Nonduality
Written by Richard C. Miller, PhD
Nonduality, as approached through Explorations in Stillness, is a living inquiry into the nature of awareness itself.
It invites us to discover what remains when the mind’s habits of naming, judging, controlling, and seeking fall silent. In pure perceiving—free of the illusion of a separate observer—we begin to sense an innate intelligence, clarity, and compassion that do not arise from thought or belief. This meditation is not about becoming something new, but about recognizing what has always been present: a dynamic stillness that is whole, unconditioned, and free.
The Explorations In Stillness approach to nonduality is a form of contemplative self-inquiry.
It entails observing, perceiving, and abiding as pure awareness that is free of the past, free of memory and conditioning, free of naming, remembering, controlling, giving direction, trying to achieve, or creating superimposed mental divisions that create an illusion of separation. In perceiving, in observing, in being and being awareness, there is clarity of seeing that is free of the mind’s habit of imposing its preferences and conditioned reactions, for otherwise, in the mind’s tendency to direct, impose, control, and fix and change there is division and conflict. Division and conflict end when the observer is absent, and there is only observing, perceiving, being awareness.
The functions of the thinker, this ego-I sense we have of being a separate “me”, along with the senses, attention, and mind are designed to create separation where, if fact, separation does not actually exist. The thinking mind projects a sense of separation from what it observes and experiences itself as a separate self, or seer. But if we inspect more deeply, we realize that the thinker, and the sense of being a separate self, is an accumulation assembled over time through thoughts, conditioned beliefs, and memories.
Awareness, Being, and perceiving are not something that “we” are doing. Neither needs a separate self. In pure perceiving, in being and being awareness, the self is absent, as are separation and seeking. Here there is the possibility of insight, for pure perceiving and abiding as being and awareness brings forth clarity, understanding, and energy. Here we realize that we have within us all the wisdom and knowledge we will ever need to meet and respond to each moment that life brings to our table.
We inquire: Is abiding as awareness, as pure perceiving, free of the movement of self as separate, free of memory and conditioning possible? Is it possible that we directly experience our Essential Nature, the Mystery that has no prior cause, yet has given birth to the entire cosmos?
To be pure perceiving, pure awareness, we must relinquish trying to fix, change, or control ourselves and our circumstances. Trying to fix, change or control the body, senses, mind, attention, and thinking created separation, division, and conflict.
The self as separate is an illusion – a deception created by the thinking mind. In perceiving we recognize how the sense of self arises, unfolds, and dissolves in awareness. Abiding as awareness has the potential of the sense of self being set free to arise, without the mind’s identification with it.
To live free of the illusory sense of being a separate self, we must not rely on outside authorities.
Need to be our own authority. We must depend only upon ourselves and our own first-hand understanding, without imitating or conforming to conditioned beliefs superimposed by our family, culture, or experiences. We must free ourselves of imagination and second-hand information. We must rely only on directly perceiving, without an intermediary of a separate self.
We inquire: Can we understand the nature of separation? Is there a way of living free of separation and conditioned reactions? In pure perceiving and being awareness, we cannot find either perceiver, controller, division, or conflict. We act, then, not from thinking and thought, but from being pure perceiving – pure awareness – where we discover here an intelligence within that possesses all the knowledge, insight, and wisdom we need, that is the embodiment of love, compassion, and kindness.
Only here can we experience true security, safety, stability, and our dynamic stillness that is independent of circumstance, yet always knows exactly how to respond.
Anxiety & Fear
We feel various forms of anxiety and fear due to survival threats, death, insecurity, not being loved, loneliness, loss, grief, climate change, uncertainty, etc. We need to understand the root source of anxiety and fear and how it comes into being. We need to understand thought, time, memory, and division and how separation is the root cause of anxiety and fear.
How do we do this? We must perceive the actuality – not the idea – that thought, which creates separation, is the root cause of anxiety and fear. Who is the observer who sees this truth? Are we a separate seer who sees as a separate self? The observer is not separate from what is seen. At the moment of fear, there is only sensation, prior to the mind labeling sensation as fear. In this moment of direct perceiving there is no separation, no fear, only sensation. Here we do not try to escape from or suppression the sensation. We don’t try to fix, change, or resolve what’s present. When we end the conflict between the “me” and the sensation that is being labeled by the mind as fear, duality and conflict cease. How does this occur? By being pure perceiving – pure awareness. Here the “me” as a separate self and conflict cease. Then we meet afresh the sensation that is labeled as fear. In pure perceiving an intelligence uncontaminated by the thinking mind is free to spontaneously arise.
The Thinking Mind’s Beliefs
When we see something that’s dangerous, we move away. If this is so, why do we not move away from the beliefs and images that the mind holds us hostage in?
Why does the mind, through thought, create, build, and maintain beliefs? Obviously, the mind, through thought, seeks security, safety, certainty, permanency through the beliefs it builds and maintains. But can we find true security, safety, and certainty in the mind’s beliefs, which are based in memory? We don’t like feeling anxiety, fear, and being out of control. Yet, despite knowing that the security our beliefs offer is false, we cling to our beliefs. Can we see the danger and how identifying with the mind’s beliefs create within our body a prison of contractions?
While the mind’s function is to register, store, assess for safety, and respond, is it possible to observe, perceive, listen, and respond without reacting, or reacting to our reactions? To do so we must give total attention to what’s unfolding without the mind going into thinking, beliefs, memory, and its stories about how things “should” be.
When we live in the belief of being a separate “me” it is impossible to not react from the beliefs we have about ourselves and others. Being a “me” entails separation. And separation is the birthing ground of conflict. No “me,” no conflict. So, can we perceive without a “me” as a perceiver?
Perceiving
In perceiving there is no perceiver, only perceiving. When there is a perceiver, there is separation – an observer and an observed – which entails division and conflict. As a separate self the mind projects separation and utilizes thinking from thinking – analysis – when responding to situations. While the thinking mind always seeks security and safety, it utilizes thinking from thinking and analysis, which keeps us in becoming, end-gaining, and comparison, which entail insecurity, anxiety, and fear.
To attain true peace, we must understand what true safety, security and certainly is.
When we live from thinking, we live from the past, which is projected into a future. But truly there is only this moment, now, where this moment contains both our past and our future, as without radical transformation now the future continues to contain what we are now, which is based on the past. If there is to be radical transformation it must be uncontaminated by past memory and beliefs. For there to be true psychological safety, security, and certainty we must be able to hear, listen, and connect with undivided attention. In pure perceiving we are outside the thinking mind and can truly listen and act from freshness and intelligence uncontaminated by the past and thinking. In this there is action without conflict that springs from love, compassion, and kindness that are independent of our being a separate self.
Awareness
Unbreakable peace, well-being and authentic spontaneous action arise when we are free of identification as a separate self. Actions then arise from the innate intelligence that springs directly for the indescribable Mystery that has given birth to the entire cosmos. Action is then dynamic and universal, not-just personal, with life living us as its expression. Here we knowingly know our underlying identity as pure perceiving – pure awareness – outside of time, space, and lack, in which there is true love, compassion, kindness and spontaneous action not based in thinking or past conditioning. Here it is impersonal, universal Intelligence which acts.
Attention
Attention is a movement of the mind that is constantly monitoring and assessing for safety and security. When there is the movement of attention from a center – “me” – or separate self the mind divides what is indivisible into separate objects into perceiver and perceived, time, space, and internal and external. The movement of attention, however, is always “in” perceiving, in which there is no separation, even as attention continues its movement of monitoring and assessing.
We inquire: Can we understand through pure perceiving the various ways attention moves?
In pure perceiving, can there be recognition as to how the mind, through its movement of attention, divides what is indivisible into:
Internal and External: where the mind conceptualizes “thought objects,” as, for instance, an imaginary juicy red apple. Or, as inside versus outside where in fact there are neither. Or, as a thought: “I am lacking,” or “I am a force for good in the world.”
Expanded versus Contracted: where attention attends to a particular object, say a sound in the immediate vicinity, then all sounds at once.
Directed versus Receptive: where attention rests on a sensation, say in the jaw, then shifts to feeling the entire body, globally
Close versus Distant: where attention attends to something that feels close by, i.e., an emotion, and then attends to a distant perception, say a tree.
Singular versus Split: where attention rests upon a particular object in the visual field, say a tree, then attends to the entire visual field at the same time as many separate objects.
Focused versus Diffuse: where attention rests on a particular object, say a tree, then softens and takes in the entire visual field.
Subjective (Towards) versus Intrinsic (From): where attention appears to be a center that attends towards an object, say the pelvis, then rests in the pelvis and senses “from” the pelvis as a radiance of sensation.
Written by Richard Miller