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.

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We can never be far from God or near to God. We are never really a sinner or a saint.There was a period of my life when I wondered what was the best way to live. How could I be a good person? How could I do the right thing? What was the right thing to do? So I made some changes and developed some principals, such as not eating meat, recycling, supporting good causes, not misleading people or being unkind, and making an effort not to do anything that seemed dishonest. I was even sometimes called 'Do Right Dave'...

All that is fine, and in some ways trying to be a better person brings one closer to the true nature of being. Or at least it can seem that way. 'The saint is closer to God than the sinner,' we could say. It's kind of true, relatively speaking, but not absolutely true. Let's break it down and build it up.

The 'saint' is the good person, doing good things, being kind to others, helping others; being selfless, we might say. This is close to God, where God is Oneness. The 'saint' is close to Oneness by being less self-centred and more focused on the whole, showing love and kindness to all. The 'sinner' on the other hand is selfish, looking out for 'number one', all taking and no giving, and showing hate and disdain for others. This certainly seems far from godliness, and it describes someone who selfishly puts themselves as more important than the whole. The 'sinner' seems far removed from Oneness.

That's how it seems. But truly Oneness is here throughout. There only appears to be differences. There only appears to be far from God and near to God. God, or the Infinite One, is right here where everything appears. Nothing is outside of God. Goodness seems to be close to Reality or the Truth of Being Infinitely One. Badness only seems to be far from it. But there is no inside or outside of the Infinite One. The apparent opposite of near and far appear within the unbounded space of the Infinite One.

We can never be far from God or near to God. We are never really a sinner or a saint. That is the appearance of the world as if it was the Infinite One separated. But this separation doesn't happen. We are never a person of any kind, though we may experience the life of a person. I call it the human experience. The human may make changes to be a better person, and that is good and fine, and in keeping with the understanding that there is only One and our true nature is this Infinite One.

There comes a point when the 'saint' (in the human experience), becoming closer to oneness, lets go of the ideas of being a 'saint', being a person doing actions, whether good or bad. This letting go is Freedom. It is the Freedom of just being. Some say it is freedom from karma, and in a way it is. The Infinite One is not subject to karma, the Law of Opposites. When the identity as a human doing actions is dropped, the person is no more, and it is clear that there is only ever the Infinite One. Actions of the human may continue, but there is no attachment to them, no separate person doing actions.

So you see here the path from doing bad, to doing good, to not identifying with doing at all. The question of whether an action is good or bad no longer arises. There is no choice to make. There is no seeing the world or actions as good or bad. There is the clear knowing that there is only God, the Infinite One. No saints or sinners. No heaven or hell. No near or far from God. Only the Infinite One.

The stillness of your room is illusory. Even the walls of the room are moving. It's only a relative stillness.The world appears as a World of Variety and Change. There seem to be so many different things - different elements, different combinations of elements, different densities of form - solid, liquid and gas, different formations of these forms - inert substances, plant-life, animal-life and human life. And it all swirls around, interacting, producing new forms and developments. The world is continually changing.

Sometimes the world may seem to be quite still, maybe when you're sat in a quiet room reading a book or relaxing. But the stillness of your room is illusory. Even the walls of the room are moving. It's only a relative stillness. The molecules that make up the walls, the air, and the different forms in a room are vibrating energy. In addition to this, the room is part of a spinning planet. Planet Earth spins on its own axis whilst rotating around the sun. The sun and this solar system in turn flows in the arms of a spiral galaxy, swirling through the universe.

Where was I? Right here. Ah, everything in the world is moving and changing, and any unchanging stillness we perceive is illusory. That's how it appears. You look at a table and it appears solid and still. You feel the ground beneath your feet and it seems solid and unmoving. But it's not quite the way it really is. We know it's not completely solid. It's permeable. That is, frequencies of energy can pass through it. Light can pass through glass windows. WiFi radio waves can pass through walls. Ground Penetrating Radar sends high frequency radio waves through the ground to detect buried objects. Nothing is ever truly impermeable.

There's some magic at play here. Really this moving and changing is illusory, and stillness is the reality. What is perceived is a reflection of reality. What is perceived is a play of opposites, whilst reality remains purely One.

Space and time are not natural to Reality. Reality is an Infinite Singularity without division, unchanging and unmoving. It cannot move or change because there is no space or time in the Singularity. Space and time only seem to appear within it. Distance and change seem to be created through the appearance of opposites. When the Infinite Singularity seems to split into opposing characteristics then a sense of separation, distance and change appears. Space and time appear to be instantly created, but they don't appear from the Singularity. They appear within the Singularity. The Singularity remains as it is. The separation never really happens. Space and time don't really happen. There is no real beginning or end to space and time, because they are illusory.

So this world of variety and change is illusory. That's not to say it isn't real. There is nothing other than the Real. That's the Singularity. What's unreal is separation and change. It doesn't really happen. So space and time isn't real, yet what this is is Real.

Enlightenment, Self-Realisation, Nirvana or Liberation, is the dropping of the belief and sense of there being limits.It may seem that the spiritual journey is a long one, or indeed a never-ending story. Well, it is and it isn't. It can seem like there's a lot to learn. Some people practise meditation all their life and feel they never reach the goal, so to speak. The goal for meditation and other spiritual practices is often Enlightenment. There can develop a frustration for the spiritual seeker, that they have been meditating for many years, they have changed their diet, they have studied the enlightened masters, but they still haven't become enlightened.

The problem is that the seeker never will become enlightened. True Enlightenment, Self-Realisation, Nirvana or Liberation, is the loss of the seeker. Self-Realisation is the recognition that there is no seeker and there never was a seeker - there is only What Is. This realisation is more like the dropping away of identity, the sense of limitation and separation, whereby what really is is revealed to have been always as it is. This Infinite Reality is not something objective that can be found. Searching for it is an error. Trying to achieve it is flawed. Yet we search and try, because the seeker feels a need to be complete, to achieve enlightenment, oneness or happiness.

This Infinite Reality, the revealing of which is called Enlightenment, is never hidden. The seeker develops as a sense of being a limited being that longs for wholeness. Wholeness is the natural state, but when there is a sense of being limited it feels that we have fallen from the blissful state and we need to find it again. Not only is this evident in spiritual seeking, but in all humanity's search for happiness. Humanity's sense of separate identity gives rise to the sense of being incomplete. Being an individual and being separate from the whole are two sides of the same coin. But it's a mistake. There are no limits or divisions in the Whole.

Enlightenment, Self-Realisation, Nirvana or Liberation, is the dropping of the belief and sense of there being limits. The seeker will remain dissatisfied until its sense of being a limited being is dropped. So in Liberation there is no seeker. The seeker never was. Who achieves this self-realisation when the realisation is that there is no limited self?

Nobody achieves it. It is a recognition of Nothingness. Well, it's not even a recognition. It's just the natural Beingness without the clouding of the human sense of identity and limitation. It's the end of the ego, the end of the identity, the end of the person. That can sound bleak. It is a death of sorts. It's not something that people generally want to hear or accept. Who wants to hear that the person they think they are isn't real, and in fact they are Nothing?

But it's not really bleak. This dropping of identity and limitation is Freedom. It is Liberation. Truly you have no limits, to the extent that there is no 'you' or 'me' or 'them'. There is only What Is. But while we still seek to find it we chase our own tail. It doesn't mean we have to stop meditating or start acting in a free way, doing what we want, because it makes no difference. It means that the answer is here already whatever seems to happen.

It helps to know that you are not the limited being that was assumed to be limited. It helps to know that it isn't a world of 'me' and 'them'. There is just What Is. Knowing this, why not live that way? Of course, it's not really you that does this or that, or chooses this way or that way, or even you that assumed you were limited. You are none of this. Are you the seeker? No. The apparent seeker is perceived. The sense of being frustrated is perceived. The sense of feeling incomplete is perceived. The realisation that there is no 'me' is the end of frustration and feeling incomplete. But it doesn't happen to anyone. It just is. Reality just is. It can't be found by looking for it. It's here already.

We can't pinpoint who or what we are. There aren't any real limits.The Non-Duality answer to the question, "Is there a me?" is that there really isn't anyone. The ideas 'we' have of who 'we' are are mere imaginations in the mind. But then there isn't even a mind or minds. There is only Beingness appearing to be otherness. There is not a 'me' thinking or a 'me' doing. These are labels that don't stand up to scrutiny.

We could say that humanity has made a mistake in identifying with the body, and feeling that 'I am this and not that'. There is a feeling or sense of personal identity that most humans have. It's a mistaken identity, but it's okay. It's not the truth, but it's okay. This sense of personal identity has developed from the experience of centralised senses. There is a sense, a feeling, and a belief, that 'I am this, perceiving that'.

But really we can't pinpoint who or what we are. There aren't any real limits. It's more accurate to say that the personal identity appears to happen, but it appears to no-one. So what I'm saying here is that there is no-one saying this. That can sound a bit ridiculous until it's recognised that really there is no-one saying anything. Words being written or spoken just happen. It's part of the flow of the appearance of the world. We could say that humans write and speak, and that's relatively accurate and useful, of course. But it's still not accurate, because we can't define the 'human'. We could also say the hand writes or the mouth speaks, but we can't really define that either. It's all just an appearance of flowing, movement, vibration, and so on.

Where are we in all of this? Well, we're nowhere to be found. Humans like to think we are personal and we are all separate people. That's the play of Oneness, appearing to be something other than what it is, appearing to be many. There is only this What Is or Beingness, no matter what appears to be. What Is or Beingness can't create something other than what it is. At best it can appear to be or seem to be what it is not. But that's all a play.

So there isn't really a 'me' separate from others. There is only always What Is. We are That. But there's no 'us' and 'That'. There is only What Is.

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