How does having a personal relationship with God fit into this understanding?

There is only one consciousness going on here.

For instance, when you dream at night, are you divided from your dream character? Could you develop a personal relationship with your dream character? No. There are no personal relationships in your dream because there are no independently existing characters with which to have a relationship.

If the idea of a single consciousness is bothersome, you may prefer to think that you do have a personal relationship with your dream character or that you do have direct access to your dream environment. Don’t let this be an obstacle to understanding.

I’m uncomfortable reducing God to the level of consciousness and saying that God is impersonal.

Nothing can be known outside of consciousness, therefore consciousness is the ultimate experiential reality. So from a nondual perspective, God is consciousness, the ultimate, unified reality which contains all apparent dualities.

God is not personal because God is not limited. It may be helpful to think of infinite being or consciousness as unlimited and impartial rather than impersonal. Impersonal connotes separation and distance, with no personal feelings, whereas consciousness is the most intimate experience of all.

Does consciousness ever change or evolve?

Change requires time. To evolve, consciousness would need to go from one state to another state, in time. But consciousness is not a state. Consciousness is that which knows mental states.

Time, like space, is a product of mental activity, and the perception of time can vary greatly depending on our mental state, focus, and emotional entanglement with experience. But if there is no mind, there is no time.

In deep sleep when the activity of the mind relaxes and there is only consciousness, there is no sense of time or space. Why? Because time and space require the activity of a mind.

Can consciousness learn from its mistakes?

In life when consciousness chooses ignorance, an indulgence of the body-mind can lead to suffering. On the relative level, consciousness may appear to learn from its mistake and therefore move closer to rediscovering itself; or consciousness may sink deeper into ignorance and move further away from its true nature. Such is the push-pull dynamic of life.

From the limited perspective of the mind, consciousness or reality is unfolding and ever-changing; but from the point of view of consciousness, there is only the unchanging fullness of infinite potential.

What is the evidence that consciousness is not limited?

One may believe that consciousness is limited to the body-mind, that when the body-mind dies, consciousness ends. But the idea that consciousness ends after the death of the body is a hard sell for people who have experienced NDEs. To believe in the limited consciousness model is to maintain that any phenomena experienced after the cessation of brain signals is merely residual. But what is it that experiences this phenomena? It can only be consciousness, and there is no evidence that consciousness is limited to the brain.

Alternatively, one may maintain that personal consciousness is not limited to the body-mind, and when the body-mind dies, personal consciousness lives on for eternity. An eternity is a long time to inhabit a personal consciousness. For example, a quintillion years, which is a one with eighteen zeros, is a mere droplet in the ocean of eternity. You could side-step the vertigo of eternity issue by saying that in the afterlife there is no time, but without time a narrative cannot unfold, and without a narrative there can be no personal experience, no personal consciousness.

According to the consciousness-only model, consciousness assumes form to experience the world through the sense perceptions of the body-mind. The end of the body-mind experience is the end of the world of form, not the end of consciousness. An obvious example of consciousness without form is deep sleep.

Isn’t deep sleep a state of unconsciousness?

In deep sleep you are conscious but not meta-conscious. Meta-consciousness is the ability to reflect on and become aware of one’s conscious experience. In the absence of the content of awareness—thoughts and perceptions—there is consciousness, but not meta-consciousness. Deep sleep is empty awareness.

You seem to be suggesting that God or consciousness may be similar to deep sleep out of which all perceptions appear?

Yes, from the mind’s limited perspective, deep sleep can be a helpful analogy for describing what is ultimately beyond concepts, beyond the mind’s ability to grasp.

Is awareness, subjectivity and consciousness the same thing? How do you define consciousness?

Yes, I use the terms awareness, subjectivity and consciousness interchangeably.

Consciousness is the potential for experience. In deep sleep, when the mind is quiet, you are conscious but there is no experience, only the potential for experience. Some may say that when you are in deep sleep you are unconscious, but an unconscious mind could not be stirred by an alarm clock, as some form of awareness would be required to hear the tones. Words can be used in different ways, but in these discussions we use the words consciousness and meta-consciousness [the ability to re-represent an experience], not unconsciousness and consciousness.

Does the ego-mind, the personal self, survive death?

It is likely that the patterns of self-identity operating as the ego-mind do survive death temporarily. Consciousness may not return to unmanifest potential completely, assuming instead a subtler form of mind. In the Thomas Gospel, saying 11, Jesus said:

“This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away; and those who are dead are not alive, and those who are living will not die.”

“This heaven” refers to “the kingdom of the father [that] is spread out over the earth, and people do not see it” (Thomas, saying 113) but which is experienced as the physical world. In other words, people may not see the physical world as it really is, which is God’s being, the expression of consciousness. “The one above it” refers to a more subtle realm of subjectivity that is experienced when the body dies, in which the localization of consciousness is still colored by lingering patterns of the body-mind.

In the second half of the quote, “those who are dead” refers to the illusory separate selves that were believed to be separate entities, apart from God’s being. Those separate selves “are not alive” because they never came into being as entities with their own distinct existence. There is only God’s infinite being. “Those who are living will not die” is the good news of Jesus: while the personal identity is a temporary object in consciousness, consciousness itself, that which knows our personal identity and that which is our true nature, is ever-lasting.

. . .

I grew up with the understanding of God as a parental figure. I am in the second half of my life but this still resonates with me. I find it very comforting.

If you are genuinely happy and established in peace, you are already in your true nature. There is nothing more to do other than celebrate.

. . .

What are the stages of understanding according to the nondual teaching?

The first step is the recognition: I am that which is aware.

The second step is the recognition: only awareness is aware.

The third step is the recognition: there is no distinction between awareness and its objects. Everything is an appearance within awareness, known by awareness, made out of awareness.

How do I live my life in service of awareness?

By paying attention. If you are a writer and an insight appears spontaneously out of blue—you may be relaxing in a hot shower—you write the idea down so that you can explore and refine it later. You do your best to give it a voice. Maybe you share this idea with others. This is one example of a mind in service of awareness, a mind in service of the reality in which the thought appeared.

Where do thoughts come from?

Thoughts are the manifestation of potentialities within consciousness. Thoughts arise on behalf of a sense of separation and thoughts arise on behalf of wholeness. Thoughts of separation promote division and ignorance in the world while thoughts arising from wholeness contribute to compassion and understanding.

Is awareness neutral? Does awareness have an agenda? What does awareness know?

Awareness doesn’t need the world to know itself. Awareness is by nature self-aware. However, for awareness to experience its infinite potential, for awareness to know itself at the relative level of the world, awareness will seem to lose itself in subject-object relationship. Awareness may then embark on a search to rediscover itself knowingly as a truth seeker or unknowingly as an untruth seeker. By untruth seeker I mean a seeker of happiness under the false belief that this new object will be the one to bring true happiness, though this superficial happiness will not last. Why? Because the happiness that the seeker is searching for can only be found within, initially. Then, through spontaneous acts of grace, awareness rediscovers itself. We could say that, at the relative level, when awareness recognizes its true nature, awareness is drawn to experiences of exploring itself, resting in itself, and expressing itself. Awareness wants to share the experience of itself with other aspects of itself.

So then awareness is expressing itself to itself through these discussions. Conversely, we’ve said that criticisms, judgements, and resistance are expressions of the ego.

All expressions are expressions of awareness. The ego is an activity within awareness, not an independent entity separate from awareness that is capable of making judgements and decisions. The activity of consciousness is either veiled or revealed. We could say that awareness expresses itself by veiling itself and revealing itself in the world.

These discussions can be considered clues to where awareness is hiding, which is right under the nose, right in plain sight. A different aspect of awareness taking part in these discussions may or may not choose to investigate these clues further at this time.

We may think that we are our thoughts, but we are the reality in which thoughts appear. Awareness may be ready or not to reveal itself within each body-mind. The revelation occurs through the divine appointment of grace. When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears.

That would mean that there is no real freedom for the thought complex called the ego, which does seem transient in nature and seemingly bound by its cognitive functions, but that would also mean that there is an inherent freedom at play here with regard to awareness, our fundamental nature. The nature of awareness that awareness is looking for, or not, is intelligence, sensitivity and love.

Yes. The ego as an apparently separate entity does not have its own autonomy. Only awareness is free to choose, and when true understanding is revealed, it takes the form of intelligence, sensitivity and love.

How does one distinguish between thoughts arising from the ego and thoughts arising from our freedom?

The impersonality of the thought is the determining factor. The more impersonal the thought, the more it comes from freedom.

Personal thoughts arise from a sense of being a separate person. Thoughts arising from wholeness are impersonal because, from the point of view of awareness, there is no separate, independently existing person with which to be personal. Awareness sees the whole of reality, the totality of existence, and impersonal thoughts serve this reality through expressions of beauty, love and truth, all in service of life. Life is about something much greater than protecting and reinforcing a temporary, artificial persona.

As shared beings we must stick to what is true.

I am coming to this understanding late in life. If I had discovered the nondual understanding earlier, I would have had more time to go deeper, to become more established in my being.

We should be careful about saying that “I” came to this understanding late, that “I” wish there had been a different experience in my life. We need to know which “I” we are referring to. Remember that there is only awareness veiling itself and unveiling itself to itself. It may be beneficial to think of everything, from the mind’s limited perspective, as happening exactly as it must, exactly when it must, and therefore from the finite mind’s perspective, to be disappointed or upset about anything is to express ignorance in the face of reality.

Every experience is an opportunity for awareness to draw closer to itself, even in the marketplace. With this understanding we experience less turbulence from the activities of seeking and resisting, and we experience greater peace and happiness in the presence of what is.

When I think about my life prior to this understanding, my memories are colored by a certain sadness due to the lack of meaning in my life. How can I resolve this?

Whether living in ignorance or in wisdom, life serves its own purpose. Life is like a play, and you, the separate character from whose point of view this question arises, are part of that process; you are part of the flow.

Regardless of your current level of understanding, you are a manifestation of consciousness doing exactly what consciousness does, perceiving the world through the necessary limitations of a finite mind in order to experience the ordinary and exotic manifestations of life, a life teeming with tangible details, symphonies of sound, scents, tastes, and vivid colors.

Jesus says in the Thomas Gospel, 113, “the Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth but people do not see it,” however when we see our life as a miracle of manifestation, it becomes so. With this understanding we find our home in the kingdom of God.

. . .

I am still having difficulty understanding how there can be no separate self here. That is not my experience.

There is the experience of a separate self, but there is no self here with its own separate existence.

—separate from what?

Separate from the totality of experience. Separate from the whole of reality. Separate from the flow of consciousness. Separate from being. Separate from God.

In life, the personal self is what you know by direct, intimate experience. No other self seems to have access to your private inner life. You seem to stand alone. But that which knows your experience is not the personal self. The personal self is only the activity of the body-mind—thoughts, memories, feelings, sensations, perceptions. That which knows the personal self is consciousness, God, the ever-present universal subjectivity having a temporary, limited experience through your body-mind.

What is there for me to do, then?

You are consciousness perceiving the world through the faculties of a finite mind, and you express yourself spontaneously. Therefore do what you feel impelled or led to do in the service of wholeness. Make your contribution to beauty, love and truth in the world. Enjoy and be grateful.

See conflict as an opportunity to draw closer to truth, closer to your true nature, closer to divine presence. Know that resistance in the body in any given situation is a marker for ignorance in the body. Begin there.

Understand that thoughts, feelings and sensations in the body do not arise in a separate self, but rather in something that is limitless.

What is a concrete example of beauty, love and truth in the world?

Forgiveness.

What does it mean to be saved?

To cease denying God’s omnipresence and drop the mistaken belief that you are a separate consciousness, a limited body-mind.

How do I honor God?

We honor the reality of God through expressions of beauty, love and truth, and by celebrating the sacred nature of reality in all that we do.

. . .

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