Introduction to Nondual Therapy

The true nature of healing

“Be passionately dispassionate – that is all.”

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Who am I? What am I? Where am I? What am I here for? What is the point? What is the purpose of life? Why do I exist? All of us, without exception – whether through strife or through life, through pain or gain, through longing or wronging, through wisdom or schism – all of us will come to these pulsing questions asked with insistence by our existence: Who is this? What is this? Where is this? Who am I? What am I? Where am I?

These are the questions of poets, scientists, engineers, philosophers, innovators, artists, priests, mystics, and sages. They are timeless because they are sourced outside of time. They are boundless because they are asked into an infinite space of the unknown. They are fiery questions, lighting up beacons of curiosity, as each answer ignites another question. They are formless, because the questioner is life itself, before any differentiation, into shape, size, or frequency.

Therapy without conditions

Life is asking the question of anything we could imagine ourselves to be. Yet our imagination is limited by fearful anticipations based on depressed conclusions. These existential questions, even without answers, reveal the forgotten vistas of endless potential. They endow meaning, purpose and evolutionary momentum. They transmit wonder, awe and curiosity. They put light on old battle lines, revealing the false claim within every limitation – that this line drawn in the sand long ago marks the end of the world. Suffused with the sense of impossibility, these limits claim to be impassable, that there is an end to being, and that there our true nature is restricted. In short, that we are stuck. Questions can dispel this illusion of limitation, by asking with a naughtiness: is this really true? What is on the other side of this so-called battle line?

As consciousness awakens with open eyes to the living body of earth, it might look for partitions of cities, states, and nations. It might look for the divisions in color, creed, and species. It might seek the tyrannical rift between man and woman. Yet it will not see black and white, but a myriad colors. It will see bodies of water and gradations of mountains, moving clouds and the awesome suspension of the planet in stillness, just as she turns on her axis while journeying through her orbit of intergalactic belonging. It will see unlimited beauty through variety within wholeness and it will see that it is good.

We look for limitations to define us, but where we put our faith in these limits, hoping that restriction will somehow keep us safe, we are always horribly, thankfully betrayed. This is because the consciousness that we are cannot be controlled, contained, conspired, or condemned. We are the conscious life before, beyond and after all limitations have passed. Limitations fail us and we find ourselves falling into the formless emptiness of boundless unborn potential. When our world of restriction ends, we find that we are free. In Nondual Therapy, this self-realization of the limitless within form happens safely, by degrees, sentient fiber by sentient fiber.

We look for limitations to define us, but where we put our faith in these limits, hoping that restriction will somehow keep us safe, we are always horribly, thankfully betrayed.

So, it is with our nominal identity, and the ideas we have about our shape, size, weight, status, and destiny. None of these can truly define us. Consciousness has the power to blow such suppositions apart, as if they never were. Consciousness will shed illusions and shatter the notions that have stressed the spirit, depressed the heart, and numbed the living body. Consciousness is the alpha and omega of all healing processes.

How is it that what seems like destruction, devastation and disintegration can lead to expansion, release and a lightness of being? How is it that our greatest suffering – the dread of the end of our world – when unmasked, can seem like nothing more than a bad joke told in a grainy way?

And-and

It can be thus because of a shivering possibility: that we are far more magnificent, powerful, and brimming with potential than we ever dared imagine. We are our own creators and the architects of our own destruction within a multisensual narrative in which we are the one inspiration. The whole universe is centering in us and swirling in a sensuous storm around the core of our individual doorway of consciousness: the doorway we call “I”.

Throughout the ages, the focus of sages has been on the evolution from the judgmental, discriminating mind, to the dimension of wisdom. The judgmental mind is caught in polarity. It splits experience into good and bad, wanted, and unwanted, light and darkness, winners, and losers. In this splitting of reality into twos, it creates localized energetic battlefields of comparison, competition, and conflict. Out of this warzone of consensual conflict, it appoints a commander in chief – a dictator of reality to which all thoughts must conform. This commander is often the loudest voice of the collective mind. Already wounded and condemned by eons of perpetual warfare, he is paranoid and feels constantly victimized. He speaks the language of fear and threat. His fuel is the rage at injustice. His mandate is to bring peace, and to do this, he wages perpetual war.

Nondual wisdom moves beyond this nonsensical belief in the division into two, ultimately separated, mutually exclusive sides of a conflict that are engaged in an existential war. It releases our consciousness out of the causeless struggle found in the either-or, into the self-evident truth of “both”. It is not me or you, it is both of us. You cannot have a choice without at least two options. Even after you decide on one option, both still are here. It is not either-or, it is both. It is not you or me, it is us, together. This is factual wisdom hidden in plain sight.

In the “and-and” – we find the interdependent nature of all things. There is no light except as a measure of darkness; no mother without a father; no parents without a child; no left without right; no up without down; no rising without falling; no winning without losing; no good without bad; no pleasure without pain; no death without birth; no me without you; no self without other.

They say it takes two to tango. In our physical dimension, this is true. Without duality, there would be no flow of love, no bliss of touch, no peace of togetherness, no movement, and no life. The split into two creates the bliss of experience through friction. If we were not separate, we could not rejoice in one another. If we were not one, we also would not rejoice in one another. All experience is a sensuous celebration of separation within unity.

War zones

The illusion is not in the dance of duality, but in the belief that this tango is an existential fight to the death – to the annihilation of one side OR the other. This either-or belief states that the universe is not big enough for the two of us, and that only one of us can come out a winner. It’s true. We are really, collectively believing in this absurdity – investing all our vitality in the destruction of each other, which is our own self-destruction.

Yet self-destruction is an impossibility because the belief in duality is the belief in impossibility. It is illusory. If I am self-destructing, which one of me is destroying which one of me? Which one lives, which one dies? You got it: everyone dies. It’s inseparable. The wellbeing of each part is inseparable from the whole.

Formed out of the toxic waste of fear, the illusions of either-or thinking are ungrounded and unearthed. They are in conflict with direct observation. My right-hand does not compete with my left hand. My right foot is not out to kill my left foot. If you are bad it doesn’t make me good. My future is not at war with my past. If the world is evil, it doesn’t mean that I’m an angel. Although I could be an angel dressed as a demon in an evil world.

Fear of pain is intoxicating, and it compels our consciousness into beliefs based on death, negation, and existential erasure, as if we could uncreate what has already happened

Nondual Passion: a quality of Consciousness in Nondual Therapy

Fear of pain is intoxicating, and it compels our consciousness into beliefs based on death, negation, and existential erasure, as if we could uncreate what has already happened. As if we could undo time or erase a pain that is already felt. We believe we can “get rid” of parts of who we are, not just from the present and future, but also from memory. And because we cannot do this, we pretend that we can by smothering it with the insentient energy of ignorance and denial.

When we are determined to get rid of a part of ourselves, we need to deeply believe in that part as being definitive of who and what we are. We religiously pay deference to the offensive part. In a way, we enslave ourselves to the suffering we fear. We make it the big issue. We make it matter as that one part which has the power to disturb our universal peace, disrupt our god-given vitality, and distract our cosmic consciousness. The very strength of our self-rejection brings an energetic charge to that which we are trying to reject. We pile the pain of rejection on the pain of rejection on the pain of rejection. There is no wonder that what we resist, persists, with bells on it. The force of our aversion brings force to the whole field of aversion, until all we feel is aversion, until it gets so horrible that we don’t want to feel anything anymore at all.

This is where nonduality becomes Nondual Therapy, through the tremendous power of truthfulness in accepting all experience, even the vibratory cruelty of the energy of negation, within the field of shared conscious inquiry.

We cannot get rid of what has passed, but we can change our attitude to it, expand our range of perspectives on it and deepen our insight into it. Healing does not happen through the elimination of parts of the psyche, it happens through the transformative power of inclusivity. Therapy is not a violence, but a shared process of softening, opening, and safe revelation. It is a process of relaxation into awareness. In every healing process, we move from disease to a fluctuating unease, to a sense of unconditional ease where we even begin to forget what we were fighting for.

To be well

This is the paradigm shift of Nondual Therapy – from a dimension of conflict to one of inclusion and overview. From core contraction of time and space where freedom appears to be loss, to the self-realization that regardless of contraction, freedom can never be lost.

The truth will set us free, and this wisdom has clinical applications that can turn a conventional therapy room into an opportunity for uncensored Satsang, and unparalleled depth healing within an atmosphere of compassion.

In Nondual Therapy, this liberating truth is not a “thing” or a fact from the world of “things”. It is the sense of truth, of atmosphere, vibration, or intuition, that moves through the skin, blood, gut, and bones of us.

Truth is one of the deeper senses of consciousness that will guide us into the core of our own being, through the halls of shame and the old gates of loneliness horrified by the prison walls of isolation. It will lead us out of the whole territory of stress and danger and into the dimension of true nature, the Garden of Eden which is the dimension of our unfettered, living consciousness.

This dance of duality is not doomed to be an eternal, existential slavery, but is an evolutionary passage of passion in which we unfold, by degrees of sustainability, into purer expressions of source. We are hardwired for this direction; programmed for passion; and coded for bliss. Every moment of our existence through varied densities of form is reaching toward this fulfilment.

Imagine or remember a new-born baby. When the baby cries, it is out of need, a need to return to wellbeing. This quality of wellbeing includes qualities of peace, connection, relaxation, fulfilment, and care. Even the baby’s pain reaches toward wellbeing – or “being well”.

Adverse experiences are literally vibratory encounters between our naturalness and the confused and unresolved energies in the environment. There is a shock of dissonance or disharmony. When there is a loss of balance or energetic bewilderment, we seek balance and clarity. Our whole being tends toward the harmony of wellbeing through all expressions of form – physical, emotional, and mental. This process of refinement into higher harmony is evolutionary. It is part of our deeper intention and manifest purpose in being here in freedom.

When we are shocked in our naturalness, or wounded in our living responsiveness, there is a reflex to pull back. Expanding energy contracts. These contractions aim to protect against further assault. They seek to numb the pain of the next blow. They shield us from the outer world and seek to disable that which has been unsafe. We instinctively seek coping strategies through trying to find the cause of the horrible discomfort of contraction. Condoned by the environment, we often end up blaming that exact experience in which we were shocked.

For example, when we were mocked because we were innocent – we blame the innocence of true nature for the mockery. When we are shamed in our purity, we blame the purity for the shaming. When we got into trouble because we were free – we blame the freedom for the trouble. In all, we are conditioned to blame our true nature for our suffering. The vibration of consciousness gets energetically associated with the vibration of pain, and as a result, we disconnect still more from our naturalness, which causes still more suffering.

Part of the effect of contraction is that we lose freedom of movement. The flow of quality energy gets frozen. Vitality gets reduced, and we lose grace and naturalness. In the density of contraction (contracted purity, for example), this frozen energy is denied time, space, and movement, yet it now reverberates with layers of suffering. The pain is not functional, so we numb it, by withdrawing consciousness. At first it is an occasional pain when we are triggered. In time, and without attention, the state of contraction gets fixed. It appears as part of normality, as something that has always been there, that will never go away. At this stage, the very notion of a nondual quality, like purity for example, can seem conceptual. Purity cannot “be” in the real world. Purity is a fantasy of fools; it’s an impure world.

Yet our consciousness is pure. It is made of purity. When we become conscious of the energy of our shame, we begin to experience it in purity. We begin to reverse the process of contraction. Rather than feeling ashamed in our purity, we begin to feel the purity of our shame. As we realize the purity within that field of resonance, and the pure space within the physiology of the emotion, the shame has the freedom to move again. It de-contracts, de-freezes, and reunites with the undifferentiated purity within conscious awareness. Decontraction releases vitality, as the voltage that has been short-wired now becomes available to the whole. A healing momentum builds up.

It is no big news that love restores wellbeing, or that peace brings ease and relaxation. It is not rocket science that the energy of freedom brings solace when we feel trapped, or that the energy of joy uplifts a grieving heart. If beauty did not have a tremendous healing impact, then we would not flock in our free time to museums and places with awesome views. If the sense of connection was optional, we would not be dying from loneliness while the world turns its face.

The qualities of our true nature are not optional by-products of increased functionality or the latest medication. They are foundational to all wellbeing. They are the most abundant healing resource in the universe, and they are free, unlimited, and directly accessible to every living being. They are accessible as the qualities of consciousness, and wherever we are conscious, there they will be, whispering to us to be well. It is out of these ageless insights into the fundamentally transformative, evolutionary, and healing nature of consciousness that Nondual Therapy is emerging.

A nondual calling

Nondual Therapy acknowledges and harnesses this natural tendency toward well-being, whether it is physical, emotional, or mental. This is felt as a yearning toward the qualities of true nature. It is as if those qualities at the source ourselves are reaching toward those qualities in the whole. There is no private fulfillment. When we touch the quality inside ourselves, our whole drive is to share it with others. When we lose the connection inside ourselves, we call for it, like a teardrop resonating with the ocean.

When we realize the transient, sensory nature of separation, division, and discrimination, we begin to expand as conscious awareness. This is the very field in which all sensory vibration occurs, including the sense of division. There is a plain-sight, self-evident inclusivity of all phenomena in the here and now and there is boundless peace. These phenomena – physical sensations, feelings, emotions, and thoughts – are of a vibratory nature, arising and evaporating within our feeling awareness.

Healing depends on three principles: time, space, and movement. When these three are liberated through the realization that we are the eternal, spacious awareness in which the movement occurs, the whole field begins to vibrate with greater harmony and wellbeing.

In this, Nondual Therapy is deeply holistic, treating mind, emotional state, and body within one field of awareness. All impressions arise as experience, which is inseparable from this pure awareness. In its original meaning, the word “therapy” means to make whole. Nondual Therapy recruits and resources a wholeness beyond all the old coding of pain. It ventures a wholeness which is not a creation, but a recovery of the pure wellbeing of who we are, and who we will always be, irrespective of any play of experience.

Our true nature mediates the three worlds of universal consciousness, self-consciousness, and the collective unconscious. In this, Nondual Therapy is a resource, directed at the source of all we are in the infinite here and the eternal now. It resources through direct experience, to the core of experience, and from here to the spontaneous true nature of conscious awareness. It works with life, as life, in life.

Nondual qualities or the qualities of our true nature are often misconceived, reduced to a state of competition with negative emotions, and replaced by structures of ethical obligation. Nondual qualities are not primarily behaviors but are spontaneously arising vibrations, with an evolutionary purpose. They are unconditional, unlimited by time and space, meaning they are timeless and boundless. They are abundant, in infinite supply. They do not run out, and they never get lost. They cannot be injured or taken away.

Each nondual quality is accessed through our sensory ability. We feel them. We have a sense of truth, for example, or we able to sense love, peace, or freedom. The sensing of the quality invites it. In this, each nondual quality is an entry to the whole of true nature. As our sensory ability arises out of sensory awareness, the vibrations of nondual qualities are inseparable from awareness. Another way to say this is that they are the refined, vibratory nature of awareness.

The transformational effect of nondual qualities is that they pull form toward greater balance and harmony, orienting the mind, body, and heart toward increasing degrees of wellbeing. This brings release, reward, rejuvenation, and resource, often accompanied by a liberation of consciousness. Nondual qualities are both awakened by the touch of consciousness and deliver a liberation of consciousness.

When nondual qualities contract, through the process of shocks in manifestation through greater densities of vibration, there is a lack of time and space. There is a splitting of consciousness between the dominant perspective, and the contracted one. Contraction is a protective reflex, a resistance, and in this, time and space are withdrawn. However, some consciousness remains within the contracted form, and this claims its own perspective.

Because contractions are a split in consciousness born of conflict with an area of experience, they are reflected in either-or thinking or binary mind. This polarization reduces feeling sensitivity toward all the shades of grey, which can present sometimes as numbness and at other times as uncontrolled emotion. This numbness is also because contractions lack sensory context in the here and now: they are trapped energetic vibrations from the past. In this, their resonance can feel familiar, like a part of reality, or an old unliked family member. Consciousness effects contractions, awakening the condensed energy and bringing the permission of time and space that allows expansion. In this, the contracted energy is invited to return to the source – rather like ice melting into water.

In this book on passion, we focus on just one of the myriad qualities of consciousness. As you will discover, each quality is a doorway to the unbounded unity of true nature. Each is a perspective, or a way of perceiving. Each quality offers a portal to true nature, in which we access a timeless and limitless wealth of resources that empower our sacred passage of individual and collective evolution. This empowerment of the sacred rite of passage is called passion.