Non-Dualistic Thinking, Non-dual Consciousness
Paradox is the ability to live with contradictions, realizing they can often be both/and instead of either/or. Richard Rohr
Gregg’s Reflection
In the early 2000’s I noticed something unusual happening. I had left the business world a few years before, and was consulting and working on projects in the church. What I noticed was that every time I was in a discussion where the group seemed to get stuck in an either/or paradigm, I kept noticing that if I looked at the situation long enough, the possibility of a both/and emerged.
I thought perhaps it’s because I’m a Libra, and am used to seeing both sides of an issue. It was not until I began to read Richard Rohr that I came upon the idea of Non-Dualistic thinking. My first tentative steps in this direction came as I made a conscious choice to change my negotiation/conflict resolution style from competition to collaboration, from win/lose to win/win.
Here’s an example. I would walk our dog every day when we were in Atlanta. One day, there was a homeless man sitting on a bench at the edge of the park. The next day he was still there, so I stopped and talked to him. His name was Travis. I asked, “What would it take to get you off this bench?” I was astounded at his answer, “$2000 and a MacBook Pro.” You see, he was an artist, and three large banners of Jesus he had created were hanging on the front of the church across the street. The problem was, he had mental health issues, and was not taking his meds, as often happens with homeless people.
The church had been letting him sleep in a portico. But, then, he started loud, expletive filled rants as the parents brought kids to their preschool. They asked him to leave, and he moved to the bench across the street.
An old curmudgeon lived across the street and would sit out on his porch reading his paper every morning. He saw me engaging with Travis, and spoke to me as I walked by. He told me “we“ were having a meeting that night about Travis at the church and asked me to come.
As I walked to the church that evening, I was praying that God might show me a way to help Travis. At the meeting, half the people had been giving Travis food and money, and half were just trying to get him out of there. The conundrum was the bench sat at the edge of the park. The naysayers were trying to get the police to say it was a park bench, which could not be occupied overnight. There was no such rule about public benches on the street.
As the two sides were at an impasse, something came to me. “I think we can all agree we want Travis off the bench. What if we set up a GoFundMe? I think each of us might pitch in $20 to get him off the bench.” It took 20 minutes for the curmudgeon to come around. We finally all agreed to this ‘both/and’ solution. We set up a GoFundMe titled “Get Travis off the Bench.”
We raised $3500 in three days. I helped Travis gather all his stuff and moved him to an extended stay hotel. From, there he moved to subsidized housing. It was a win/win solution that breached the divide and turned an either/or into a both/and.
As I described this story to my spiritual director, Mark called this the Third Force. ”Holding tension with the opposites, while choosing neither, allowed the Spirit to show a third way that honored the truth in each position while finding middle ground.”
As I began to read Rohr, and his description of non-dual thinking, I realized that was what I experienced. I had been meditating regularly for 25 years at that point, and realized my consciousness had opened to the possibilities of non-dual thinking. When I read about it, I knew from my lived experience that it was true. What I had begun experiencing, I finally found a written explanation describing.
Many times over the years, I have found the saints and mystics describing situations I have experienced. Those experiences kept me on the path, wading ever more deeply into contemplative practices and life.
Our country seems so divided, with no middle ground. We sorely need people who can see beyond the either/or’s that confront us and allow Spirit to show us a middle ground, a third way. So, come along with me and explore Non-Dualistic Thinking and Non-Dual Consciousness. God knows we need it.
Journaling Prompt
Think about times when you resisted either/or situations and found Spirit opening you up to a both/and view of the situation. What was that like? How might our country and culture change if more people could hold the tension until a bridge across the divide appeared? How might you change by always looking for the win/win?
Scripture
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me and through their message, that all of them may be one, Father; just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one.
John 17:20-23
They are joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the Mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.
Acts 1:14
May the God who gives endurance give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Romans 15:5-6
I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.
1 Corinthians 1:10
Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Ephesians 4:3-6
Then make my joy complete by being like-minded having the same love, being one in spirit and of mind.
Philippians 2:2
Ancient Writings
We will not take possession of our birthright of never-ending joy until we find ourselves fully gratified with God and all his actions and judgments, loving and nonviolent toward ourselves and toward all our fellow seekers, and able to love everything God loves. And when we do achieve this state of surrender and love, it is the goodness of God that awakens it in us.
Julian of Norwich, The Showings of Julian of Norwich
Modern Writings
Things rightly understood tend to be complementary rather than contradictory. And the capacity to appreciate the complementarity of opposites rather than a contradiction of opposites is a characteristic of adulthood.
Thomas Berry, Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul, p. 435
The Miracle of Paradox
To transfer our energy from opposition to paradox is a very large leap in evolution. To engage in opposition is to be ground to bits by the insolubility of life’s problems and events. A huge amount of energy is wasted by modern people in opposing their own situation. Opposition is something like a short circuit; it also drains our energy away like a hemorrhage. To transform opposition to paradox is to allow both sides of an issue, both pairs of opposites, to exist in equal dignity and worth.
Robert Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow, p. 85-86
The line between good and evil runs through the landscape of every human heart.
Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self, p. 180
Only unitive, non-dual consciousness can open our hearts, minds, and bodies to actually experience God. Ultimate Reality cannot be seen with any dualistic operation of the mind, where we divide the field of the moment and eliminate anything mysterious, confusing, unfamiliar, or outside our comfort zone.
Dualistic thinking is highly controlled and limited seeing. It protects the status quo and allows the ego to feel like it's in control. This way of filtering reality is the opposite of naked presence to Presence. Non-dual knowing is living in the naked now, the “sacrament of the present moment.” This consciousness will teach us how to actually experience our experiences, whether good, bad, or ugly, and how to let them transform us.
Words by themselves will invariably divide and judge the moment; pure presence lets it be what it is, as it is. Words and thoughts are invariably dualistic; but pure experience is always non-dualistic.
Richard Rohr: Essential Teachings on Love, p. 94
The Bible is filled with conflicts, paradoxes, and historical inaccuracies. It is in learning to struggle with these seeming paradoxes that we grow up. We have created people who have quick answers instead of humble searchers for God. God and truth never just fall into our laps, but are given as gifts only to those who really want and desire them.
Richard Rohr, Yes, and, p. 14
Facing the contradiction that we ourselves are, we become living icons of both/and. Once you can accept mercy, it is almost natural to hand it on to others. You become a conduit of what you yourself have received.
Richard Rohr, Naked Now, p. 126
The binary, dualistic mind cannot deal with contradictions, paradox, or mystery, all of which are at the heart of religion. The very nature of spiritual truth is that it is paradoxical.The times where we meet or reckon with our contradictions are often turning points, opportunities to enter into the deeper mystery of God or, alternatively, to evade the mystery of God.
If you hold both sides seriously, that is the space in which you can grow morally, in understanding what really matters. That is the space in which you can go deep and learn mystery, which is endless knowability. The third way is not balancing or even eliminating the opposites, but holding the opposites, as Jesus did on the cross. To live inside this space of creative tension is the very character of faith, hope, and love. “Third Force” energy is overcoming seeming opposites by uncovering a reconciling third that is bigger than both of the parts and doesn’t exclude either of them.
Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 8/27/16
Paradox is the ability to live with contradictions, realizing they can often be both/and instead of either/or. Dialectic is the process of overcoming seeming opposites by uncovering a reconciling third way, where you hold the truth in both positions without dismissing either. It’s the fruit of the contemplative mind.
Richard Rohr, The Spring Within, p. 235
Non-dual consciousness is a much more holistic knowing, where your mind, heart, soul and senses are open and receptive to the moment just as it is.
Richard Rohr, The Spring Within, p. 278
Whenever we can appreciate the goodness and value of something, while still knowing its limitations and failures, this also marks the beginning of wisdom and nondual consciousness.
Richard Rohr, Naked Now, p. 106
Nondual knowing is learning how to live in the naked now, the sacrament of the present moment. The nondual mind is open to everything that comes it’s way.
Richard Rohr
What Jung calls the “transcendent function” is the intrapsychic reconciliation that emerges after opposites have been consciously identified and the tension between them patiently held in awareness. The Artisan is the person in the human community most capable of spanning the chasms between such opposites.
Bill Plotkin, Nature and the Human Soul, p. 366
Richard Rohr uses the term non-dual to designate one’s personal capacity to bear paradox and ambiguity. Dualistic thinking is thinking marked by a rigorous either/or dichotomy and the insistence on black-and-white, exclusive solutions.
Nondual is expressed in the capacity to hold the tension of opposites, rest comfortably in ambiguity, and resist the tendency to demonize and exclude. By definition mystical experience is nondual.
The classical descriptions of mystical experience inevitably feature that brief, overpowering sense of the boundaries dissolving and finding oneself at one with everything. The boundaries dissolve, the oneness flows in, and the world is bathed, for as long as the experience lasts, with the radiance of intrinsic wholeness.
Cynthia Bourgeault, Heart of Centering Prayer, p. 44-45