A Non-Definitive Guide to Non-Duality

Instead of thinking of yourself as a separate object from the world, like a pinball in a machine, it’s maybe just more accurate to think of yourself as a drop in the ocean. This can be a scary idea, in the sense that it forces you to confront the arbitrariness and flux of existence. But it can also be a relaxing alternate frame—it’s a way of looking that can bring a sense of letting go, as well as greater empathy for you and others: we are all just trying to ride this wave together and none of us is totally sure what’s going on, or totally in control.

For some people this happens when walking in nature—your sense of “you” diminishes, the volume of your thoughts is turned down, and it’s almost as if you’re melting into the forest. For some people, this can happen on a dance floor, or when marching with your fellow troops, or during really absorbing conversation, or sex. It’s a big part of what a “flow state” is. For many religious people, it’s a feeling that arrives during prayer.

These moments can be really nourishing. Your problems and fears and worries, which seem so big, can seem less imposing. Or, instead of seeming like “your” fears, they can seem simply like a variety of noise or weather passing through the universe. You might have that most precious intuition, the sense that it will All Be Okay.

Non-dual experiences are experiences of feeling like the self/other boundary has thinned dramatically, or even dissolved. Non-dual practice is a way of intentionally bringing about this quality of experience, increasing its depth, and, eventually, perhaps, after some amount of practice, installing it as the default flavor of consciousness

Because that’s just the first layer, this duality of self and other. Non-duality also refers to the process of transcending other dualities

When you make this mental move, it can be subtle at first. But sometimes it is striking. Sometimes, your peripheral vision can suddenly feel quite a bit larger. Discursive thoughts tend to quiet down a lot. There can be a feeling of freshness or childlike delight, a novelty seen in familiar things. Sometimes, a sense of palpable realness presents itself, as if you’ve woken up from a dream.

The Headless Way is a really fun and funny set of pointing out instructions with an Alice in Wonderland aesthetic, which feel very different from traditional meditation stuff. There’s a great Headless Way course on the Waking Up app.

conscious awareness makes itself happen. You don’t have to create your experience: sensation comes to you all on its own

So: intuitively, we perceive that the “center” of consciousness is in our head. Like, that we are “looking out” from a control room. But this doesn’t make much sense. You’ve seen a photo of a skull before. Is there any golfball-sized “empty space” in which the theatre of consciousness resides?

everything you are perceiving, right now, including that fabricated sense of a “center” of consciousness, is an output of your mind

If everything you’re perceiving is a cinematic production optimized for utility, then when you look at this page, you’re not really seeing a raw report of the light hitting your eyes, you are seeing what’s coming out of your mind. Therefore, everything you perceive as “the world” is a perception of your model of the world, which is to say, you.

Maybe your fingers are touching a screen or a trackpad right now: you could become aware that the coolness and smoothness of it is your creation, just like the motor feedback from your hand. Maybe there’s ambient sound around you right now, or you’re listening to music: you could notice that this is your awareness, transmitting a message from you to you.

this is true, also, of anything you associate with a “sense of self.” That is a production as well, composed of ephemeral sensations that come and go

it’s possible that you’ve already had a non-dual experience, and you just didn’t recognize it as such. Lots of people spontaneously have moments of mystical connection and then don’t systematically investigate it, or don’t return to it for one or another reason.

Anecdotally, though, people experienced in non-dual states tend to report:

• Less emotional activation • A greater sense of sacredness • More absorption in surroundings • A heightened sense of interconnectedness • Less preoccupation with neurotic thoughts • More available feelings of meaning and purpose

In other words, there is a network in the brain devoted to inner experience, and a network devoted to exterior experience, and usually activation in one is associated with reduced activation in the other. Typically, being lost in your interiority means being less attuned to exterior experience, and vice versa. But during non-dual experience, when you feel that outside and inside are merged, the neurological reality reflects that. Like I said though, this sounds almost too cute; I like it too much, so I’m suspicious of it.

During non-dual experience, there tends to be a de-emphasis of that stressed-out inner monologue, and—as we all know—the stressed-out inner monologue can help you remind yourself of things like, “Fuck, fuck, I hope I don’t forget the milk, if I forget the milk again, I’m a fucking failure.”

Qualitative research has shown that people who have persistent experiences of non-duality tend to keep a lot of to-do lists, for this reason

We go for a binary story: I have failed and people hate me. Or: they are wrong and I am awesome.

But a non-dualistic view can help you cut through overly simplistic views of your experience—black-and-white narratives that flatten the beauty and texture of your life, like “I’m a failure,” or “I regret that relationship,” or “I am definitely this variety of person.” Maybe such statements can be both true and not true: perhaps there is freedom in allowing that tension to exist.

half of people who learned how to achieve non-dual awareness through a Sam Harris meditation course said it was the most important skill they’d ever learned in their lives