How Much Do You Know About Non-Duality?

Understanding Non-Duality: Benefits, Risks, and Approaches

• Non-duality refers to the idea that the boundary between self and other is not solid and can be relaxed, leading to experiences of feeling like the self/other boundary has thinned or dissolved.
• Non-dual practice aims to liberate practitioners from the feeling of a separate self, with different traditions emphasizing different dualities to transcend.
• Non-dual practice can be hugely rewarding, bringing a sense of letting go and empathy, but should be approached with caution as any meditation can be mentally destabilizing.
• There are different non-dual contemplative traditions that share a point of view, with different approaches to non-dual meditation such as Tibetan "pointing out" instructions, Zen's peer-to-peer meditation, self-inquiry practice, and more.
• Non-dual experience is associated with increased activity in normally anti-correlated regions of the brain, and practitioners report long-term benefits such as a less solid sense of self and a heightened sense of interconnectedness.
• The natural state of human beings may be fluid interconnectedness without abstraction, but living in a layer of abstraction and simulation may impose a felt boundary between you and experience.
• Practitioners report feeling more sensitive to the vibes of others in a state of expanded awareness, and maintaining a constant state of floaty expanded awareness may not be practical or desirable.
• Non-duality is best appreciated as an experiential or emotional truth, rather than an intellectual interest, and reading piles of text about non-duality is not necessarily the best way to understand it.
• Recommended readings on non-duality include Michael Taft's Non-Duality Page, I Am That, Roaring Silence, A Cartoon Epistemology, An Experience of Enlightenment, and The Book by Alan Watts.
• Difficulties in teaching non-dual meditation include individual variation and mental obstacles, with only 10% of those who took a Sam Harris course on non-dual meditation learning it successfully.
• Non-duality as a philosophy takes many forms and is a radical philosophical move that bubbles up in moments when existing dualisms dominate, with non-dualistic traditions in Buddhism aiming to escape reincarnation and get to nirvana.
• To learn non-dual practice, experiment with different non-dual teachers and their writings, and remember any past non-dual experiences that may help bring you back to a similar mental state. While there is no hard scientific evidence to support the benefits of non-dual practice, anecdotal reports suggest it can be synergistic with therapy and lead to emotional/spiritual breakthroughs.

Understanding Non-Duality: Benefits, Risks, and Approaches

• Non-duality refers to the idea that the boundary between self and other is not solid and can be relaxed, leading to experiences of feeling like the self/other boundary has thinned or dissolved.
• Non-dual practice aims to liberate practitioners from the feeling of a separate self, with different traditions emphasizing different dualities to transcend.
• Non-dual practice can be hugely rewarding, bringing a sense of letting go and empathy, but should be approached with caution as any meditation can be mentally destabilizing.
• There are different non-dual contemplative traditions that share a point of view, with different approaches to non-dual meditation such as Tibetan "pointing out" instructions, Zen's peer-to-peer meditation, self-inquiry practice, and more.
• Non-dual experience is associated with increased activity in normally anti-correlated regions of the brain, and practitioners report long-term benefits such as a less solid sense of self and a heightened sense of interconnectedness.
• The natural state of human beings may be fluid interconnectedness without abstraction, but living in a layer of abstraction and simulation may impose a felt boundary between you and experience.
• Practitioners report feeling more sensitive to the vibes of others in a state of expanded awareness, and maintaining a constant state of floaty expanded awareness may not be practical or desirable.
• Non-duality is best appreciated as an experiential or emotional truth, rather than an intellectual interest, and reading piles of text about non-duality is not necessarily the best way to understand it.
• Recommended readings on non-duality include Michael Taft's Non-Duality Page, I Am That, Roaring Silence, A Cartoon Epistemology, An Experience of Enlightenment, and The Book by Alan Watts.
• Difficulties in teaching non-dual meditation include individual variation and mental obstacles, with only 10% of those who took a Sam Harris course on non-dual meditation learning it successfully.
• Non-duality as a philosophy takes many forms and is a radical philosophical move that bubbles up in moments when existing dualisms dominate, with non-dualistic traditions in Buddhism aiming to escape reincarnation and get to nirvana.
• To learn non-dual practice, experiment with different non-dual teachers and their writings, and remember any past non-dual experiences that may help bring you back to a similar mental state. While there is no hard scientific evidence to support the benefits of non-dual practice, anecdotal reports suggest it can be synergistic with therapy and lead to emotional/spiritual breakthroughs.