Clearing up the dualistic confusion and realizing our true Nature is simple: LIFE and me are not two. But simple does not mean easy.

Certainly, the direct realization is instantaneous: we just have to realize it. But the fact of realizing it does not occur at will or by a simple intellectual understanding. The feeling of self is deep and refuses to give up its privileged prominence.

In order to the self, the feeling of individuality, stops eclipsing our real Nature, it is necessary to identify and undo the knots, the attachments, that feed dualistic confusion and keep us tied to it.

The so-called Spiritual Path

The different Forms of Tradition have proposed to the human being practices of self-knowledge and liberation to achieve the experience of the Unity of LIFE (some will call it union with God).

They are what we are used to calling spiritual paths. Paths full of precepts, prayers, renunciations, purifications, asceticism, privations, meditations, retreats, silences… even the use of psychotropic substances. All this in order to achieve extraordinary experiences or altered states of consciousness.

They are valid paths, no doubt. But they have not always been presented, approached or practiced with the most appropriate attitude.

The mere fact of talking about “paths” and “spirituals” feeds the stubborn dichotomy between spirit and matter, as well as the pernicious belief that the physical world is illusory and that our body is inferior, a hindrance, a prison from which we must free ourselves. This attitude predisposes us to a fragmented vision and a constant conflict with ourselves. It makes us feel incomplete, lacking something that we have to achieve and that we believe we have to seek and find “there”, “outside”, in higher dimensions or celestial worlds.

Certainly, these practices can lead us to experiences and altered states of consciousness that allow us to transcend the egoic gaze, numbing it for a few moments, and this allows us to set aside the feeling of individuality and have a taste of our true nature.

But they are not the realization. The realization is not only a experience. Realization is being. Experience is of little use if it is not transformed into being, if it is not incorporated into one’s own marrow.

Experience is not what one lives,
but what one is.

Advaitananda Vyasa Goe

WAY Does Not Lead

Dualistic confusion, clinging to our sense of individuality, deprives us of realizing that “we are not on” LIFE, but that “we are” LIFE.

If we already are It, we don’t lack anything. So isn’t it absurd looking for what we already are? What needs to be achieved? Why do we look for “there” and not in our own nature?

The WAY of realization, paradoxically, is not a path that leads nowhere. If we are already it naturally, it is also natural that sooner or later we are aware of it. All that will be needed is a sincere desire to see clearly and a minimum of dedication and perseverance.

It’s not about learning or achieving anything. Nor of forcing or giving up. We don’t lack anything, but we don’t have anything left over either. Rather, it is about discovering what it is that deprives us of realizing what we already are and putting everything in its place.

Untying Knots

The tangle of dualistic confusion feeds the egoic gaze and the feeling of separateness.

Like any tangle, the consistency of dualistic confusion lies in the complex jumble of twisted knots that, feeding off each other, make it difficult for us to see clearly the only rope that makes it up.

If the direct experience of the Non-Dual Nature of LIFE resists us, we can always identify, loosen and undo, patiently, each of the knots that, in the form of beliefs, prejudices or misunderstandings, tangle the skein.

Sincere introspection – that is, looking at ourselves decisively without fear, decisively, but also without shame, without guilt, without judging ourselves – will allow us to get to know how what we call our constitutives operate – the body, emotions, thoughts, mental formations and consciousness – and how their joint action generates the feeling of self that appropriates all the protagonism.

When we examine mental formations, we will have to carefully review and question all those habits, values, ideas, concepts and beliefs —our own or adopted from our environment—, that nourish dualistic vision and keep us linked to it: from how language (dual in itself), conditions our gaze, to ontological explanations about what it is that we call life, going through the apparent dichotomies and antagonisms that we experience in our day to day.

Live, Only Live

We should not be discouraged by the apparent complexity of the task, because it is not. It is a natural process. As natural as breathing.

A process that will begin when, perhaps tired of suffering, we intuit that the root of our uneasiness is in our gaze and not in what we see. That it doesn’t matter so much what we live, but how we live it.

This will awaken a sincere desire to see clearly. A longing that will push us to look at ourselves to know our true nature, beyond the feeling of self.

Traditional practices and techniques can help us find the necessary calm for introspection. But let’s not make practice the goal.

We are LIFE and, therefore, living is the ultimate meditation. We just have to give ourselves and trust it fully.

Test our intuition on a day-to-day basis, with the certainty that LIFE is the only Teacher and the best guide.

The inherent Joy to Nature of LIFE (not the emotion that only arises when things are going well for us), will be the best indicator of our progress.