Topic: Recognizing and Eliminating the Dualistic Mindset
Upcoming Seminar in Oss, Netherlands on Self-Actualiztion.
Where the Rubber Meets the Road
Vedanta is much more than intellectual concepts that give us the inspiration to cope with life. It is living non-duality. Inspiration without action wears off, keeping seekers seeking, whereas Vedanta ends seeking and provides a blueprint for joyous transformational living. It is difficult to let go of seeking because, despite its downsides, seeker is often a comforting identity, a virtuous security blanket of sorts. When you understand the value of Vedanta, the dream of seeking stops and your real waking life begins.
For quite a while I was living in the dream that most long-term devotees of Vedanta were dispassionate and rational enough to recognize the dualistic mindset and were dedicated to eliminating it. Backed by the Bhagavad Gita, my teacher made it clear that duality was the enemy and that the struggle with duality is the essence of our spiritual work. It made sense so I worked hard on my mind every moment of every day for about two years. It was satisfying work. It wasn’t hard because I trusted my teacher, who had mastered his mind and I was completely fed up with the me-centered approach to the world. Gradually duality lost its power and one fine day, the mind stepped off the samsaric merry-go-round. The status of the world changed. It was no longer real as it had once been. It was real in a completely different way. It was real because it was me, ordinary vasana-free existence shining as whole and complete unborn awareness, which is the teaching.
As I shared what I knew over the years I also discovered that many seekers claimed they were working hard on themselves but were still cultivating the dualistic mindset. That duality was a serious problem was only an idea that was at best partially assimilated, sometimes not at all. Consequently, here and now, duality played scot-free in their minds!
When you are not ready to let go of your fears and desires any teaching can supply a rational for hanging on to them, particularly the idea the life is a both/and, not an either or. If it’s a both/and, you can have your cake and eat it too. You can say the world doesn’t affect me because I am the Self so I will just let things be as they are, which is only good if you more or less indifferent to your mind.
Unfortunately. When the Self thinks it is a doer, it doesn’t know that the world doesn’t affect it, so it keeps choosing this and that to make it happy. And for its trouble it keeps going round and round on the samsaric merry-go round. The doer likes options and if it knows that a particular path is going to limit them, it avoids it. They call it human nature. But the whole point of Vedanta is to put the doer in the position where it uses it’s free will to eliminate its sense of doership. The only time it stops doing is the day the body dies.
Is Vedanta a Both/And or an Either/Or?
But if Vedanta is an either/or with reference to your choices, a wise person will cultivate a non-dual mind-set, since it prevents sufferings large and small. It should be a simple rational choice.
The hallmark of the Self ignorant Self is fear. It thinks fear is smart. So, it is attracted to the idea that that life is one big conspiracy. It is to be sure, but not in the way it imagines. Even though Vedanta repeatedly points out that ignorance is the only virus and Self knowledge is the only vaccine, these words still fall on the deaf ears of many good people who are not ready to let their fears and desires go and trust life…call it God if you will…to take care of them.
Yes, fear can momentarily make the mind alert, but it can just as well make it dull and unsubtle. Vedanta doesn’t use fear because using it inculcates it. Unexamined fears of every sort spring up and attach themselves to events, keeping the mind that is not committed to constant vigilance of duality obsessively disturbed until one’s life becomes dysfunctional. The mind should be aligned with the non-dual nature of reality, a friend, not an adversary.
Fear-oriented people think they are covering their backsides, but they are actually living backwards, defaulting to duality when they should default to fearless non-duality. They think they are clever, but they aren’t. Sometimes they even try to convince me that non-duality isn’t smart. “You’re living in a fools’s paradise, James. The idea of trusting God is good, but you need to look after Good Old Numero Uno.” They don’t know that trusting God is the only sure way to underwrite their happiness.
All a proper teacher can do is make suggestions and hope that an inquirer is mature and subtle enough to pick up the idea that duality is a practical problem and run with it, which basically means taking a stand in the opposite thought. “I am whole and complete. Nothing can be added to me or subtracted from me.” Practiced steadily with faith it kills doership and sets the doer free of samsara.
Upcoming Seminar in Oss, Netherlands on Self-Actualiztion.
This seminar will be a continuation of the Sunday night satsangs, which are presently focused on the reflection teaching with the idea of helping individuals progress along the well-worn path to freedom and non-dual love. For those who don’t attend regularly we are talking about Self-actualization in depth, using a mnemonic symbol…the dancing Shiva…to assist us in removing the dualistic mindset and establish the mind in non-duality. You will like your mind very much if you can teach it to think from the non-dual platform. Although the seminar is fully booked it will be live streamed and kept online for downloading. For details write Georg at georg.shiningworld@gmail.com
