I don't have the answers yet, but I have learned enough to be dangerous, and ask better questions..

A dual verus non-dual experience of the Divine.

Dual: Something's working on me, and I experience It. But I am still present and aware of myself as a separate self, an entity. There are two of us present, me and It.

Nondual: No abstract idea here. How about an example? Years ago, on a piece of wild pasture land facing a lakefront in Texas, my future ex-husband and I went for a walk. I carried my new baby in my arms. I saw a shadow cross the ground, and looked up. A giant red-shouldered hawk circled lazily over my head. I watched him for a moment, enjoying his prowess on his thermal ride as much as he probably was, and then suddenly I was lost. I WAS him and could see me on the ground, looking up at him but I was no longer a me. For a moment that blew open, my consciousness was his consciousness, and there was no separation between us.

This is an experience of nonduality. I no longer feel myself to be a separate, distinct self, but realize that I am connected to everyone and everything on this planet.

A little hard to get the head around, I must admit. Direct experience is the only way I know to explain it.

Buddhists call it emptiness. Vedantists call it fullness. Sufis call it annhilation in God. Christians might call it Christ-consciousness.

Then again, they might not. Depends on the Christian, I suppose.

It happened again with a lover. We'd fought, and I had decided to dump him, but let him stay the night. As I lay next to him, our heads touched, and once again my separate self dissolved. We went....somewhere. It was an experience of melding consciousness, floating on the ether, and being in some place Else sans mind-bending substances. We broke apart, perhaps 20 minutes later...perhaps it was 20 hours. He looked into my eyes and asked me if I had experienced the same thing he did. It was some kind of joint waking dream into another world, and of course I'd been there with him. It destroyed my sense of reality for awhile, because if you can join consciousness that quickly with another, then surely the barriers of separation must be far hazier than I previously believed.

In a world of material realism, it does seem that we are these distinct, separate entities. The experience FEELS that way, and society reinforces that by telling us we are what we look like - finite, little beings. But are we? When I dissolve my boundaries that way, in nonduality, I suspect that I am much more than what I look like.

I always know who is calling me before I answer, if I have some connection with them. I know when my friends are hurt. I am not special, loaded with psychic powers, or incredibly intuitive.

I just think my barriers are lower than other people's. I think everyone can be open, sending and receiving, all the time. But it's a choice, and then some work to consciously open the self to the experience.

But I suspect those experiences of nonduality ARE an experience of Reality, yes, reality with a capital R.

Thinking these thoughts, I was sitting next to a disgusting man in a seminar this weekend. He had his shoes off, and I could see a nasty fungus on his toenails Worse, he uttered obnoxious comments and heckled the speaker. I felt that since he so pertubed me, it was incumbent on me to get to know him.

Isn't that crazy logic?

Glad I followed it. Turns out we had a lot to teach each other. But had I maintained my stance of separateness, I should have missed an incredible connection.

Have others had these experiences? I should love to know....