Writing about it now makes it sound much more dramatic than it was at the time. It was special, but also so utterly ordinary. Life was just happening as always, only without all the extra noise—the stream of thoughts constantly objectifying experience into solid and separate things. The story of separateness. The narrative is so deeply embedded in the noise floor of our experience that we don’t even hear it anymore. Until it drops away.
There are times when it feels isolating and crazy making to be alone, to be myself, but there are also times where it feels grounding, stable, and secure. There are times where it feels suffocating and horrifying to be connected to everything around me, but there are also times where it feels awe-inspiring and reassuring. There are times where either experience can feel both good and bad, perfect and unbearable, at exactly the same time. The experience of reality always seems to exceed our conceptions of it. The world overflows us.
This is a deceptively simple practice that is so simple most folks write it off without giving it a sincere shot. Like meditation, it can take a while to get the hang of. Its many proponents argue no other practice can change your relationship to hardship and suffering more radically in so short a time.
There is a long and confusing and ultimately useless debate about which approach is correct. The debate is useless because both approaches are right. It’s a paradox, and there is no getting around paradox in the wooly and contradictory world of spirituality.
I hosted this panel at the 2013 Science and Nonduality conference in Holland. At least two of of the participants – Lisa Cairns and Gary Weber – claimed to be in a permanent state of nondual consciousness. For those who don’t speak the lingo, they are what some Buddhist might call “enlightened” – i.e., their sense of being a separate self has collapsed, and they now apparently reside in a state of open unfixed “oneness” – whatever you take that to mean. Actually, what the hell that actually means is the subject of this panel.