Ruth: I’m still applying the Vedanta teachings daily, but I am experiencing difficulty in addressing a situation. In the past I’ve done spiritual bypassing in these situations & trying not to do that. Hence my contacting you to see if I could have a zoom or video call with you.
Sundari: No problem to set up a zoom. I think most people employ spiritual bypasses at some time, and depending on how frequently and why, it may not always be a bad thing. For instance, you could use one to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, or your own. But if it is a habit, then there is an underlying problem you are avoiding. From the sounds of things, at least you know when you are spiritually bypassing the issue that is causing you disturbance.
Ruth: Would it be correct to say marrying the two levels except I know there is only one, difficult?
Sundari: Yes, indeed, applying nonduality to your life is where the rubber hits the road, to use James’ favourite saying. But it is not about marrying nonduality and duality because they are and never will be, in the same order of reality. How can you marry that which isn’t real, duality, to that which is real, nonduality?
The difficulty and the freedom comes in discriminating between the two orders of reality, and basing all your thinking/feeling on the latter, non-duality, the Self, not on the dualistic, vasana based thinking and feeling of the jiva. It is in the identification with the jiva (ego) where all the problems arise. But this is not easy as the mind is entrained to think dualistically.
Applying non-dual vision involves training the mind to think from a completely different perspective, and this is the hard part. Nobody is to blame for this as Maya makes duality highly tenacious. But as long as the mind is still run by repetitive mental emotional patterns, karma yoga will not work, the mind will not have access (or at best only partial and fleeting access), to Self-knowledge. And so, you suffer.
In a nutshell, freedom from limitation can be simply defined as the automatic and permanent ability to discriminate between mithya, the jiva/world of experience, and satya, the nondual Self.
Much love
Sundari
