Non-duality is a secular term for the other words which have been bogged down by so much overuse – god, love, infinity, oneness.
So if non-duality just means one, why not just say oneness? Because then it is referred to, it can be made into an idea or an object, it has been reduced. Non-duality has some mystery to it, some indefinite quality that is useful in confusing the mind, which is always looking for certainty. The mind is this or that, one or the other. It cannot confront a paradox. It has been conditioned to identify and hold on to an outcome, an object, an idea, etc.
Non-duality contains the opposites, it contains the paradox. Not-two. So one? No answer is given. Meditation brings forth an unanswerable question. We all know this question, we know the uncertainty and the danger of life no matter how far we’ve removed ourselves from it, it hangs there still. The question burns us, it drives us into all kinds of absurdity just to try and avoid the uncomfortable facts of life.
But no answer is needed. Everything is provided and available at this moment. But our incessant mental activity has led us to pass right over the obvious. Its so close that we have somehow missed it. The conditioning and divisiveness of the mind has to be allowed to end. We cannot accept the mystery at first, because thought is not capable of doing so. We are trying to overcome it the way we overcome any other problem.
But slowly, patiently, we can let the fire burn itself out, turning into the light. What remains is what we always are, always will be, with the filter of the separate self removed.
Jeff Nirenberg 