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Our story begins as most stories about enlightenment do, with confusion, cartoonish hope, and a questionable bus timetable.
An animated exploration of non-duality through the journey of two toddlers discovering self and illusion.
Key Takeaways
- Self-awareness creates a dualistic split that leads to the illusion of separation.
- The spiritual quest often traps the seeker in the very duality they wish to escape.
- Consciousness may be better understood as an active process rather than a fixed entity.
- Commercialized spirituality can distort genuine methods of care and insight.
- True liberation involves seeing beyond the concepts of self and other.
What the video covers
- The film follows Clare, a filmmaker who animates the human journey toward understanding non-duality.
- It begins with toddlers Billy McMe and Boris McYou experiencing the emergence of self-awareness around age two.
- The story illustrates how consciousness creates a dualistic split between self and other, leading to existential confusion.
- Billy and Boris embark on a metaphorical 'dream bus tour' seeking gurus and enlightenment to undo this sense of separation.
- The journey satirizes spiritual seeking, highlighting the paradox that the seeker is part of the illusion.
- The film critiques the commercialization and ritualization of spirituality, termed the 'Enlightenment Industrial Complex.'
- It explores how attempts to find oneness often reinforce duality through concepts and practices.
- The narrative emphasizes that consciousness may be an action of division rather than a divine essence.
- The story uses humor and parody to question traditional spiritual teachings and the quest for self-realization.
- Ultimately, it suggests that the sense of self is a constructed illusion, and true freedom lies beyond dualistic thinking.
Chapters
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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Meet Clare, a filmmaker and animator, a seeker of sorts, although not in the traditional sense.
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She's long since abandoned performative stillness, guru-approved Instagram quotes, and men in suspiciously breathable fabrics.
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Instead, she's decided to animate the entire, entire ridiculous human journey toward non-duality, complete with gurus, neurology, and at least one driverless bus.
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This, dear viewer, is the director's cut of the dream bus tours, which means there will be interruptions and commentary.
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Now, then, buckle up. Metaphorically, of course, the dream bus is about to depart. And the destination?
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Well, let's just say it's not on any map. Welcome to the beginning of the illusion.
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This is the story of Billy McMe and Boris McYou, two unsuspecting toddlers just doing what toddlers do until the brain flicks a switch and declares, "You're separate now."
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It all starts with a red dot and a mirror. Before the age of two, you show a toddler their reflection with a little red mark on their forehead, and they'll try to wipe it off the mirror.
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The world is just one big blur of being, no self, no other, no commentary.
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But somewhere around the age of two, something flips. They recognize the dot as theirs.
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The lamp of ‘I am’ switches on. And just like that, the brain starts running a new program: Division 101, self versus other, me versus you, inner versus outer.
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A consciousness lamp appears on their little heads. Sweet, right? Except it signals the end of paradise and the beginning of existential admin.
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Now, some folks see this emerging awareness and decide that this flickering sense of being aware is the sacred thing.
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They say it's divine. They say it's the fabric of the universe. They say consciousness is everything. But what if that's just another misunderstanding?
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What if consciousness isn't a thing at all but an action? Something the brain does when it carves the world up into this and that?
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And what if that very carving, that dualistic split, is the root of the illusion?
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That's where our story begins. Billy and Boris, suddenly aware of themselves, begin to feel wrong, incomplete. The world is no longer simply what it is.
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It's something to be figured out, to be fixed. They've inherited the idea that there's a problem with me and a path to truth to fix it.
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Boris panics, but Billy, ever the optimist, has an idea: We'll catch a bus, we'll find a guru, surely someone out there knows how to erase this cursed sense of two. And so begins the great journey, the dream bus tour, an epic illusory quest to undo
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the illusion created by the very sense of self that's doing the seeking. They'll seek, they'll chant, they'll try mindfulness, mind emptiness, and probably mind-numbing nonsense.
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They'll get in a metaphysical dither. But here's the kicker: The more they seek, the more real the seeker seems to be.
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The journey itself is the trap. The self is trying to escape a cage it built out of concepts, mirrors, and a toddler's red dot.
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So hang on, the ride is about to begin, and spoiler alert: No one is actually driving the bus. This is the story of Billy McMe and Boris McYou.
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And the strange thing that happens when children are two. We might start off as oneness when all is funness.
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But when we turn to two, we've quite a different view. They say it all starts with a mirror and a spot and someone to say, "Wash off your dot." When the child is all-seeing and only knows being,
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the child does something inclusive and freeing. But after two, what do we do with that spot? When someone says, "Wash off your dot," suddenly there's no longer oneness.
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There's a world and a you. Awareness has divided the world into two. Instead of wholeness, there's the birth of the me.
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And the me sees the world in duality. The me starts to fret and to be unhappy.
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It thinks there's a future and someplace to be, and a solution to fix up this dreadful me.
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This is a terrible dilemma, says Boris McYou. What, oh, what are we going to do?
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There must be a way to get rid of the me and the you, not to mention the them and the us. There must be a way to return to oneness!
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I know, says Billy, we'll catch a bus. We'll seek and we'll search to find a guru who will know how to rid us of our sense of two.
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And that's what they do. They seek hither and thither and get in a dither, and argue the meaning of life with all its strife and the reality of duality. And ask things like, do we have consciousness?
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And are we or aren't we autonomous? And should we or shouldn't we strive to have mindfulness?
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And so on it goes as they travel the illusory dream bus and work themselves into a deluded fuss.
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Asking, "Who am I? What is real? Can I save the environment? And have enlightenment?" All this searching is sending us nuts, wondering who, oh, who is driving this bus?
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Awareness divides the world into two. It divides it into me and you. Those who say their awareness is divine are telling porkies, the naughty swine. The only ones who seem to be free are those who've reached a calamity.
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Or in a moment of carelessness, have somehow lost awareness-ness. The light has gone out, the self has died, or has been revealed to never have been alive.
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But what of Boris McYou and Billy McMe? Come and watch them on their enlightening journey.
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They want to know totality, but that involves a knower, so that's a duality, and people will confuse it with spirituality.
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They're looking for the Absolute, but that's a bit of a miscompute. It's hopeless persevering for it keeps disappearing.
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When awareness is peering, it shines so bright, it's as hopeless as looking for the dark with a searchlight. But come and see Boris McYou and Billy McMe as the duffers search for reality, which is hiding somewhere, or so they believe, beyond the illusion of duality.
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So in episode two of The Dream Bus Tours, Billy McMe and Boris McYou arrive at what I can only describe as the Enlightenment Industrial Complex.
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It's a full-blown satsang circus, complete with rides, booths, gurus in cages. First stop, kale fairy floss.
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Because what else would you eat before a fun ride into the void? Then there's a guru inside a lion cage, literally caged enlightenment.
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He's transmitting grace at 2 p.m., as if divinity runs on a schedule. There's a classic distorting mirrors of emotion.
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You look in and see fear and anger. The mirrors are labeled "Facing Your Emotions."
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And let's face it, who wants the horror mirror? No one can resist looking. Everyone hopes they'll see themselves as pure but suspect there is something wrong with them because they experience very normal emotions.
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But, of course, gurus have said that the goal is pure awareness, so the mind repetitively and neurotically keeps looking inside.
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Right there, you have an act of duality. But never mind that hypocrisy when the gurus have said, "Look within."
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And what do we look in with? The mind is virtual reality. It's not really there.
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And it tries to look inside biology, which it can't actually do. Or, even more impossible, it tries to look inside itself.
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What's actually happening there? Attention is divided, creating a supposed looker and something to look at.
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That's an act of duality. The very thing that makes separation seem real when it isn't.
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Anyhow, Billy and Boris go to a holy mantras slot machine because nothing screams transcendence like a coin-operated path to God.
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Other booths include "Find Your True Purpose" and "Your Next Life Lesson Revealed." Why sense oneness already when you can spiritualize your FOMO?
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Then we get into proper parody. A sacred hill where maybe someone spiritual from long, long ago once sat.
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And there's even a ghost ride that dares you to still the mind. It's such an odd human quest, isn't it?
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Overcome your biology, and you'll be catapulted into a special realm beyond your biology or beyond this realm.
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Never mind that it is biology that is creating this longed-for, wholly imagined magical realm in...
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A bliss delivery that may or may not arrive? Enlightenment via courier? And then there's the Enlightenment race, ready, set, meditate The runners sit, they meditate, they fail.
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The race announcer keeps yelling, still the mind, which, of course, keeps the mind active.
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Finally, exhausted, our heroes catch the dream bus. A mysterious new guy joins them. They get off at the same place they started Classic loop, but this time they notice a bar next to the bus stop called wait for it, This changes everything.
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Here we meet Mr. Nondual. He's at the bar, laughing, drinking a cocktail. He orders them all Nondual Negronis and gives them a cube.
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not a Rubik's cube, a Necker cube, the one that flips perspective, depending on how you look at it.
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Through one pair of satsang binoculars, Billy sees a miserable little box trying to become one with the rest.
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Through the other pair, suddenly, he sees it's already one cube just cleverly drawn to look fragmented.
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Mr. Nondual points out that separation is just an illusion, just like those green phantom balls you see in the optical illusion when pink ones are flashing around, your brain sees the green ball where there is none, just like the brain sees an illusory me.
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Then, boom, life turns into a film. Billy and Boris has shown that the Self is like a character in a movie.
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appearing to go somewhere, but really just flickering in place. In a flash, Mr. Nondual transports them to their own graves.
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Billy and Boris freak out and run off, but the extra guy stares into his grave.
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The lamp of supposed consciousness, the very thing creating division falls off his head and click.
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No separate self, just one appearance, all already, as it is. He walks away. No need to be anything like Mr. Nondual or hang around him..
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No guru hug, no donation, no need to follow him. And that's deliberate. Mr. Nondual doesn't want devotion.
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He's not selling anything. He's not offering retreats. He just points to what is And that's the one thing that can't be bottled and sold at a booth. and the guy walks away free from a teacher because, well, there is no teacher.
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How can there be a teacher when there isn't a student Ready for chapter three?
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This is where Billy and Boris arrive at Advaita Alley, which looks a little bit like diagon Alley got redecorated by the pink panther on ayahashka.
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Everything's pink and everything claims to offer freedom. The signs say things like Advaita of ancient wisdom and Advaita Experience but the fine print always assumes you're very much, not that.
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Every door they enter, teachers appear, and they all have one thing in common. They immediately see Billy and Boris as separate, lacking, in need of a path in need of fixing, in need of something.
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Once you start to see, how nearly every teacher is seeing twoness, the less inviting is their offer.
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What my first appear is compassion, helping someone fix themselves, begins to unravel the moment it's seen that there was never anything wrong or separate with the illusory self to begin with and that the only ones gaining from this carrot dangled
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promise of freedom are the very teachers and gurus packaging twoness in non-dual wrapping Next, Billy and Boris go to therapeutic theater.
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This is where therapists aim to replace the goal of therapy from a healing one to enlightenment itself.
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Again, these teacher therapists see twoness. Now, I confess I was teaching something similar And of course, the healing can produce dramatic, healthy, and wonderful results.
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But when the aim is enlightenment, it creates division where there is none. It creates supposed awake people versus supposed non-wake people and it creates a fictional trampoline, one that people get thoroughly and painfully addicted to In episode five, Billy McMe and Boris McYou
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arrive at the shimmering, blinking, pin ball machine of modern enlightenment, the awareness Arcade, because let's face it, these days, awareness is the superstar.
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Everyone's selling it, gurus bathe in it, wellness apps chant it like a mantra. It's the big Kahuna of inner work.
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But here's the twist Awareness isn't the unifier it's marketed as, but possibly the Great Divider, the cosmic cleaver, the velvet rope between me and that.
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What if awareness for all its sparkle and depth isn't the divine source the Gurus keep naming it as Humans ache to believe that awareness is their true essence. their secret source, their portal to God, even better, if it's an awareness out there watching
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them, seeing their rituals, their sacrifices, their Instagram worthy meditations, a great cosmic dad who's keeping score and preparing a golden elevator straight to the fifth dimension.
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Awareness in this scheme becomes a father figure with perfect posture. Yes, being mindful is extraordinary, and sure, awareness practices can be nourishing, beautiful, filled with love.
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But what if the very act of being aware of is what creates the illusion of separation in the first place?
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This here is how the act of consciousness works. This blank paper represents wholeness or oneness, or whatever's apparently happening.
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And this is the act of consciousness. It cuts, and all it can do is cut.
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First, it cuts whatever is apparently happening into me and everything else, and then it cuts up everything else into smaller and smaller things.
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It cuts up the little things into categries and cuts and divides those categories into me and my knowing.
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It cuts this into space and that into solid, it cuts up here from there, it cuts this wholeness into time.
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There is no time, but it cuts this up into a past and a present and a future.
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All it can do is cut, it cuts and calls it awareness, but all that is, is cutting this into a me and that.
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There is no I am, but nevertheless, the act of cutting all this into a me and that creates the sense of an aware I am.
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Consciousness is just a cutting action. A knower is a cut, creating an artificial me separate from everything In this episode, Billy and Boris ascend to Tibet, where the air is thin, but the philosophies are delightfully dense.
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Now, I love the philosophies that come from Tibet, but it can seem like a philosophical maze or a deep and difficult game to reach a truth Some say it's all emptiness, others insist it's luminous clarity.
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and a few maintain its both, or neither, or something else entirely that can't be named.
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Billy and Boris first try the long and usual route as they seek ways to become worthy.
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Luckily, there is a character not too dissimilar from Longchenpa, who is a little like a Tibetan Mr. Nondual, who points Billy Boris to what is known as the pathless path or the gateless way.
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The episode highlights the endless aspirations of a you who can attain personal enlightenment by following the long path compared to the quick and easy gateless way where there is just no you to be found Welcome to the psychiatric carnival episode,
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where therapists' tools are repurposed as enlightenment catapults see genuine healing methods transformed into industrial grade spiritual seeking equipment.
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Billy and Boris keep getting kidnapped by a wily guru stealing genuine methods of care, which are then turned into industrial grade spiritual seeking methods.
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It's quite the spectacle. Methods designed for people with actual psychological wounds are now weaponized for perfectly functional seekers who just want to transcend their pesky humanity, the results, spectacularly miserable seekers in padded rooms Midway through Billy and Boris's stay in the psyche ward
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ward, Mr. Nondual makes an unexpected appearance. Finding our heroes with seekers wrapped in metaphysical straitjackets, he offers a perspective so heretical, he's almost sane What if trying to wake up is itself the hallucination and attempts at being present
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is like administering self prescribed shock treatment to a patient who doesn't even exist Orange is the new black.
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Presence is the new religion, and in this episode, Billy and Boris get carted off to spiritual prison, where Enlightenment wears a jumpsuit and the warden, sorry guru, dishes out an endless stream of advice on how to reach that elusive state of beingness
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He's got rules, he's got routines, he's got teachings, all lovingly designed to remind you how very not present you are and how lucky you are to be locked up under his guidance until you can get it right.
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Then Mr. Nondual wanders in, casual as ever. and glances around, but he doesn't see any prisoners.
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He doesn't see seekers He doesn't even see separate beings. And that's when we return to the necker cube.
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My favourite visual metaphor for oneness, because when that cube is viscerally seen, not just as a fun optic illusion, but as a truth bomb, the entire seeking project blows up.
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From one angle, the cube looks solid, a box in the corner of the room.
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You'd swear it's really there, but with a shift in perspective, it's revealed to be nothing but lines and space.
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There never was a box, just a play of perception, just like the sense of a me who's trying to find something.
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The moment you think you're separate and have to get to oneness, you're already buying into the box, and so are the gurus.
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They see two, they reinforce two, they sell the keys to a cell that never existed.
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It's the oldest con in spirituality Oneness held hostage. with the Guru as negotiator, and presence is the ransom note.
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And when it really lands, when it really hits that you've been trying to turn a fictional avatar into the divine, would you seriously go back to that prison?
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Or would you finally realize the door was never locked? Because there was never a prisoner in the first place?
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What can I say about this next episode? A few genuine pearls for mister Nondual, scattered among a sea of boorish self appointed Gurus.
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Honestly, I could count on one hand the so called spiritual teachers I've met who haven't later been outed for something, abusing women, covering up abuse, sleeping around while married It's not just one gender who's trying to cover abuse.
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I recall one communication with someone comparing me, not very favourably to a famous guru who they said was serene and emanating peace.
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Meanwhile, I was there poking holes. Just so happens, though, that I knew that guru they were talking about the sexual abuse cover-up, the chaotic private life, the facelifts, the devotees declaring she is so spiritual, she doesn't age.
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I mean, the problem that seems to happen with teachers, of non-duality or satsang, is they declare personal enlightenment or a personal dropped 'me' or a personal awake-ness.
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So, of course, devotees want to be want to have that too. But what am I saying?
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I'm saying what is, is forever in flux, with no state of being, state of enlightenment, state of divine consciousness, no arrival for anyone.
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What is, is in flux. And when that's seen How would someone who's in flux be like someone else who's in flux?
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Does anyone need to spend time at the feet of someone falsely saying they have something?
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Next up, non-duality at an Adventure Park This segment dives into what I used to teach, the gentle art of returning to beingness.
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And look, I get it. For many, it's a beautiful pause from the chaos of identity loops. and behavioral reruns.
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You get a whiff of stillness, start identifying as awareness itself, and suddenly life feels like a spa day for the soul.
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The body's twitches and dramas, not a problem anymore But let's be honest, the idea that not reacting to things equals enlightenment, it's just too ripe for satire to ignore.
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Does it feel like bliss has unpacked its bags and moved in? Yes. Does it mean you've found the cosmic truth?
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Not so fast. We love saying things like, I've realized my true self, but what exactly is that Everything's in flux.
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Even the self having the realization is mid-metamorphosis. That said, some of the practices here are gold for healing, truly top shelf, just maybe don't mistake a nervous system upgrade for a spiritual revolution Now, if you venture deeper into this non-dual
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theme park, you'll bump into the radical crowd, or as Their fondly or furiously called, the uncompromising types.
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Their message shook my worldview like a rogue roller coaster. I don't agree with everything they say or how they say it, but they've been refreshingly taboo busting, a necessary thrill on the seeking safari And now for a poem, as the intense search
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continues for the absolute no less, there are so many ideas floating around about the promise of what we will receive when we find it.
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We want to find our real home, which assumes so much, doesn't it? It presupposes a real you to find it that there is an it, and that this realm isn't it.
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And the story continues with Billy McMe and Boris McYou, and their attempts to reach an enlightened view.
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They're travelling to Advaita Island, where they hope to find a hidden diamond, a treasure so wondrous and holy and true, the gurus say it's accessible to only a few Speaking of gurus and their spiritual teachings, the island is full with the sound of their screechings.
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You want the truth, you need someone to worship, step right up. I have Satsang entrepreneurship.
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Step right up to receive my holy transmission and follow my methods with much repetition.
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The tale is so often the same Enlightenment is presented as a hide and seek game.
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They say, go deeper, be silent, go within. You'll find consciousness is the linchpin. You are not the body, the thoughts, or an emotion You're not the wave.
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Be still and see you're the ocean. The Gurus say, you are consciousness itself, still and vast.
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Discover this, and life will be a holy blast. Can't realize yourself as awareness? You're not trying enough.
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You're being careless. Find your true self. It's behind a veil of illusion. I assure you, once you find it, there'll be no more confusion.
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As consciousness you'll find the knowledge of the absolute. Of this, I am resolute, but remember the emperor with no clothes?
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In the same way, Advaita has something to disclose. The consciousness they declare as the foundation of all may not be the right answer at all.
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It's possible it's just the pomposity of a me. Declaring itself as the oneness key.
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It thinks itself able to open the door to end this raging duality war. Bear with me, if you will, For admittedly, what I say is like a suicide pill.
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But what if there's no such thing as consciousness, just a dreamt sense of selfness?
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What if consciousness is not so much a noun as a verb? Would that be superb?
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So not an attainable spiritual junction, but instead simply a function? Dreaming as someone who's separate and aware, but in truth, there's no one there, like an eye that is there, but not its stare.
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So self-awareness has all the probability of a round square. What a relief The search has been in vain.
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There truly is nothing to gain. A dreamt up consciousness can't create real duality, doesn't even have a locality.
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There never was anyone with a separate identity who needed to seek out serenity. But shush, now, this Advaita is ever so rare, for it dares to say there is no one there.
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What to do? There is a clue. It's when a guru refers to a you and a list of many things to do.
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That guru sees you as a cube. What a silly, pompous boob. They've fallen for the simplest illusory trick, using their spiritual measuring stick.
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The world has to wake up, don't you see? There's a you there, who needs me, for I am an enlightened authority.
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But wholeness is blind. There is nothing there. No knowledge or ability to be aware no illusion ever sat in the illusory corner, so no need to become an awakened reformer.
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Gurus set an impossible task for an imagined someone to wear a spiritual mask, as if that would lead someone to liberation and not a life of vexed separation, or worse, it leads to an impossible declaration of a someone who's found self-realization.
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When there is no one there in the first place, there's no one who wakes up in this enlightenment race.
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The neocortex simply reflects like a mirror.. It couldn't be clearer. It's not the producer that's been proven incorrect.
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It takes over seven seconds to even reflect. Conscious awareness is so slow. In fact, it's always the last to know.
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There just is no separate self who can seek or find. There is no duality creating a bind.
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There is no observer to mind. There's no one really grappling with what seems seems to be happening.
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This is it, this is all. No need to reach for an awakened experience Imagining it will come from devotee obedience.
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For not even stillness or silence can be your passport, as if that was a means of oneness transport.
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No need to find love or bliss or sat-chit-ananda Or a need to read tomes on Vedanta.
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No wondrous gate to pass through with an answer to satisfy an imagined you, That promise of an awakened soul is a most misleading goal.
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No one is on the other side of an imagined great divide, waiting for an illusory you to finally become one of the enlightened few.
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Nor is there an absolute, aware of Billy McMe and Boris McYou and their difficult plight and waiting in readiness for them to get it right.
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To form a line is a little bit asinine. No one's nearer to what's divine.
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No need to try and jump the queue, 'cause seriously there is no you. No one's closer if they've had a glimpse or have or haven't lost their me.
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There isn't anyone who's bound or free. These signs are just imaginary. You see, whatever is appearing apparently is not happening to you or a me.
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All there is is a gloriously undivided everything, neither large nor small, which is paradoxically at the same time, no thing at all.
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And now we're off to America Ah, America, land of the free, home of the brave and well, I can't actually go there any more, not since I made a few cheeky animations involving a certain orange hued strong man with a twittery X addiction turns
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out Homeland Security isn't a fan of satire Anyway, this next episode was made in what now feels like a more innocent time back when satire wasn't considered a threat at customs.
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It's set in Hollywood, naturally. I've got to include some well-known non-duality speakers being interviewed, all quite proper and philosophical, until, of course, the dream bus shows up and kidnaps them all Next stop, the island of Crete.
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Think pink boh Bougainvillea, sun drenched goats lounging on rocky beaches, and water so blue, you could baptize your illusions in it.
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Alas, our boys get separated. One is thrust onto the so-called arduous path to enlightenment, cue solemn music, inner work, and And earnest of cleaning of the gurus toilet.
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The other, he's having a marvelous time, skinny dipping, sipping arack, and stumbling into the wild, scandalous idea that maybe Just maybe there is no actual path no self to walk it no destination just radical non duality served with a citrus twist and as
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if that weren't enough James Bond crashes the party and some one gets shot at because of course he does this is Crete and enlightenment was never going to be the weirdest thing to happen here Last episode And it's a big one.
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Mr. Nondual has borrowed the TARDIS. Thank you, Doctor Who, and the boys are off, not just through space, but time, where to India, naturally, the spiritual Disneyland. Their mission? To visit the two most revered figures in modern nonduality.
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Two giants, beloved icons, and yes, I do love them, even if respectfully and playfully disagree with the direction they pointed.
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Because here's the thing. The moment you look inward, voila, there's a split. Now attention is focused on a self.
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And guess what? That self isn't actually there. The whole point of non-duality is that the act of turning inward presupposes division.
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It creates the illusion of a separate self, one that needs to be found, healed, improved, or united with something divine.
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But if the self is an illusion, then the God within must be too. A God imagined by whom? A fictional self!
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it's delightfully bonkers. What is, is this, this ever moving, ever changing energy, playing as everything, and baked into that energy especially in animals like us, is the quirk of split attention.
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It's useful, sure. It helps us not fall off cliffs or forget our email passwords, but it's not proof of a real inner observer.
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The split isn't real. It's just part of the show. So yes, I honor the two fathers of modern non duality, but at some point it hit they accidentally kept the seeking game going.
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They gently, beautifully prolonged the illusion. and when that realization lands, it breaks a necessary taboo and leaves only what is as 'what is'. No pedestal, no inner god, no path, no you needing to get anywhere.
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Don't worry, the bus isn't stopping there. We're off to the neuroscience summit. Now, some folks have accused me of being a physicalist Simply because I mention the brain.
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And yes, I know the argument. We can't see the brain, so maybe it's not really there.
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Cute, but I'd argue it's much brainier to say appearance includes brains. Just because all this is energy doesn't make it less miraculous.
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If anything, it makes the apparent diversity of life even more jaw droppingly wondrous. So a word about the end of seeking.
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Anything could end it. Maybe this ridiculous, rambling multi-episode marathon starring Billy and Boris, is enough to stop the search in its tracks.
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Maybe it helps you see the futility of chasing enlightenment like it's a lost sock.
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Maybe it saves you from ever starting the whole whole circus in the first place.
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And if it puts a dent in the idea that you need to sit near some magical being to absorb their vibrations like a Wi Fi signal from Nirvana, well, good.
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If what I've said is enough, and this entire journey is seen for what it is, a wondrous verb like happening then lovely, let the happening happen, sometimes adventurous, sometimes plain, no real story, but no need to deny any story either.
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Just this, and the bus rolls on. Oh, and I do hope viewers pick up on the various Monty Python jokes that have been sprinkled throughout this series, especially this episode, with a nod to the blessed are the cheesemakers
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So there you have it. Their seeking is done. Of course, it never really was their seeking.
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That's the discovery. There's no personal seeker. After all, has anyone ever injected their own brain with just the right dose of synaptic soup to start or stop a thought?
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Did you make your brain? Craft your environment, lay the soil, pump the oceans, oxygenate the atmosphere?
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Possibly there's just no one in there to begin with. The idea that a brain with its mind-made VR headset could somehow leap outside this ever-shifting energy show to know the ultimate truth.
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Delightfully impossible It's been said, we're just wandering around with a highly limited field of vision, like a spiritual oculus rift.
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And here's the kicker, all animals' brains seem to process reality through two lenses, duality and non-duality I want to leave you with one last animation, a kind of bonus track.
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It's about the two hemispheres of the brain. And yes, I may have been a little cheeky in this one.
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I throw out a bit of a challenge to some of the more radical non-duality speakers, asking them to, dare I say it, include the brain, possibly rude.
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But don't worry. I'll pop back afterward to clarify a few things. The code of non duality is cracked, and it's a bit of a shocker.
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Nonduality tends to infer that when there is no self, what is then said is coming straight from source.
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Now, whether you're thinking source is consciousness or source is the nothing, either way, it's thought that truth is spoken because the illusory mind has been dropped So let's have a look.
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With no sense of self, what's it like? Well, anything outside of what is doesn't have quite the concrete reality as before.
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Past is definitely not here. Future is a mental concept Me and other are illusory.
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Things just seem like they're appearing. Life is just appearing to happen. So when someone turns up to a meeting with a problem, the presenter can legitimately reply saying, well, it's not real.
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It's not happening to you. It's a false narrative. All there is is this. It seems true, and without a narrative occurring, it seems like these answers are straight from source, since no mind is involved.
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And yes, the self is an illusion, and yes, all this is completely unknowable, boundless energy But are the words of a presenter coming from source and not mind?
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Does seeking come from the pesky illusory me as a small child before there is a sense of of being self-conscious, there is just beingness The way of being in the world is non-dual.
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Then, roughly at two years of age, the brain can image itself as separate and others are separate, and it's the use of language that stimulates memory and With it, a simulation of a self.
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The world is then constructed by the brain in terms of duality. Now, before you think duality is the bad guy, or an illusion that needs to be seen through, duality in language are necessary.
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One character in history did conduct a particularly nasty experiment He denied a group of children from learning language, and their brains couldn't develop.
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Anyhow, at some point, we don't like the me, we don't like viewing the world constructed as a duality, and we look for non-duality, a return to beingness.
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We may have heard stories of people without a me, or we hear of them living from a state of beingness, sounds lovely, a part of us may really resonate with this notion, and for very good reason.
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The right hemisphere of the brain already constructs the world in terms of non-duality, in terms of wholeness.
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It's just appearing, it's just happening. It can't divide. It can't even divide out itself from wholeness, from unconditional love, from oneness.
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Nothing is seen to be happening because it doesn't narrow its focus on small things It doesn't label.
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The left hemisphere slices and dices and divides, focuses on small objects, labels absolutely everything.
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But sometimes the left hemisphere's processing seems to disappear, might be from psychedelics, might just seem to happen for no reason at all, and we have glimpses of non-duality.
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like a truth is revealed. It seems like all those non- duality presenters have indeed been presenting the truth.
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But the non-duality presenter has no idea about the two sides of the brain. Its had a lateral lobotomy Can't divide anything out.
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Says it doesn't even have a brain because it can't divide itself out from boundless energy.
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It can't even divide out the attendee at the meeting. The left hemisphere stands up in protest and paces back and forth, seeking a way to see like the presenter.
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which, of course, it can't. It can only focus, divide, and see in terms of being separate.
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It's being told separation is wrong, it's illusory, so it seeks out ways to get rid of the false me.
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Now, there is already no me. Without the inner chatter, there is no sense of a separate self, no space, no time, just thisness.
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It's like the Zen saying of no hearer only hearing, no seer only seeing no feeler only feeling, leaving only thisness.
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There is no one coming to a conclusion. And in a way, there is no conclusion about reality.
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It is completely unknowable because humans can only view duality or non-duality. That's it. But non-duality presenters, my animations included, have concluded non duality to be the truth.
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It isn't plain and simple. I'm a bit surprised to hear about the doubling down that no one has a brain.
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Luckily, we've got a volunteer. Harold here has offered to give up his brain. He says there is no such thing as a brain and non-duality has no need of a brain.
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His followers are waiting for him to upload his new video titled See! No Brain is Necessary But I have to say say, Harold isn't looking too well.
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And I put out this rather naughty challenge. Find a nonduality meeting that doesn't involve left hemisphere asking questions and the right hemisphere answering them in the way only it can.
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All there is is boundless energy. No. Everything is separate. There isn't anything I can't separate and label.
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It's everything and nothing. It's both at the same time. There isn't even time. Tick tock, tick tock.
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Don't you hear that? That's time. Nothing is happening. Nothing at all. All this is just an appearance, appearing spontaneously.
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And at the same time, it's nothing. It's emptiness. You've got a real problem with division, haven't you?
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There is no me, and there's no you. There's only unconditional love There is no problem with anything, because there's only this.
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Everything is perfect. Oh, for fucks sakes, there's chemicals and cosmology and geometry and geography and differences everywhere, and nuances and gradation of beauty, and there's physiology and physics, and on and on and on.
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All made up words. There's nothing outside of this. I don't know how you see as you do.
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Well, you just throw out division, no division at all. And it's wholeness. No, it's all I can do.
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It's what I am meant to do. Now, of course, some attendees turn up to a meeting and totally resonate with the right hemisphere.
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It feels like home, because it's how it was as a child, and it's home, because it's the right hemisphere.
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It's right where you are anyhow but it's not home because it's a truth. The absence sought has been an absence from the simulated self as your identity and from the slicing, dicing, and separating being done by the left hemisphere.
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So for some, there has been a dropped self And if the drop is viewed through a spiritual framework, the dominant view tends to come from the right hemisphere.
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The person starts uploading to YouTube to offer liberation, but some, with a dropped self or a loss of the left hemisphere, have then viewed it through the scientific framework Reading up on both is nothing short of illuminating, and everyone who has sought for the truth
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would do well to include the possibility that what has been offered by the right hemisphere is not the truth at all.
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The two hemispheres are the reason we've had wars. The reason we've had arguments of spirituality versus science, the reason behind the search for non duality in the first place plain old seeking has been nothing other than left hemisphere right hemisphere conflicting views.
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Me-ing and being turns out to be a leaning back and forth between the two sides.
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If the lean returns to the left, it's seen as if the me is back.
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No, the me is a simulation. What's actually occurring is one half of the brain's view dominates.
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All seeking has actually been a search for a half brain lobotomy. And this half can't get rid of itself, no matter how hard it tries.
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And no presenter can help either. There is no presenter speaking as a an awake or liberated person.
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And there is no presenter with a no me status talking from anywhere other than half a brain no special unraveling energy is emanating from a half-brainer.
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And witnessing left hemisphere questions and right hemisphere answers in a non-duality meeting will not lead to a lateral lobotomy.
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I want to know this is just an appearance. There is no one to know it.
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It just is one appearance already. How can I see that this is nothing? No one sees it.
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It just is nothing. Empty, silent, nothing happening. What can happen is that the 'me' unravels, leaving just this-ness.
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Dangling a carrot of enlightenment or a drop to me is an illusion based upon half a brain.
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Projecting non-duality or duality on reality is like a bat saying everything is a sonar wave on the basis that it is the only thing it can see.
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So, will seekers continue the attempt to lose half a brain? Will anyone with a no-me status who is dependent upon their no me business and their much needed paying customers persist in saying a half brain view is liberation
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Maybe they'll be like the flat Earthers, who think science must be a hoax by the devil, because astronomy doesn't reveal that heaven is above and hell as below.
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Maybe presenters will one day be forced to change their nonduality meetings to lateral lobotomy sessions.
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Oddly, this truth is way more freeing than a lateral lobotomy, because the simulated itself and its narrative are still illusory.
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It's just the bit about non-duality being the truth about reality that's false. It's one of two views.
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With any luck, this is the last video anyone needs to watch in terms of hoping a me, you already don't have will drop, and thinking you'll land forever in a lopsided view.
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This means no more seeking ever again. Drinks are on me. I was a bit mischievous.
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But you see, in good faith, many people go looking for answers, for guidance, for freedom, and often what they find are frameworks, rituals, a new set of rules, curated lovingly by the left hemisphere, that tireless organiser and explainer of all things
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Others wind up in the radical camp where language collapses and everything is just what's happening, spoken from the right brain's wide open field.
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I love that view, but sometimes even that can sneakily become a performance, the performance of having no performer Suddenly, in that community, no one is allowed to speak unless they have declared that their me has personally dropped, while others are now supposed to recognize that everything they
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now say and do is coming from some pure, unfiltered source. What source is this?
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Seeking is not much more than a rollicking, duality, non-duality adventure. Consciousness, it's quite likely it's not a thing, it's an action.
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It's a verb. The self, a beautifully convincing, glitchy VR avatar running on outdated software The bus, driverless, always has been.
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And the view, it's either through the lens of duality or non-duality. Explains so much, doesn't it?
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Seeking fizzles out and ends. There's nothing to find No one doing the grasping and nothing to grasp.
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Life is just life-ing, a spontaneous, unknowable miracle, more astonishing than ever, not because someone figured it out, but because no one can, not even the ones who say they have because it's always via the duality or non-duality lens.
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It's probable that there's no separation, and yet it can app appear that way. Myths collapse in the freshness of what's simply isness.
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Maybe it's all a verb, maybe not. I don't know. And that oddly enough, feels like love, it's humbling, it's heartfelt, it's ordinary.
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And that makes it extraordinary
Topics:non-dualityenlightenmentspiritualityconsciousnessself-awarenessillusiondualismanimationspiritual seekingphilosophy
