I am convinced that Jesus was the first nondual religious teacher of the West, and one reason we have failed to understand so much of his teaching, much less follow it, is because we tried to understand it with dualistic minds.
What is nondual thinking?
Many people have not heard of this term or if they have, they don’t understand what it means.
I continue to struggle and be challenged by the concept.
Richard Rohr explains dualistic thinking like this: “The dualistic mind is essentially binary, either/or thinking. It knows by comparison, opposition, and differentiation. It uses descriptive words like good/evil, pretty/ugly, smart/stupid, not realizing there may be a hundred degrees between the two ends of each spectrum.”
Rohr also comments that dualism “is the ego’s preferred way of seeing reality. It is the ordinary ‘hardware’ of almost all Western people, even those who think of themselves as Christians.”
Nondualism, on the other hand, transcends differences and dichotomies.
It brings unity rather than division.
Read more in Sitting with God.
“His whole mission can fundamentally be seen as trying to push, tease, shock, and wheedle people beyond the “limited analytic intellect” of their egoic operating system into the “vast realm of mind” where they will discover the resources they need to live in fearlessness, coherence, and compassion—or in other words, as true human beings.”
ENCOUNTERING THE WISDOM JESUS: Quickening the Kingdom of Heaven Within
Cynthia Bourgeault
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