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[post_content] => When my wife says I’m the only person she knows who could happily curl up in bed with a 20-pound medical text, I like to point out that I also enjoy books on philosophy. It’s been at least a decade since I’ve read a work of fiction (except to my kids), but I find nonfiction so fascinating, and it constantly challenges my worldview. I know most people find these subjects dry and heady, so I try to tackle them in our newsletters with the aim of making them more accessible and digestible.
Today I’d like to share some thoughts on one of these dry topics – the philosophy of nondualism. Wait, don’t leave! I promise I’ll make it interesting – controversial even. Just bear with me. It might even change the way you see the world.
In a nutshell, nondualism is the notion that everything is essentially one – that all the apparent differences and separation we perceive in the world are an illusion.
Nondual philosophy has many different forms; I can’t deliver a comprehensive analysis in an article this short. Instead, I’ll speak to the perspective of a single Eastern source – Tantra Illuminated by Christopher Wallis – and a single Western source – A Course in Miracles (ACIM) by Helen Schucman.
The first is a study of Tantra, a group of spiritual traditions that arose mainly between 300 and 1300 A.D. They had a significant impact on the development of yoga, Hinduism, and Buddhism. And I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but “tantric sex” is the tiniest fraction of what Tantra comprises.
The second, which might be understood as nondual Christianity, was written by an American in the 1960s and 70s and is presented as a “channeled” work dictated by Jesus.
Though seemingly very different, these two traditions actually have a lot in common. And what they share is a perspective that would alleviate a lot of suffering if it were more widely known.
Both schools of thought focus on discovering the unity within all the apparent differences in the world. They say that when we see a world where some things are godly and others aren’t, where good and evil, wealth and poverty, sickness and health, virtue and sin, life and death, and a host of other “dualities” yank us around and define our experience of life, we’re wrapped up in a dream that obscures the real truth.
And that truth, they assert, is that all things are an expression of one Consciousness (God, Spirit, Universe, Divine Light, Highest Self, or whatever other word you care to use), which is synonymous with Love. These systems hold that everyone and all things are connected, equal expressions of God, and there is nothing to fear and no reason to suffer.
ACIM often pushes non-Christians’ buttons by using terms like Jesus, Christ, and Holy Spirit. For me, raised Jewish, the terminology presented some hurdles at first, but it gets easier the more I recognize that these names – as well as those of most other traditions – are all pointing to the same thing.
ACIM also pushes Christians’ buttons because much of what it teaches flies in the face of Christian dogma. It states that God isn’t outside of us or different than us. It holds that there is no duality of heaven and hell; only heaven is real and we’re either conscious of it or lost in stories of our own making. It says there is no sin – only mistakes made out of confusion. It claims that God doesn’t forgive – because God doesn’t condemn.
Despite these potential objections, I feel it’s a worthwhile study in Western nondualism. It might be a more natural leap for someone with a background in an Abrahamic religion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam are the main three) rather than adopting a completely foreign Eastern nondual tradition. However, some find the reframing of deeply entrenched Abrahamic concepts too difficult to swallow, or the terminology too loaded, making the Eastern traditions something of a clean slate in comparison.
Central to ACIM’s narrative is the idea that you sought to break apart from God, to be independent, and in so doing, you gave your power to your ego. (This might be likened to the biblical story of eating from the Tree of Knowledge, whereupon the mind was given authority and we lost the “Eden” state of consciousness.) The ego protects this idea of independence by asserting that the world is a place of separation, where everything is disconnected, where all things are in competition, and pain, suffering, and loneliness threaten us.
The perpetuation of this dream depends on the ego’s continually empowering itself by generating conflict – with the world and yourself. Meanwhile, the belief that you cut yourself off from your Highest Self (keep substituting words you like) is a source of deep self-blame, which you also project onto the world and its inhabitants.
The primary means of resolving this dilemma, the Course teaches, is forgiveness. By forgiving yourself and everyone else, conflict dissolves, the illusion of separation fades, you see that you were never actually alone or vulnerable, and the world becomes a different place.
Nondual Tantra takes a slightly different view of the origin, but presents a similar human conundrum. In its conception of reality, there is one Divine Light (again, you can call this God, Goddess, Awareness, Spirit, Dao, etc.) that expresses itself in all possible ways – including as seven billion humans – through what is called krida, the doctrine of divine play. The word “play” is used because the Source manifests an infinitely diverse world for its own sake – for the love of it – rather than for some end result.
In order to have an immersive experience as each of these facets of the world, the Divine imbues them with only a fraction of its total awareness. That is, so that you can really experience being you – believing you’re on your own, thinking you’re limited by this body, feeling the full spectrum of human emotion, triumphing over obstacles – you can’t know all along that you’re actually God acting like a human.
You have to forget, so the play feels that much more real – and so that you can later remember. It’s the ultimate game: to dive into a world where you’re blind to the connections and safety nets, where there’s so much potential to feel alone, afraid, and attacked, and yet, to find the light. To remember that it’s all You. To wake up to what you really are, with revelation, relief, and awe.
I have no agenda of convincing you to subscribe to either of these schools of thought. But knowing that our readers are open-minded people who are looking for deeper peace and an experience of connection, I thought you might find it compelling that two traditions from such different times and places offer such a similar message. (And these are just a couple examples of many.)
Both systems declare that you’re so much more connected to the world and your Highest Self than you realize, that the death of your body isn’t the end of life, and that the fundamental matrix of the universe is love. Perhaps there’s room in your worldview for a little nondualism. What do you think?
With love,
Dr. Peter Borten
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If we hear a saying enough – especially at an impressionable time and/or spoken by someone we respect – we may accept it without applying critical thinking to determine if it’s actually true. For me, one such saying was, “People don’t change.”
As a young adult I heard it said by a guy I looked up to, and I remember thinking he must be wise. He stated it with triumph and bitterness – as a keen insight that would allow him to never be hurt again.
In writing this article, I googled “people don’t change” and “people can’t change” and got about 4 million hits for each phrase. Clearly this is a prevalent idea. But is it true?
When psychologists Dan Gilbert, Jordi Quoidbach, and Timothy Wilson set out to investigate perceptions of personal change, they discovered something surprising: most people believe that they have gotten all of their changing over with. Interviews with 19,000 participants revealed that young people, middle aged people, and old people all saw themselves as having changed a lot in the past, but believed they had more or less “arrived” at who they would be from now on. The scientists called this the “end of history illusion.” They used the word “illusion” because . . . we’re almost always wrong.
Perhaps this widespread view of ourselves as unlikely to change spills over onto what we expect of others – i.e., that they won’t change either. But we might ask, when someone believes that people don’t change, did it originate as a rational assessment of the likelihood of change? Or did it begin as a way of saving face, as in, “It may look like I got blindsided, but I actually saw this coming – because people don’t change.” Or as ammo for self-punishment, as in, “I’m a fool. I should have seen this coming – because people don’t change.” Or as the basis for blaming others for our pain, as in, “I was relying on you to become different so that I could be happy, but I’m not happy – because people don’t change.”
I happen to be in the business of tracking change. A few folks come to me for health maintenance, but I like to empower people to do most of their maintenance themselves, so the majority of my patient visits are from humans wanting the same thing: change. They want their body to change or their mind to change or their life circumstances to change. Because my task is to help facilitate this change, a significant part of my job is to be a change tracker. As a change tracker, I can assure you, people change all the time, often dramatically. If they didn’t, I’d feel like a charlatan.
But of course, we all have recurring patterns. In Vedic philosophy, these are considered to be expressions of our samskaras – the imprints of past experiences. Samskara literally means “impression” – like a footprint in the sand or a groove cut in the earth – and we tend to fall into them over and over, just as water naturally follows ruts in the land. Likewise, as experiences “flow” through our consciousness, they are manipulated by these contours of our psyche. Our capacity for discernment, called the buddhi, is said to be impaired by the presence of samskaras because they cause us to see things differently than they really are.
Scientists in the field of psychoneuroimmunology discovered that there’s a biological basis for this behavior. The repetition of the same thoughts, feelings, or behaviors strengthens a particular neurological pathway. These neurons “wire together” making a more efficient channel for nerve impulses to flow through, much like a groove in the sand. This increases the likelihood of our continuing to repeat the thought / feeling / behavior and thus to further strengthen the pathway and increase the potential to revisit it.
What can we do about this? There are many useful strategies, most of which amount to the cultivation of clear vision and perspective. Traditionally, this is one of the central purposes of yoga – meditation, specifically – which is said to be like polishing the dirty mirror of the buddhi so that it provides accurate reflections.
Meditation is like walking to the top of a mountain, where we can see the big picture (something impossible to do when we’re stuck in a rut in the ground). Here we can determine our most efficient course of action. Here we see the grooves of samskaras and “fill them in” through forgiveness, love, and acceptance. Here we can see the ways we have changed, and, indeed, see that big change is inevitable for ourselves and everyone else.
Take a few minutes today for a mental fast. Close your eyes and allow yourself to rise above the chattering and judgements, the push and pull of emotions, and perceive what kind of change would bring you into closer alignment with your inner being. Then set an intention to allow this change to happen. Perhaps even ask your highest self to reconfigure you to experience peace more readily. A change is gonna come.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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"The place of wood is to grow upward towards the fire element. It's always trying to reach the sun."
How will you grow and move past the obstacles in your way? Leave a comment below and let us know.
[post_title] => Talking Wellness with Dr. Peter Borten: The Wood Element (video)
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[post_content] => When my wife says I’m the only person she knows who could happily curl up in bed with a 20-pound medical text, I like to point out that I also enjoy books on philosophy. It’s been at least a decade since I’ve read a work of fiction (except to my kids), but I find nonfiction so fascinating, and it constantly challenges my worldview. I know most people find these subjects dry and heady, so I try to tackle them in our newsletters with the aim of making them more accessible and digestible.
Today I’d like to share some thoughts on one of these dry topics – the philosophy of nondualism. Wait, don’t leave! I promise I’ll make it interesting – controversial even. Just bear with me. It might even change the way you see the world.
In a nutshell, nondualism is the notion that everything is essentially one – that all the apparent differences and separation we perceive in the world are an illusion.
Nondual philosophy has many different forms; I can’t deliver a comprehensive analysis in an article this short. Instead, I’ll speak to the perspective of a single Eastern source – Tantra Illuminated by Christopher Wallis – and a single Western source – A Course in Miracles (ACIM) by Helen Schucman.
The first is a study of Tantra, a group of spiritual traditions that arose mainly between 300 and 1300 A.D. They had a significant impact on the development of yoga, Hinduism, and Buddhism. And I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but “tantric sex” is the tiniest fraction of what Tantra comprises.
The second, which might be understood as nondual Christianity, was written by an American in the 1960s and 70s and is presented as a “channeled” work dictated by Jesus.
Though seemingly very different, these two traditions actually have a lot in common. And what they share is a perspective that would alleviate a lot of suffering if it were more widely known.
Both schools of thought focus on discovering the unity within all the apparent differences in the world. They say that when we see a world where some things are godly and others aren’t, where good and evil, wealth and poverty, sickness and health, virtue and sin, life and death, and a host of other “dualities” yank us around and define our experience of life, we’re wrapped up in a dream that obscures the real truth.
And that truth, they assert, is that all things are an expression of one Consciousness (God, Spirit, Universe, Divine Light, Highest Self, or whatever other word you care to use), which is synonymous with Love. These systems hold that everyone and all things are connected, equal expressions of God, and there is nothing to fear and no reason to suffer.
ACIM often pushes non-Christians’ buttons by using terms like Jesus, Christ, and Holy Spirit. For me, raised Jewish, the terminology presented some hurdles at first, but it gets easier the more I recognize that these names – as well as those of most other traditions – are all pointing to the same thing.
ACIM also pushes Christians’ buttons because much of what it teaches flies in the face of Christian dogma. It states that God isn’t outside of us or different than us. It holds that there is no duality of heaven and hell; only heaven is real and we’re either conscious of it or lost in stories of our own making. It says there is no sin – only mistakes made out of confusion. It claims that God doesn’t forgive – because God doesn’t condemn.
Despite these potential objections, I feel it’s a worthwhile study in Western nondualism. It might be a more natural leap for someone with a background in an Abrahamic religion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam are the main three) rather than adopting a completely foreign Eastern nondual tradition. However, some find the reframing of deeply entrenched Abrahamic concepts too difficult to swallow, or the terminology too loaded, making the Eastern traditions something of a clean slate in comparison.
Central to ACIM’s narrative is the idea that you sought to break apart from God, to be independent, and in so doing, you gave your power to your ego. (This might be likened to the biblical story of eating from the Tree of Knowledge, whereupon the mind was given authority and we lost the “Eden” state of consciousness.) The ego protects this idea of independence by asserting that the world is a place of separation, where everything is disconnected, where all things are in competition, and pain, suffering, and loneliness threaten us.
The perpetuation of this dream depends on the ego’s continually empowering itself by generating conflict – with the world and yourself. Meanwhile, the belief that you cut yourself off from your Highest Self (keep substituting words you like) is a source of deep self-blame, which you also project onto the world and its inhabitants.
The primary means of resolving this dilemma, the Course teaches, is forgiveness. By forgiving yourself and everyone else, conflict dissolves, the illusion of separation fades, you see that you were never actually alone or vulnerable, and the world becomes a different place.
Nondual Tantra takes a slightly different view of the origin, but presents a similar human conundrum. In its conception of reality, there is one Divine Light (again, you can call this God, Goddess, Awareness, Spirit, Dao, etc.) that expresses itself in all possible ways – including as seven billion humans – through what is called krida, the doctrine of divine play. The word “play” is used because the Source manifests an infinitely diverse world for its own sake – for the love of it – rather than for some end result.
In order to have an immersive experience as each of these facets of the world, the Divine imbues them with only a fraction of its total awareness. That is, so that you can really experience being you – believing you’re on your own, thinking you’re limited by this body, feeling the full spectrum of human emotion, triumphing over obstacles – you can’t know all along that you’re actually God acting like a human.
You have to forget, so the play feels that much more real – and so that you can later remember. It’s the ultimate game: to dive into a world where you’re blind to the connections and safety nets, where there’s so much potential to feel alone, afraid, and attacked, and yet, to find the light. To remember that it’s all You. To wake up to what you really are, with revelation, relief, and awe.
I have no agenda of convincing you to subscribe to either of these schools of thought. But knowing that our readers are open-minded people who are looking for deeper peace and an experience of connection, I thought you might find it compelling that two traditions from such different times and places offer such a similar message. (And these are just a couple examples of many.)
Both systems declare that you’re so much more connected to the world and your Highest Self than you realize, that the death of your body isn’t the end of life, and that the fundamental matrix of the universe is love. Perhaps there’s room in your worldview for a little nondualism. What do you think?
With love,
Dr. Peter Borten
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Beautiful, Thanks so much! 🙏
You’re welcome, Sarah
After reaching my 50’s and downsizing my “things” I truly get what’s important. My relationships with people. Sharing love, making memories and emotional bonds. Its not what I have done, my accomplishments or successes, its what I have given of myself that matters most ❤Thank you for this video to remind me to remember what’s important as I transition into fall.
Yes! You’re welcome.
That was a beautiful and inspiring lesson. A great way to look forward into the upcoming season. I’m very grateful . Thank you,
Elizabeth
You’re welcome. Elizabeth
Thanks for this. Always wondering how to tie up the air/metal discrepancy between world views. This is really helpful.
Of course, my friend. I am glad it was helpful.
I needed this today. Thank you!
You’re welcome, Molly
You’re welcome, Molly