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Nonduality is not about finding the right concepts for living life. If you want that, select your favorite religion, much of which is about how to live life in the “correct” or “right” way.

In particular, nonduality is not about right and wrong, or any other pair of apparent opposites.

Nonduality is about going beyond the mind AND HEART entirely, diving into pure awareness and discovering it to be what we’ve always wanted: the source of peace, happiness, understanding, contentment.

Dear Holger and Walter, I feel moved to reply to your interchange. I will also email this to Walter, since he has unsubscribed to comments.

Whenever individual people communicate, there is the risk of misunderstanding. This is because we all have a web of beliefs (conditioning) that dictate how we say things and what concepts we emphasize, sometimes regardless of context.

However, when two people misunderstand each other and conflict arises from it, this is an indication that further communication is valuable. No, there is no guarantee that there will be a meeting of minds or a resolution of problems. But a bit of peaceful communication is always a positive step.

“Maybe my arrogance and ignorance are so deeply ingrained that I don’t see them anymore?”; “Am I just being fake?” (from today’s meeting)

Holger, you do have a unique way of interacting with people. You tend to write or speak in ways that challenge the mind. This is what Walter calls “passive aggression”. It is an unfortunate tendency, as you do have a profound understanding of nonduality and are often helpful to those in our meeting who feel lost during a period of spiritual confusion.

The problem is not so much with what you are trying to say but with how you are saying it in relation to what is the current context or situation. Simply put, you can’t ask dogmatic questions when the person you are communicating with did not ask for your feedback. That’s just uncivil.

In communicating with others we can appeal to the mind or we can state nondual dogma. For example, gently pointing out to someone how their thoughts and beliefs are constantly changing (as so many teachers do) is a good start to leading the mind toward an understanding of the nature of awareness, our true self. But loudly proclaiming that our behavior doesn’t matter because the world is an illusion is easy to be heard as dogma in service to passive aggression, a mode of expression of the ego.

People don’t improve in their behavior easily when they feel justified in pursuing their current course. Currently, for example, Holger feels justified (based on his own experience) in asking me whether my difficulty in hearing could be psychosomatic. And Walter feels justified (based on his own experience) in calling that question passive-aggressive.

There is a bit of truth in each of these comments. There is also a bit of unrelated reaction based on conditioning in each of these comments. This out-of-proportion reactivity (a sort of imperfection) is to be expected while we are on a spiritual path, that is, not yet at the goal (which is permanent self-realization and freedom in peace and happiness).

All I ask is that we be kind to ourself and tolerant of the other. Let’s try to use this event as another of our life experiences that can teach us something subtle. Seeing this interchange without attachment can help us to be more helpful to each other, to see that we are all in the same boat of spiritual progress.

Let’s not try to force ourselves or another to change. That won’t work. That can keep conflict alive for us, blocking our ability to grow and make progress along our path. Instead, let’s give the practical philosophy of nonduality the time it needs to loosen the hold of the mind so that we can identify with the unchanging field of formless awareness within which and out of which all events, objects, concepts, and meaning of the body, mind, and world are manifested.

David

Everything, allowed; nothing, excluded; processing in process; endlessly admired.

Dear Walter,
I re-read my comment to David.

I don’t see a double-mindedness in it; but I still take your words to heart. Maybe my arrogance and ignorance are so deeply ingrained that I don’t see them anymore?

Thank you for your forgiveness, your love for truth.

“What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torments, despair, eternal death.”
William Blake

Thank you Walter for your sharing.

I can relate to David’s hearing issues; I shared my own experience of not always hearing clearly; and for myself (body-mind) I saw a psycho-somatic connection.

I wasn’t thinking about your book when I quoted or misquoted, but I will read your comment again and take it to heart.

Thank you for your comment; why do we meet, what do we share? To see what is really here. What we see in an “another” is our own mind content.

Please stay with it, pretend some openness, don’t run away. “Remove me from the list”… is this the same energy that some weeks ago made you quit Telegram?

This is not a blame, not an expectation.

I really appreciate your sharing; it is priceless to have an opportunity to face our “me” stuff; we all sit in the same boat.

I allow myself to use words, I deeply enjoy this audio from Osho, that’s why I call it priceless.

Thank you Walter for your openness to share, to look at what arises.

Are we so different from each “other”?
Thank for your invitation for me to look below the surface.

Arrogance, confusion, misunderstanding…

On a scale from 0 to 10, how much peace and aggression was in your comment? I welcome it, it is good, it is always a win-win.

I love you and I thank you,
Holger

Holger,

I awoke this morning to your public reply to David on nondualsharing.com. I have typed this reply in a separate window and will not send it immediately. I may not send it at all. An energy drain.

“From my own experience I can say that Mr. Mind tries everything possible to prevent the seeing of the obvious; maybe your hearing difficulties are just psycho-somatic (but that’s not the point of this comment).”

What is the point of the comment Holger? Is it to sell this video that you have given meaning to as “priceless”?

Is it to say in a passive-aggressive way that David need not get his hearing checked, it’s all in his head?

Is it to say prescribe your brand of “what works”?

Is it to present an example of classic passive-aggressive rhetoric in saying things like “Thank you for your sincerity of not giving up and your humility of giving up the struggle that seemingly prevented you from embracing with your heart what mind cannot understand.”

That last part, by the way, you have misquoted from the poem “Take Heart, Seeker”. It is “your mind cannot know what your heart has never forgotten.”

This reply is beneath you.

And yet, at the end, you manage to exhibit the spiritual arrogance of a “proclaimer” in saying “it can feel quite humiliating to see that what we always longed for, and tried so hard to reach, IS always here and now, as I am.”

Whom are you speaking to? Enlightened Holger to poor humiliated Holger before enlightenment? Who gets enlightened? Is this a teaching from a realized being I am failing to grasp? If so, I beg of you 1000 pardons.

I’m curious. “Noble intentions” you say? Where are those in this post?

You speak of “humility”? And then end with “Peace”?

In reading this post this morning it is clear to me that this feud you keep throwing fuel on does not show a desire for peace.

Please stop this pointless energy drain and clear dislike for David. Stop the bullying veiled in spiritual jargon. My paraphrased suggestion is to (as you said to David), please read your reply another time, maybe several more, go for gold, not for petty passive-aggressive arguments.

And please remove me from receiving email notifications of these comments.

Sincerely,

Walter

He speaks with an accent, so the loud musical accompaniment makes this audio impossible for me to understand. I was not able to find a version on the Web without the music.

Something I like about this poem is the mystery in it. I don’t think a prose explanation can do justice to any really good poem. It cannot rival the beauty of the language. But also, prose is designed for linear thinking, not for capturing a moment in time, or flipping a switch in the brain, taking us beyond the rational mind.

I just wept when I watched this. For me, she IS the courage she’s looking for: if only I could be so courageous as to care about the gift of Awareness while in the center of that kind of danger and trauma.