“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
~Oscar Wilde

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Our desire for embodied conscious living asks us to make a deep dive into our present moment experience.

And this includes all the little moments of daily life, the ones we take for granted, the ones we walk through under the veil of same, old same old.

Some ways of reacting are so familiar that we don’t even think to stop and question them.

Awakening into the reality of things is all-encompassing, including everything. No stone is left unturned as we notice all the times we turn away from openness and into habit and robotic living.

Noticing these moments is rich with possibility…

When we live in our conditioned patterns, we’re steeped in fear and separation…not love. There’s a sense of an inside and outside—a person in here who lacks comfort, attention, or safety, and a world out there that we strive to control to fulfill our needs.

We’re like hungry ghosts, terrified of our inner emptiness while focusing desperately outside ourselves:

• Seeking approval and recognition;
• Scanning for danger so we can protect ourselves;
• Trying to measure up to meet others’ expectations.

We’re ill-at-ease and feeling divided…from ourselves and from life.

While searching out in the world for the peace we long for, we’ve neglected to include an essential part of the unified whole…our own inner experience.

That’s why living from the inside out feels so right. We shift our attention back to being aware of ourselves and perceive the world from here. We open to:

• How we react in our nervous systems;
• How our conditioned patterns color our view;
• Letting ourselves feel how our hearts are touched by the people and situations around us;
• Melting into the peace that’s possible when we stop the tendency to move outside ourselves.

We may not realize it until we begin to notice our own experience, but we are sensitive beings. We react to what goes on around us, and these reactions are full of insights.

You’ll discover you judged someone because you were scared. You find the tender places within that need your loving care…not your avoidance. You feel the benefits of slowing things down so you feel less stressed…and more present in your life.

If you’re not aware of your inner experience, it’s a guarantee that your conditioned patterns will be in charge of your reality. And your life, the real one here right now, will pass you by.

Consider living from the inside out. Touch everything you notice with your loving attention. The lines between inside and outside begin to blur as you open to the oneness of all.

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“We cannot solve problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
~Albert Einstein

If you’re part of the human race, then your mind probably compares. It’s the nature of thoughts to divide the world into this and that, good and bad, better and worse.

The comparing mind tells you you’re not good enough and that others matter more than you. Comparing leaves us irritable about the weather, wishing for a better childhood, and striving for perfection.

Take a moment to feel into your comparing mind. How does it tell you that now is not good enough? How does it convince you of “if only”…if only your reality were different, then you would be successful, approved of, or just plain happy.

I have studied this comparing function in myself and many others, and here’s what I’ve concluded—comparing never makes us feel good.

Usually, we come up lacking. And even if we convince ourselves we’re special or better than others, we’re still caught in a story that makes us feel disconnected.

Check out how your mind functions for the next few days. My guess is that every time you feel badly in some way, you’ll find that comparing has taken hold.

In my experience, the comparing mind is harsh and makes us feel tense…and sad. Who wants to live feeling like others have the key to happiness while we’re left lacking?

So how do we find our way out of comparing and back to peace, love, and harmony?

It’s important to know that you won’t find the solution by staying entangled in your thoughts. This is the “if only” strategy—if only I were thinner or more successful, then I would feel better and stop comparing.

The solution is not in hoping to achieve something that you feel you don’t have now, as this will keep you striving forever. So, as Einstein says in the quote above, another approach is needed, which is to turn away from the whole comparing function of the mind so these thoughts don’t create your reality.

Comparing thoughts are veiling your true nature as peaceful, whole, and perfectly okay. When you don’t put your attention onto these thoughts, what happens? You realize you’re here, breathing in this moment, alive to your senses, not thinking about yourself and what you think you’re lacking.

Yes, the thoughts will probably return…and that is another golden opportunity to ignore what they tell you and open again and again to the reality that’s actually here…not the false one in your mind.

Don’t think yourself into being. Instead, stay still. Don’t move your attention into stressful thoughts. Look closer than the comparing mind to the living, expansive vibration of this now moment.

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“The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinion for or against. The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind.”
~Zen Scholar Sengstan, from the Hsin Hsin Ming poem

The word “non-dual” means not two. It is used to describe the true nature of reality which is undivided, unified, and inherently whole.

Yes, we look around and see separate forms. There is this and that. I am here and you are over there. We perceive an amazing diversity of people and objects.

But when the layers of thought that divide and separate are seen through, the true direct experience of reality is just pure, formless, timeless aliveness…completely at peace with itself.

Yet, somehow we all know what it’s like to hold the idea of “other.” This means that we believe something is separate from ourselves. The other could be an object, a person, a category of people, or even our own thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

What we make into the other feels different, foreign or strange. We conclude that it’s “not me,” therefore it’s something else, something other than me. We may even add in a judgment about how what we’re calling other is wrong, bad, or less than.

And this is the source of a whole lot of trouble.

So here’s an essential question: if the true nature of reality is undivided, how does division happen?

How do we end up on different sides of an argument? How do we come to define ourselves or others as less than or better than? How do we divide ourselves from our own experience?

And most importantly, how do we convince ourselves that we—and others—are separate from the divine nature of all of life?

The roots of separation begin to take hold when we identify ourselves as the one who lives in the physical body.

Our true nature is boundless and free, but if we think of ourselves as limited to the body, then we’ve immediately created a sense of other.

Simply said, it’s our thoughts that create division. The human mind is designed to think…that’s what it does..and what an amazing tool it is.

But when we believe the content of our thoughts without questioning them, we leave the oneness and intimacy with all things and enter the world of judgment, comparison, and right and wrong.

Here’s how it works. If you believe you’re right, then the other must be wrong. If you believe yourself to be inadequate, then others must be better than you. If you like something, then you don’t like something else.

These functions of the mind help us to organize our experience. If we categorize people and things, then we know where we stand. But can you feel into the pain that arises from division?

Take away the mind’s distinctions, and what’s revealed is the bare experience of reality. Right here and right now, things are as they are. And feeling into it even deeper, the idea of separate things begins to melt away.

What is? Aliveness…here…pure being…everywhere…with no division.

And how would you create division again? Start thinking.

The mind can’t conceive of the true nature of reality. The infinite, all-inclusive spaciousness—nondual reality—can only be known by direct experience. It’s beyond language, palpable, real, so alive.

The mind tries to capture this knowing…by describing it, remembering it, or imagining it. And, ironically, when we believe these thoughts, we feel separate from it. We take what is, the endless peace of the present moment, and go into our minds to make it wrong, lacking, or not okay.

These are signs of a mind in charge. Turn away from these thoughts, and what do you discover? There’s no problem to be found.

Reflect for a moment on your experience of “other.” Be meticulous in your exploration to see what thoughts you believe that may not be true. How does separation feel?

Then try this experiment. Don’t believe what these thoughts are telling you, ground yourself in presence, and come back to experience the world deeply knowing the undivided nature of reality. How does that affect your view of yourself? How does that change your view of others?

Maybe, like me, your heart is touched endlessly…

Note: If you’d like to listen to a reading of the full Hsin Hsin Ming poem (highly recommended!), please click here. This is a lovely rendition read by Ram Dass. 

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