Everything, Nothing & Me – A Story Of Duality & Non-Duality
- Dec 1, 2023
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 3, 2023
Written by: Alexis Knight, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
When a baby is born there is no knowing. All-encompassing boundless energy and freedom, no person, no identity, no-thing appearing as everything.
After some time, a contracting happens energetically, this solidifies a simulated center within the body creating a sense of me, and this me lives in ‘here’, inside the body. Simultaneously this contraction takes place in everything else as well because in order to have a ‘me’ and a ‘here’ in the body, there has to be a world out ‘there’. This simulation that apparently happens energetically is the beginning of duality and the beginning of individuality or personhood. As duality has become manifest within the body there is also time, space, cause, and effect.
As a child grows up, a character develops and is molded by surroundings, relationships, and activities. With the contracting in place, the child believes they have free will and choice, and that through time their life is going somewhere, in a certain direction, and that with their free will and choice, they can influence which way they go or how their life unfolds.
Me is born
Usually, although not always, as the child goes through adolescence and moves into adulthood meaning and purpose become cemented too. Not only do I definitely exist as a real separate individual within society and have free will and choice, but my life has a purpose and meaning that serves my imagination of the future.
With all of these aspects of the individual ‘locked in’ and attached to the body, there are needs that seem to weigh heavy. The need to know, for if there was enough knowledge and information acquired, one would feel fulfilled. The need for something to happen, because if the circumstances of my life were exactly how I wanted them, I would be happy, at peace, and would not want for anything.
Consciousness is duality
Interestingly, consciousness, awareness, and knowing are married with the need to know. The need to know enough, the need to know more about what the mystery of life is all about. Consciousness means to know, its presence and quality are that of knowing, and that is all there is to consciousness, without something to know, it ceases to exist subjectively, its apparent existence is dependent on the object it knows. And so, when there is nothing to know (including awareness itself) there is no one who knows, and when there is no one who knows, there is nothing that is known.
This is why Non-Duality is not a thing, it is certainly not knowable, because in order to know it, you would have to step outside of it and view it objectively, and that requires duality. When you live in knowing, you live in separation. And this either subtly or grossly perpetuates, all longing, desires, grasping, clinging, and resisting.
This desire is fuelled by the energetic contraction of separation, being a separate individual is extremely dissatisfying and exhausting, and this which is all there is and isn’t, is never enough, and so the desire for something else is paired with resistance to what is.
The unknowable wonder
The beauty and wonder of all of this is that it is completely illusory. It’s not really happening to anyone. The individual who bases their identity and existence on this separation and awareness is not really there, it is simply a contraction that happens spontaneously. It is a dream, a simulation that is conjured up from no thing, and seeking for it to be any different only seemingly carries that dream on.
Without any intervention or intention, this energetic contraction and all of those aspects of Me and the duality it brings with it always have to come to an end. It’s inevitable because it’s inconsistent, unstable, and totally insubstantial despite however constant, steady, and solid it may seem to be. Some bodies recognize this as ‘ego death’ when recalling falling in love, seeing an incredible sunset, or having some intense life experience which may touch on that loosening up, fading away, or total absence of a sense of self, but as long as an I ‘was there’ it can never legitimately be called non-duality.
Only when that ‘I’ sense has dropped away completely can it be confirmed (not known) that there is no center, no here and there, no inside and outside, no free will, and no choice. Until then this will all remain conceptual, abstract, and as though it is something that ‘I’ can understand, comprehend, and meditate upon, but that is not the same thing at all.
When that is re-cognized in the body, everything is whole again, it was of course always whole, it is wild and free, and completely beautifully & wonderfully without any meaning whatsoever.
For more information on the nature of Radical Non-Duality, follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and visit my website for more info!
Alexis Knight, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Alexis communicates Non-Duality. After recognising that all practices to get somewhere with is only perpetuating the search and the searcher, Alexis recognised that this is everything, it is already whole and complete, and the I is no longer sustained in this fullness. This is the message of Non Duality that is shared from here. Public, private and online meetings are accessed on this subject, as are videos and writings.
