How did the resolution of pain born of separation come about?  Where was the unity I felt initially, as a child?  Meditation provided a powerful pathway back, back to the true nature of the undivided, the oneness and the wonder.  Through the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha, came a way to deeply understand the nature of suffering (dukkha), it's cause and the way through. 
            Sitting with the nature of my own mind, watching fear, hatred, violence, greed, attraction, and aversion arise and pass away, I came to see that I am no different from the world.  All that is within the world is within me.
            Love and compassion are there too, within my nature.  Touching the Divine Abidings, sitting in equanimity, loving joyfully with compassion brought healing to the split.  I practiced compassion for the world and for the part of myself who hated the world, who felt such avid aversion.
            Cultivating particular states of mind within meditation led to the direct experience of the dissolution of duality. It requires a stability of heart and attention, bedrock of equanimity.
            How to describe it?  It feels like a place. I know how to go there; I have a map; I know the pathway. I have repeated the pathway for years and years in my meditation practice.  I know how to travel the road that takes me to its depths.  Anyone can go who takes the steps, who repeats them, over and over again.
            I journey there by breathing, by clearing out the debris in my mind, in my heart, by concentrating, becoming one pointed in my attention.  Calm arises.  Sustain it. Next arises a state of equanimity, which needs to be sustained for a good long while. Following this, there is a feeling of dropping down, going deep, while staying awake and aware.  Infinite space. Next expanding the awareness out from the center, letting it move out in all directions.   Touching.  Touching, knowing, sitting in this place of all-pervasive boundless energy, space, consciousness.  Timeless.  Formless. 
            This is a place to be, a place to return to, a place to bring along, a place to call up, a place from which to gain insight.
            Knowing and sustaining the experience of duality dissolving comes through accumulation of effort, concentration, and awareness. Deep insight remains, while states of concentration are impermanent. 
            Of course I do not sustain the awareness of which I speak at all times. 
I flail around in duality daily getting caught up in time and space, watching judgments, anger, frustration and more arise…and pass away.  No way am I in the heart of nonduality when these states arise, yet a drop of mindfulness applied to these mental formations or a touch of metta, loving-kindness, goes a long way to restore balance.

Guidance which led to an AHA!

            Having a teacher is helpful.  In an interview with Ruth Denison, my first and forever teacher, during a retreat, I received a great gift, which brought much healing to the life dilemma of which I speak.  I came to her with a question about the conditioned and the unconditioned.  I was doing quite a bit of "sweeping" practice, experiencing the body as nonsolid, insubstantial.  I was also investigating the relationship between the conditioned and the unconditioned.  It gave me a way of exploring the experiences of duality so deeply embedded within me, within this culture and within the nature of form and formlessness. 
            I told Ruth, "I love the wonderful place I go in meditation, the peaceful states of mind.  It is so healing. I love being in meditation for days on end. 
            But how do I reconcile it once I open my eyes?  How do I make the transition?  I tend to step out of that reality when I step into the world of time and appointments, habits and desires, into
the world of personalities?  There must be a way to bridge the two, bring the depth of these experiences into my daily life." 
            Ruth said to me, "Allow your experience of the unconditioned to inform you.  Let your action stem from that place.  Let it be the backdrop of your experience."  Aha.  Something clicked inside me upon hearing her words. 
            Let the conditions with which I am dealing, people, and situations, be in the foreground of my experience. In the background of my attention maintain a consistent awareness of the boundless, timeless unconditionally loving reality and let that awareness infuse the situation, serve to inform my every action and interaction. 
            Thank you Ruth, I am ever grateful.

            I have a shirt that drives the message home in a most simple way.
                        To do is to be. Socrates. 
                        To be is to do.  Plato
                        Do Be Do Be Do Sinatra

            Struggling with the conflict of innocence and sensitivity versus the harshness of the world, inner and outer, has been a core issue for many years.  I experienced such dukkha in the state of separation.  Now there is a deep well of unity from which to drink.  The struggle is resolved, thanks to my teachers, to the Dharma, and hours on the cushion.  I realize too, it is sensitivity that allows me to perceive unity.
            Duality dissolving is revolutionary within the sphere of conditioned existence. In the embrace of the unconditioned it simply is.


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