The wellspring of peace and happiness lies inside us. To discover it, we must move beyond our notion of an outside.
Bodily Self
Beneath the noise of thought rests the simple sense of being here.
This presence shimmers as a wordless tingling on our skin. In the mind’s eye, it appears as the nebulous shape of our body, perceptible even in complete darkness.
Together, this sensation and its accompanying mental outline form the experience of the I. They mark the boundary between what counts as our body and what does not. This primal awareness constitutes the bodily self, the foundation of our selfhood that enables us to engage with the world as distinct individuals.
While the bodily self is integral to our everyday functioning, it has grown unnaturally prominent. In this heightened state, it hinders more than it serves.
The bodily self now stands as a barrier, splitting our reality in two. From this silent rift, inner and outer are born—encased in our bodies, we feel cut off from the rest of the world. The container of skin has become the container of our identity. We find ourselves trapped in duality, a realm that knows only opposites and turmoil.
Enveloped by the veil of duality, we lose sight of our wholeness. We are reduced to hollow shells that harbor a mere shadow of our essence. This existential separation estranges us from lasting fulfillment, obscuring the recognition that to touch our true nature is to touch peace. It constrains every dimension of our being.
Meaning fades into the distance. Significance thins to nothing. We search the world for substance and belonging, yet find mirages instead. Having lost our connection to life, we move through fog-shrouded numbness, followed by a ceaseless disquiet that possesses neither voice nor name.
There is a longing within us for a forgotten truth—a path opens before us, leading away from duality.
This path brings us to the ground of our being where selfhood reveals itself to be insubstantial. There, we uncover the canvas upon which our lives take form, the reality that lends all appearances existence. We wake up from the dream of the separate self, returning to our true nature.
As we step onto this path and begin to see through our separation, the heightened bodily self gradually dissolves. With this quiet dissolution, our very sense of space changes.
Sense of Space
Duality is mirrored in the heightened bodily self. It not only weighs on us emotionally but also warps our perception of the world.
A heightened bodily self fragments our vision, manifesting as an empty space between ourselves and what we see. Objects then seem distanced from us, as though they exist independently outside our bodies. Through this gap, our separation takes spatial form. It positions us as observers, set apart from the observed.
As the heightened bodily self dissolves, so does this sense of space. One reflects the other. Perceptions draw nearer, until no boundary appears between us and the world.
In the absence of duality, the division of subject and object resolves into a seamless flow of experience. Our eyes open to a view of reality unmarked by distance, and we no longer feel detached from our surroundings. Immediacy comes to define how we perceive. Simplicity is all there is.
While the dissolving sense of space serves as a compass on our path, the journey begins with facing the underlying cause of our separation.
Self-Contraction
We carry a deep tension within our bodies, often without realizing it.
Our muscles have become accustomed to a persistent contraction, one so ingrained that our identity is entangled with it. This tensing blends into the background of our lives, leaving a knot in our chests and stomachs.
Self-contraction exists as an aspect of our being that is both intimate and unseen. It is a pattern imprinted from early childhood, gradually hardening into a reflexive habit as we internalize the behaviors of others. We learn to suppress our natural expression and spontaneity in response to disapproval, adopting a muscular armor that signals our conformity to social norms.
We don this armor as though it were essential. Over time, it becomes a second skin. This contracted state has permeated our human condition so thoroughly that it remains invisible to the collective gaze.
Self-contraction underlies the sense of agency, the experience that we are the authors of our actions. It generates the feeling of free will and choice over our thoughts and bodily movement. Through this conviction, we strive to be autonomous individuals and meet external expectations, pursuing stability and control in an uncertain world where everything proves transient.
This clenching operates as a defense mechanism inherited from our distant past. It crystallizes our awareness of physical form, rendering the body more sharply defined. While this bracing once served our ancestors in the face of immediate threats, it is now perpetuated by psychological stress, with sleep as our primary respite.
We navigate our days in self-contraction, sheltering from the storms of our own minds. Rigidity becomes our anchor as we push away what hurts us, only to cement the painful feelings we try to escape. Seeking security, we tighten our grip on the body, yet through this constriction, we sink further into vulnerability.
This contraction embodies the very anxiety it creates within us. It is fueled by our fear of falling apart. In protecting our sense of self from dissolving, we inadvertently ward off our wholeness.
Self-contraction heightens the bodily self, binding us in duality. It is the root of our separateness and suffering—the obstacle we must overcome to access our path to liberation.
The armor we trusted to shield us is unmasked as the prison that confines us. Our conditioning shows its true weight. With dawning clarity, our attachment to the familiar begins to erode, and the walls we uphold lose their solidity. Resistance gives way to acceptance of what is. We surrender the helm of control.
As we let go of the self-contraction like unclenching a fist, a great burden lifts from our shoulders. With this release, relaxation takes hold, and the struggle to swim against the current of life ends. We come to see the part of ourselves that was superfluous, a contracted fabrication now shed.
We step away from the prison whose doors had always stood unlocked. In this freedom, life continues its unaltered course, and the heightened bodily self dissolves as we no longer reinforce its form. A new purpose greets us; effortlessness guides our path.
Non-Duality
Our journey finds its resolution. Another begins.
The bodily self dissolves into its natural state, receding from the foreground of our experience. Space and distance disappear from our view, while the grip of self-contraction remains a mere memory.
As the veil of separation falls, inside and outside merge beyond distinction. No place contains our being. The boundary of our body becomes porous and transparent—we are liberated from the constraints of duality.
Nothing stands between us and all that is. The self proves illusory. In this absolute intimacy, the truth we had forgotten now appears in plain sight, closer than the mind can grasp.
We awaken to non-duality, the ultimate reality in which no division exists. It is the fabric of the universe, without qualities or parts, where beingness and becoming weave together as a limitless totality. From this primordial oneness spring all forms and phenomena, endlessly arising and subsiding back into their source.
Non-duality is the depth of the ocean undisturbed by surface waves. It is consciousness itself, the very substance of which we are made. In this timeless recognition, we transcend the vessel of the body, our minds freed from conceptions that never held independent existence.
Our identities as individuals are no more, yet this awareness is what brings us into harmony with the world. Embraced by the eternal wholeness of life, we come home to our true nature.
From beneath the emptiness that once resided within us, a sense of pure fulfillment rises and washes over us. Boundless joy suffuses all. Yearning and suffering cease. The destination of our path reveals itself to be the traveler. We become one with the ocean of peace.