Part of this human experience, as I call it, is the experience of loss. We may lose someone close to us or we may lose a job, a house, or even have objects that were important to us lost or stolen. This loss can sometimes have a devastating emotional impact on us. Losing one's purpose if made redundant from a job can be very difficult to cope with, and it is a longer lasting sense of loss when we lose a loved one. It may be that they passed away, they chose to separate from us, or they are temporarily away from us due to work or other commitments. This separation increases the human feeling of loss.

The aim here is to understand what is happening with this experience of loss. It's hoped that this understanding will make the loss more bearable, as we recognise the inevitability of loss and the underlying completeness that remains but is overlooked.

So why must we experience loss? If asked whether we would like to lose those we love, the job we enjoy, the roof over our head, or those objects that have become important in our human lives, we would overwhelmingly say, "No!" But there is a certain inevitability about it - things in the world seem to come and go. Nothing lasts forever. Loss is inevitable. Loss is continually happening, as the apparent beings, objects and activities of the world come and go. The nature of the world we perceive is continual change.

In Non-Duality we may call this appearance of the world Maya or Lila, which means that it is illusory or not what it seems. In Non-Duality it is recognised that the universe cannot come and go anywhere. It is always Here. The universe or What Is cannot become something else. It doesn't really change. It only appears to change. This appearance of change is a reflection of the true nature of reality, which is timeless, formless, unchanging, and unmoving. The appearance of loss and gain in the world is itself illusory, as nothing is ever gained or lost. It only seems that way because of the appearance of change.

The universe of What Is remains timelessly complete. It doesn't really separate and divide. The world appears as if opposites have been created and they ebb and flow, separating and returning to each other, in the search for unity, wholeness and completeness. This is the play of duality that we call Maya. This is the apparent world of opposites that gives rise to the human experience of gain and loss.

Humanity has a sense of being separate from the whole. Humans generally need company, or they need to have space from company. It's all about separation and wholeness. When someone we love leaves us we feel bereft: there is an empty gap where once there was a sense of oneness. We feel we have lost them. We miss their company and how they made us feel more complete. This is part of human life in the world of change. There's no getting away from this, as nothing that appears in the universe will last. What appears must disappear. It is the Law of Opposites that allows this world to appear within the Wholeness of the Singularity.

Truly the Wholeness of the Singularity is always here, throughout the appearance of gain and loss. Where it may seem that those we love have gone, they have not. They are always Here, as we are always Here. There is truly nowhere other than Here. The appearance of separate individuals is the Singularity itself playing at being separate. Truly, all who you love, like, or dislike, are one, and you are that one also. There is no other. We are the Singularity. We are the Beingness that allows the appearance of separation whilst remaining whole.

Look differently at this apparent world of change, and know that it speaks of the unseen unchanging Wholeness that is always Here. Gain and loss seem to take place on the surface of life, but at the core is a whole, complete Oneness, and we are That.