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.
- Category: The Human Experience
- Hits: 1138
It's a common human experience to feel incomplete. We may not realise it, but the search for fun, for love, for happiness, for excitement, for spiritual enlightenment, comes from the sense of being incomplete. In some ways it's a natural sense of feeling incomplete. If ever a being considers itself to be limited, then it feels it is less than the whole. And that's not right. Something will seem to be missing.
It's this wholeness that people seek. Wholeness is the true natural state. But human development at this stage of evolution causes it to feel limited, separate, lacking, wanting, and needing. From the physical perspective the interaction with the environment is necessary: humans need to breathe in air, drink liquids, eat solid food, and also do the opposite - expel solids, liquids and gases. That is part of human nature, of being a flowing quality of the planet. That in itself is fine. But human intelligence has developed further than other animals. Human intelligence has developed to become self aware. But this self awareness isn't accurate. Human self awareness concludes, "I am this body." But really the body isn't limited in this way - it is a flowing quality of the planet. The body isn't really limited and separate from the planet.
So here we have the development of human intelligence concluding that it is a limited being and there are other beings with limits. This limited human is inevitably incomplete. It will never be satisfied, trying to hold onto things, trying to seek happiness, looking for love and excitement, or spiritual enlightenment. The limited human being will not be satisfied, because the limited being is not an accurate identification. The world is unlimited, appearing as if there are limits. It is this appearance of the world that has fooled humanity. But it's all part of developing awareness.
There is no limited human. There is only the infinite What Is, Pure Consciousness. Its nature is as a singularity, without beginnings or ends, without want or need, complete, content, perfect peace.
The development of human awareness is an expression and blossoming of Consciousness in the world. It's not that the human being develops a higher awareness or consciousness level. It is rather that the errors and mistaken views of the human mind are lessened, revealing more and more the Pure Consciousness that is the true infinite nature of being.
How do we bring about this feeling of being complete? Really it's about letting go of the feeling of being incomplete, letting go of the sense of being limited. The recognition needs to dawn that I am not a limited being and I am not this body. Then should come a 'practising' of just being Awareness, without form, without attachment to this or that, acceptance without controlling, just simply being. This resting in the pure nature of just Being dissolves the sense of being a limited separate self, and the true nature of complete contentment comes through into the human experience.
This is usually a gradual process. It's called Enlightenment or Self-Realisation. It's simply the letting go of the erroneous belief of separation and limitation, and being as you are.
- Category: The Human Experience
- Hits: 1115
When asked who I am I may give my name. That's usually the expected answer. But that's not really who I am. That's just what people call me, or call this human being. Am I this human being? Let's explore.
Let's analyse what I am if I consider myself to be a human being. Okay, so the human is a complex organism, but what I'm concerned about is: where are the limits of this human being? We can assume that this human form is limited by its skin, hair and nails. That sums up the outer 'shell' of the human form. But there's a problem. It's always changing. The skin is in a constant flow of change. We don't really notice, but dead skin falls off and is continually replaced. Hair and nails are always growing. We cut our hair and nails and consider then that they are no longer part of us.
So this superficially stable defined human outer shell is always changing. There's another problem. The human form interacts with the environment (the planet of which it is made) by breathing in gas, eating solids, drinking liquids, assimilating some of this and ejecting some (in a transformed manner). This human form is always changing. Not a second goes by without the body changing. You don't really notice it. There is an appearance of temporary permanence, but really the body never stops changing.
There are also questions about my limits in time if I am a human being. When did I begin? We may arbitrarily say it was when I was conceived. But that isn't a fixed point in time. There is a slow process of bringing a new human form into being. If we consider it carefully enough it can be seen that there is no real beginning. We say we have a family tree, where we come from. This human form comes from the flow and interactions of the human beings that preceded it. There isn't a true starting point that defines where a human being begins.
Similarly, at the death of this human form, it will break down into elements that return to the flow of the planet. I say 'return to' but they never left. This human body is really an expression of the flow of the planet. It is not truly an independent discrete form. It only seems to be that way.
The human mind develops the sense of independent discrete identity based on the way the body and world appears. But it's not true. I'm not really a human being, because I find no ends to the form that I superficially call a human being. There is only an appearance of limits to this human form. To identify with it is to believe in a false limitation.
Truly there are no limits. There is no limited identity. I am not this or that. I am.
- Category: Spirituality
- Hits: 1106
In spiritual development there is a point where it is recognised that the body is not me. If I am spiritual then I'm not this apparent material form. I'm not a human. I don't have arms and legs. It is reasoned that I am the one who animates the body, I am not the body, but the body is mine.
This sense of detachment from the body can continue and develop, so that the sense of 'me' itself diminishes. This is because the hardened 'material' form has a greater density and feeling of separation from the whole. It is not separate from the whole, of course, but that's how it feels at the point of density and apparent limitation of the human form. The ego identity that is the sense of being separate from others gradually recedes as spiritual development progresses. There is a greater sense of oneness with the whole, and the ego and identity that were so important and dominant lose their power. The peace and joy that is naturally present is experienced more and more as the ego diminishes and the sense of 'me' fades.
As this sense of 'me' fades, the sense of 'mine' also fades. Where before we may have had strong attachments to objects, considering them to be our property, seeking new things to buy and own, this becomes less interesting. The sense of attachment and ownership diminishes. So also with people. We don't rely on people so much to make us happy. We don't cling to people as before. We don't crave company. It doesn't mean that we dislike people or stop loving them. It means we have a healthier approach to people. The boundaries between 'me' and 'other' thin out more and more.
But we still have some attachments during this process. We still have a sense that although the body isn't me, it is mine: I see the world through this body, so it is mine. This too will diminish as spiritual development progresses, because it is not 'mine'. Nothing is 'mine'. The culmination of spiritual development is the dropping of 'me' and 'mine' and knowing clearly that there is only What Is. This Clear Knowing is here already. Clear Knowing is the nature of What Is. It is Pure Consciousness.
Once the sense of 'me' fades completely the sense of 'mine' also disappears. It is then that Clear Knowing is no longer clouded by the mistaken belief of 'I am this' and 'This is mine'. There are no boundaries, limitations, divisions. There is only the perfect peace and clarity. There is no 'me' who has problems, who grows, changes, lives and dies. There is only What Is. It is in Consciousness that this play of identity, possessions, gain and loss, and spiritual development plays out.
- Category: The Human Experience
- Hits: 1114
Ever wondered what being human was all about? We're going to take a look here at what I call 'the human experience'. It helps to have an understanding of Non-Duality, which I can very briefly summarise as the spiritual teaching that there is not a multiplicity, there is only What Is, which is our true nature, and has been described by sages as Sat-Chit-Ananda or Being-Consciousness-Bliss. Non-Duality is the recognition that we are not limited human beings, we are the Infinite One Consciousness, also known as God or the Self of Selves, and our nature is peace.
If that resonates with you, read on. If not, you can find out more from some of my other blogs.
So, looking at the world from the Non-Duality perspective, what is this human experience? Let's start from the beginning. Okay, there isn't really a beginning. The beginning only seems to appear from the timeless Infinite Being. Let's start there. The Infinite One, the Supreme Being is Pure Consciousness, formless and perfect peace. There is no movement in the Supreme Being, because there is nowhere to go. There is nothing other than the Infinite One.
Imagine the perfectly still surface of a lake. Perfect Peace. Now imagine that in the centre of that lake there is a motion, a fluctuation, causing a ripple, then multiple ripples, flowing outwards from the centre till they reach the limits of the lake. This is how the universe appears in the Supreme Being, in Consciousness. Vibration and fluctuation appears within the stillness and ripples out, till it reaches limits. See how the spiritual realms are created from the initial fluctuation in the Stillness, and multiplicity seems to spread outwards from the Still Centre. The Still Centre then stands as the shining light of the universe, as God the Creator of all. Spiritual beings are formed close to the Centre, and they go outwards in exploration across the lake, experiencing a range of frequencies in the fluctuation, from close to the Centre to far from the Centre, from close to the Light to far from the Light.
Close to the Centre the spiritual beings are near God and in God's likeness. But as they stretch further away they become less and less like the Centre of Peace. They become hardened, increasingly dense, and their limits seem more defined. It is in these denser realms, seemingly far from the Heart of God, that the human experience arises. Planet Earth develops, forms within the planet develop and evolve. Humanity evolves to a point of dominance, developing intelligence and concepts of itself as important.
The human being is far from the Heart of God. So much so that its qualities are a poor reflection of God. Further from the peace of God, humanity becomes warlike. Further from the Selfless Whole Being of God, humanity becomes selfish and incomplete. Further from the Spiritual Being of God, humanity becomes heavy, hardened, burdened, restricted and confused. Humanity loses sight of its connection with God. Humanity believes in itself above others. It loses touch with the Fullness of Life, and finds itself struggling in a world of opposites, knowing good and evil, love and hate, joy and sorrow, life and death. This is the stretching of opposites far from the Infinite Oneness of God.
This is the human experience. It may be considered that we are spiritual beings that have flowed out from the Heart of God and incarnated in these dense bodies to learn from the human experience. What do we learn? We experience what it's like to be limited. We experience what we are not. We are not truly limited, although in the human experience it can feel that we are. The collective human mind is still evolving. Generally it feels that it is limited and encased in the human body. We experience this sense of being encased in human dense form and clashing and competing with other dense forms. We experience opposites at an extreme level. We experience qualities that are the far opposite of God's nature - hate, cruelty, confusion, selfishness, war, ignorance, division, separation, sadness, darkness, lack, greed, torment, restriction. These qualities can only be experienced far from God. But their opposites are also experienced to a degree.
So this is the human experience, where many things are possible that would not be possible close to the Infinite Light of God. But you may have heard of Samsara, where it is considered that the spiritual being or soul becomes caught in the attractions of the world, entangled in the opposing forces of karma, and cannot escape from the endless cycle of rebirth. The soul becomes attached to human life and reincarnates seemingly endlessly, until it becomes aware of its 'fall' and turns around, arises from the density of matter to spiritual freedom, or Moksha, Liberation, or Self-Realisation.
This Self-Realisation is not a letting go of identifying as human and recognising that I am a soul. It is more accurately a recognition that there is only God. This lake of ripples we imagined is God alone. There are not truly many spiritual beings. There is nowhere that can be far from God. God is infinite and indivisible. The spiritual realms and the denser material realms are always Spirit, or Consciousness, or the Mind of God. There is only God. It only seems that the human experience is far from God.
There are no limits. There only seem to be limits. There is no death, only life. We do not become souls or humans. There is only God, infinite, limitless, peaceful Consciousness, within which the play of vibrations, fluctuations and opposites appears.
- Category: The Human Experience
- Hits: 1105
This is a question that concerns many people and causes some to not believe in God: How can a loving, all-powerful God allow evil to continue in the world? Let’s explore this.
To get to the bottom of it we need to understand both God and evil. We understand evil as the opposite of goodness and kindness. We usually relate it to human actions. So when a human does something that is harmful, cruel and causes suffering to others intentionally, we call this evil. As good people, we don’t want this in the world. We want the world to be peaceful and we want people to get on with each other, to be loving and kind, and the world will be a better place. Certainly that’s a noble aim, but the evil actions of people make it seemingly unachievable.
What evil shows us is the opposite of Godliness. Godliness is oneness with all. Evil is the extreme of separation from all. Evil is the action of clashing and breaking apart, isolating one against another. It is the extreme development of the force of separation, where a separate individual is in opposition to the world rather than being one with the world.
God is Oneness, an infinite Singularity. There is only God. God has no limits or divisions. God is Pure Love, the Oneness of Being. God is Pure Goodness, the perfect nature of being. The world appears as though this Singularity of God is separated and scattered, and the pattern of separating and scattering continues throughout the world. But God does not truly become divided. God remains timelessly as One, throughout the apparent separation in space and time. God remains as the high standard of perfect goodness throughout the imperfections of the world.
The world can be seen as incomplete and divided, a hardened dense world of clashing and opposition. Animals kill other animals, humans harm other humans or animals. People seek to dominate others, to win over others, and this selfishness leads to evil actions. The world can be seen as divided, but it isn’t really. There is only God. This appearance of the world is God seeming to be divided. Truly there are not many people or many animals fighting against each other. There is only ever God, the Infinite One Being.
The wise do not see a world of division. They only see God. The world can be considered as an expression of God through the medium of opposites. The appearance of selfishness is inevitable, as this expression of God that we call the world is a contrast of opposites. The invisible formless Oneness of God is made visible by the appearance of form and separation. But selfishness taken to the extreme results in this appearance of evil, that seems so distant from the Singularity of God. But it is illusory. There never is a distance from God. God is right here, whether the world appears to be good or evil, close to God or far from God. God is timelessly here, no matter what appears to happen.
So, back to the question: How can a loving God allow evil to continue? God does not see evil. Evil is only seen from a limited perspective, such as humans see. God is complete goodness, without opposition. God does not see others. God does not see beings harming other beings. That is only seen from the narrowed mistaken human perspective, believing that the world is separate and there are others. The highest human good is to recognise the oneness of all and live in peace and oneness with all, letting go of the mistaken sense of being separate. It is then that God’s true nature is realised in the human being. This is the aim for humanity in its evolution through time and space, to come to the true nature of Oneness that is always here beyond the sense of separation.
It is the same Oneness at the heart of all humans, all beings. Though they may believe otherwise, and though they may explore the opposing selfish nature for a time, it is inevitable to return to the peace and oneness of being, that is God. Evil and selfishness does not last. God is eternal. There is only God.