Heart to Heart

When walking the spiritual path, it can prove beneficial to step aside from the dualistic rut in which we continually find ourselves and have a frank heart-to-heart spiritual talk with oneself every now and then. Forget the social pleasantries: our spiritual welfare is at stake, and we should never kowtow to decorum simply to placate a version of reality that is inherently designed to prevent our spiritual liberation.

Let’s face it: we are constantly bombarded with the billboards and Klieg lights of duality, which ensnare us into believing that the panoramic landscape around us is real. Everyone buys into the same lie. Everyone and everything reinforces this dualistic artifice. We must remember that what we apprehend is merely a construct designed to materialize and to enact our destiny as it plays itself out in time and space. The idea that we are embodied physical forms bound by gravity to a planet we’ve made more or less habitable (up till now) for our species: from a nondualistic perspective, this is utterly illusory.

We think we are so-and-so, working at a job, driving a car, living in a home, and so on. We’ve bought into this fabrication because we – our relative self – are conditioned on a daily, hourly, moment-by-moment basis to accept this myopic version of “reality.” Because of constant societal reinforcement, we are locked into a 24/7 version of reality that severely constricts, if not strangulates, our spiritual nature.

Our spiritual nature is just the opposite: unbounded, undefined, not tethered to linear time, unshackled by three-dimensional space. It witnesses and passively watches as our relative, secular self goes through the motions. It readily sees through the facade of this universe. But there is typically a massive disconnect between our two selves.

We need to realize that our relative self is merely an actor in a karmic movie that is playing itself out in a material medium, i.e., the “world” around us. We falsely identify with this actor and also with the movie, and we interact with other players we perceive in the film – we take all this as real. But through diligent and dedicated spiritual practice – yes, practice – we can slowly begin the process of extracting ourselves from this illusion. Once we are able to detach our spiritual self from the boxed-in confines that our secular self occupies, we can discern the immense, interconnected web of illusion that successfully ensnares more than 99.9 percent of humankind.

So, we must frankly ask ourselves: why do we choose to remain entrapped? Indeed, it is safer to compromise to the status quo; easier to continue placating to the mass illusion that blankets all with its fog-like veil. Breaking free means stepping apart from the common dualistic denominator in order to walk the spiritual path in earnest. But this does not mean shackling oneself to dogma or rituals or the outer accoutrements of religion, which can be equally binding. It does mean delving into the very heart of religion: its mystical element, which is found in the marrow of all religions. This is the source of the vibrant spring where all spirituality originates and flows.

Remember, our spiritual self has nothing to do with any of this. Unlimited in scope, ever-free, it patiently awaits the day when we wake up from the dualistic illusion and reconnect our lost self with itself. On that day, we also disconnect from the apparition of duality and walk away from the movie, which can now play itself out, but no longer with our full-scale, all-in participation and involvement. The movie is someone else’s drama; the actor is not us – we have shed that role and have emerged from the dualistic cocoon to assume our true identity: our spiritual self.

Note to (secular) self: heart to heart, our spiritual liberation is all that matters.