The Problem of Non-dual Meditation

Some months back, I promised you a new and exciting form of meditation.  After making the promise, I realized that I didn’t really know enough about this new form of meditation to share it with confidence.   So, I dithered and delayed. 

My general rule of thumb is to share only those meditation practices that I know are effective.  I typically rely on history and usage to determine this.  If a meditation practice has been developed by our forebearers and used over a longish period of time, I tend to feel more confident in putting my trust in that practice.  Then I realized, after promising this new form of meditation, that it didn’t have the historical antecedents that I usually use to guide my teaching.  As a result, I held off from sharing this with you.

So let me begin by addressing a central issue in all forms of meditation.  It is an invisible problem and a subtle one, one that is typically overlooked.  It is a problem inherent in the use of language – the problem of subjects and objects.  While the goal of meditation is union with the Divine, almost all meditation practices operate within the dualistic paradigm:  that is, we are here and God is somewhere else, apart from us.

This leaves us with the paradox.  We are seeking union, but we are using tools that reinforce the dualistic paradigm that rules our lives.

Let me try and put this in more concrete terms.  You no doubt remember the story of getting the donkey to pull the cart by dangling a carrot in front of its nose – a carrot that it can never reach.  In our case, however, by using dualism to try and overcome itself, it is more like you and me chasing an ice cream cone in the hot sun that is constantly three or four feet ahead of us.  We run and run and run, but still the ice cream cone stays ahead of us.  And should we ever manage to catch up with it, we will find that the ice cream has melted, leaving us a cone full of divine No – thing!  (Sorry, but I have a weird sense of humor!)

Okay, maybe that wasn’t the very best example.  But here is the dilemma: I am right here, and as I meditate, I postulate that God is somewhere over there, apart from myself.  Either I have set up a dualistic framework for my meditation, or I have simply participated in the dualism that guides most of our waking hours.

At issue is how to overcome this too-familiar dualism.  As long as we maintain this dualism, we will be unable to connect with the Divine.  As long as we postulate that God is out there somewhere, we can think and talk about the Divine, but we will be unable to enter into union with the Divine.

Let me walk you through this for a moment:

• When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we pray to our Father in heaven – a Being who is in a place – heaven – far apart from us.

• When we pray the Jesus Prayer, we ask Jesus, who we believe is apart from us, for mercy.

• When we pray with Centering Prayer, we still find ourselves in that dualistic framework – we are here and the Divine is elsewhere.

The logic of this is terrifying!  No matter what we try, we cannot draw closer to God.  We cannot use language – either in thought, or in written or spoken word – because language is built on the subject/object duality.  While this framework is quite handy for getting things done in our day-to-day life, it absolutely sabotages our attempts to draw closer to God.

This is a dilemma that haunts all forms of meditation and all forms of prayer.  It’s not the exclusive province of Christianity or Buddhism, or any of the major world religions.  It’s a dilemma that is faced by all.

~

When I was in college, I remember reading a science fiction story about a two-dimensional world.  While I remember neither the title nor the author, I do remember being struck by the dilemma of trying to describe experience using only two dimensions rather than our customary three.  This dilemma is very similar to the dilemma faced by all spiritual seekers.  How do we overcome the perceptual limitations imposed by our frame of reference?

As always, when I face a dilemma like this, I turn to the spiritual literature.  Our problem has been faced before, and with great success by a few.  So, what do our great saints have to say about this?  How did they resolve this problem?

Let’s start with the gospel of John.  In chapter 14, Jesus says, “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”  In effect, Jesus says, ‘I am in my father and my father is in me; just as I am in you and you are in me.’  When we stop and truly listen to this passage, we realize that there is no distance between the Divine and ourselves.  Jesus already exists in us.  There is no abyss to cross; no distance to cover.  

We see from this that the dualism that besets us is just an artifact of our own minds.  We project this mental artifact onto the world and ‘discover’ that the world is inherently dualistic.  This is simply not true.

Other scriptural evidence suggests the same.  In the gospel of Luke, in chapter 17, Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is within you.”  In our dualistic thinking, we project that the Kingdom is outside of ourselves.  We create a duality between the material and the spiritual worlds, but the creation of this duality traps us in the material.  The gospel of Luke indicates, according to Jesus, that this is a profound error.  The Kingdom is right here, within our deepest selves.  We only need to wake up, i.e., to drop our dualistic thinking, in order to experience this profound and marvelous Unity.

Moving outside of the canonical books of Scripture, we have the gospel of Thomas.  This book was found in 1945 near Nag Hammadi in Egypt, and it contains 114 sayings attributed to Jesus.  The third saying in this collection states, “The kingdom is inside you and it is outside you.  When you know yourself, then you will be known, and you will know that you are the child of the Living Father.”

Here, Thomas asserts there is no boundary between the inner and the outer.  Drilling down into the meaning of this saying, Thomas states that the Divine has no boundaries.  The Divine is found everywhere: in subjective experience and in objective experience.  There is no place where God cannot be found.

Moving back into the canonical Scriptures, we have a passage from Paul’s letter to the Colossians.  In chapter 3, Paul states, “Christ is all, and in all.”  This may be the most explicit non-dual affirmation in the New Testament.  There is nothing that can exist that is outside of Christ – “Christ is all.”  Not only can nothing exist outside of Christ, but Christ is “in all.”  In this passage, we hear echoes of Thomas, who stated that the kingdom is inside and outside of us.

So, what does this mean?  It means that we are inextricably part of the Divine.  Our pain comes from our failure to recognize our true nature – that Christ is within us and within all of Creation around us.  That there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God!

There are many more passages in the New Testament that point to the non-dual nature of Reality.  These passages are typically overlooked because they do not fit our typical frame of reference which is dualistic.  There is a massive tragedy hidden in this oversight.

Most Christians and most believers of all sorts adhere to this dualistic framework.  They have literally put connection with God out of reach.  In some ways, it’s like the gold held in Fort Knox.  We delude ourselves by saying that it belongs to all of us, but good luck trying to get your hands on a single bar of bullion!

~

In this edition of Invisible, I have tried to make clear the dangers of our commonly held dualistic frame of reference.  I believe that our dualism literally prevents us from seeing and experiencing the Divine – the Divine that is all around us and deeply within us, in our innermost depths.

Our dualism even extends to our meditation practice and our efforts to experience God.  In our next newsletter, I hope to introduce you to a meditation practice that transcends this pervasive dualism.  Until then, please don’t stop your meditation practice.  Even within the dualistic paradigm, meditation prepares us for the experience of God.  It trains our minds to focus and to maintain that focus over extended periods of time.  It calms our emotional turmoil, and it introduces us to that Great Silence in which we find our Lord.

With my warmest regards,

P.S.  These newsletters were written in a particular order, but due to the limitations of our email delivery system, we cannot send them in the order in which they were written.

We can send out the first five in order, but then the system sends out the next one, whatever that happens to be.  So, if you are suddenly moving from issue #5 to issue #whatever, it might be a little jarring.  If this sounds like you, I would encourage you to go back into our archives and do your best to read them in order.

P.P.S.  Several of you have expressed the desire for an online meditation class.  If there is enough interest, I will try to figure out how to hold a group class on the web.  If you have an interest, please write me at [email protected]. 

Humility as a Tool  → Letting go → Fear → Openness →  Acceptance & Growth

If you are finding this newsletter course helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible:  The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇

To access the other newsletter editions of the “Inside The Invisible Newsletter,” or if you’d like to read ahead or go back.

Please Note: These newsletters are meant to be read in order.