The collective is not static. It will rock and interact within itself and with other collectives that are like it but different.

Here are humans, rocked in the sway of the human collective consciousness, pushed and pulled by the collective of the nation, the collective of the family, the sports team, and so on, and flowing with the collective of the evolution of humanity.

Category: The Human Experience

Published: 27 February 2026

Hits: 165

The human experience is like the extremity of separation. The human world is generally one of hard, cold limitation, darkness, heaviness, tension and restriction. It can be an experience of loneliness, feeling that I am separate from the whole world, and I am a being different to all other beings. It can be an experience of hate, whether there is hate from me or hate from others, seeing others as far removed from me. It can be an experience of lack, loss and despair, feeling that I need something to make me happy, feeling lost and confused. We can feel like we are a small speck in a vast world.

There's a reason for this: the appearance of separation. The world is an expression of the unmanifest Oneness of Reality. What appears as a world of many separate forms is the reflection or opposite of Reality. Oneness can't really be expressed. It's an Infinite Singularity, without any division between the seer and the seen. For the world, or rather, Oneness, to appear, it must seem to divide itself. It must appear to separate itself from itself in order to look at itself. That's what the world is - Infinite Indivisible Oneness perceiving itself as a reflection of itself. So we see a world of many separate beings and objects.

Many is the opposite of One. Separation is the opposite of Oneness. Distance is the opposite of Here. Time is the opposite of Now. The world appears as if it is the opposite of reality, a reflection of That which does not appear. From the human perspective, we experience a world far removed (or reflected) from the reality of Oneness. We experience the separate individual, the one who is separate from others. It allows the experience of loneliness, isolation, lack, need, and emptiness. It is the opposite of Infinite Oneness. Oneness is full, complete, free and unlimited, and there are no others to feel isolated from. These apparent negative feelings are the opposite of the reality of Oneness.

Our true nature is the Peace, Contentment and Completeness of Oneness. It is the human mind that falls into the belief that there is a world of separation and believes that it is a separate being in a cruel hard world. This belief is based on how the world appears, and it is a general assumption that 'I am this limited human'. The sense of being one separate from others has evolved on a planet seemingly far from the heart of Complete Oneness, blowing hot and cold with the opposites of Peace, Love and Contentment. It's a planet where the extreme opposites of the Infinite One Reality are experienced.

How do we find this Peace, Love and Contentment? Well, it's right here. It's just that the human mind doesn't notice it, because it is always present. Something that is always present doesn't move and doesn't change; it cannot be noticed. So the mind can't 'feel' this complete peace, but it can become evident when the sense of separation and restriction subsides. When we feel close to someone or a pet, when we feel close to nature, when we feel the release from difficulties, or when tensions are relaxed, the underlying Peace is revealed. We get a glimpse of the ever-present Peace. Usually, some other difficulties come along soon after or the sense of separation increases and obscures the underlying state of Peace.

But the aim would not be to have temporary glimpses of this Peace. The aim, for the spiritual seeker, should be the experience of complete Oneness. It's here already, but what's needed is for the sense of separation to be cleared out. The sense of 'me and others' needs to evaporate, be cast aside, allowing the true nature of Oneness to be freely evident. We can start by living a life of recognition that we are one, we are the whole, we are complete, no matter what appears to happen. Being kind to all others, as though they are ourselves, because there aren't truly many beings. There is only One.