I got an interesting email, the first part saying:
"Hello Nicholas,
I'm a researcher with the Center for the Study of Non-Symbolic consciousness. We are the only academic center that is dedicated to researching forms of consciousness such as persistent nonduality, unitive consciousness, mystical experience, and so forth. You can learn more about our academic research center at: www.nonsymbolic.org.
You’ve been suggested to us by several people as someone who has persistent nondual awareness. If this is the case, I'm writing to ask for some of your time to help with a project that is the first comprehensive scientific investigation of persistent nondual awareness....
...a major portion of the research project, an online survey is offered..."
The survey was 132 questions long. The first 24 questions were statements and you click on a multichoice ranging from: always, sometimes, rarely, never. Below each checked statement there was an optional box to make a suggestion or explain more.
When I was finished checking the 24 statements with the answers that best fit my experience and filling out all the boxes below each statement, there was a clickable button to submit and continue. I have often had problems with writing large portions only to have it all disappear when I click a submit button, so out of habit I copied and pasted the writing in the optional boxes.
The following are the first 24 questions (as statements and box below clickable answer). I didn't get a screen shot so the clickable answers are not reproduced here, only the statement and the explanations for the clickable answers I chose.
Some of this is a repeat from other articles throughout this blog, but I felt to put the first part of the survey here anyhow.
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1. *An inner contentment that is not contingent or dependent upon circumstances, objects, or the actions of other people.
Of course the wording doesn't matter much since it's all conceptual, but I would say an "unshakable presence" rather than "inner contentment" since contentment implies that there is an opposite to contentment that can be experienced.
The presence that we are is presently aware. That awareness doesn't identify with circumstances, objects, or actions. It's only ability is to be aware. It has no judgment, no thoughts, no opinions, it's only ever being what it is; presently aware. In seeing this and being identified by that unshakable presence as who you are (as a way of speaking, really you can't identify with awareness since it's default), the body/mind can do as it pleases and you continue to be what you are as unshakable present awareness.
As a result, the body/mind can be dependent upon circumstances, objects, and/or actions but since there is nobody there being identified with that process unfolding then the inner contentment seems to be a natural outcome and yet the body/mind doesn't always need to feel inner contentment in order for the unshakable presence which is not dependent upon anything to be what it is which can be defined as contentment. So one who has recognized this present awareness, can be in the heat of an anger emotion and still have complete still inner contentment.
Consequentially, the body/mind doesn't need to be experiencing inner contentment in order for there to be contentment in the unshakable present awareness.
I am using the word contentment here as meaning "Not sad or happy or anything in-between; just being. A collapse of opposites and therefore irrelevant to seek happiness or run away from sadness."
However the body/mind is not separate from awareness. What is presently aware and what that awareness is aware of, is the same one awareness appearing as something else.
2. *Accepting (not struggling with) whatever experience I may be having.
Whatever is happening, is happening. To want something outside of what is happening is insanity since there is nothing outside of right now, this present eternal moment is it.
If you are thinking of a past, you are thinking of a past right now. If you are conceptualizing a future, that conceptualization is happening now. Right now, this present moment is eternal, it never moves. It is never going anywhere, it's always here. So to want something that isn't happening right now, is insanity since nothing else exists and nothing else ever will exist except for right now.
Right now is always full, whole, and complete since everything is here as this hereness. Seeking for "something else" other than what is now, is just the mind conceptualizing a fantasy or imagining like that of a child.
This is apparent through direct experience. Through your direct experience have you ever experienced anything outside of this presence? If you have, can you prove it outside this present moment?
Obviously not, there is nothing outside of it and therefore whatever seems to appear is whole, complete, and full. It can only ever be seen any other way through imagination/fantasizing also known as focusing on thought/mind and whatever it is conceptualizing. Without identifying with those conditional thoughts, how would you know that something is not right or something needs to happen.
It can only ever unfold the way it is unfolding, anything else is pretending to know that it should be one way or another; how do you know it should be that way? If it is happening the way it is happening, it's obvious happening that way. Why put yourself through the torment of fantasying.
Yes you could say it's an accepting, but it could also be said to be a mentally growing-up by recognizing direct experience and stop the childish fantasying. It's not real.
I mean that in the most loving way. In the same way a mother teaches a child to walk. We all have gone through it. It's just conditional thinking.
3. *An interest in clearly seeing the reality or truth about my self, the world, and others, rather than in feeling a particular way.
Feelings are fleeting. They arise in awareness and then die back into the awareness in which they came. You can't hold onto something so fleeting. Experiences, sensations, thoughts, states of mind, perspectives, beliefs, emotions, options, etc.. are all unstable to set a foundation on.
Interests of seeking comes in many different forms, but ultimately we are all searching for the samething. Something that is unchanging, something that we can count on, something that is always present, something that is stable, something that's whole, complete, and full... something that is loving, wise, peaceful, freedom, compassionate, etc...
As a result, you don't have to have an interest in clearly seeing reality or truth about self, the world, and others in order to see what it is that we are all really interested in finding. Since we are what we seek already.
Seeing this shows up in people that are not spiritual, not knowing what they are interested in, not searching and seeking for anything particular, and not caring or resonate with anything to do with nondual awareness (or whatever word).
4. *A sense that I am protecting or defending a self-image or concept I hold about myself.
It's all concepts. The concept of "I" doesn't point to anything solid, it is always fleeting with the thought attached to it. How can you defend something that's not always there to defend? It's a belief/assumption that has gone unquestioned.
5. *Deep love and appreciation for everyone and everything I encounter in life.
Awareness is not independent and nothing is independent from it. Nothing is separate from awareness because it requires awareness to be. Nothing is independent of awareness and therefore there are no individuals or things.
It's just appearances of awareness. Awareness appearing as "something else" but nothing else is actually independently there separate from awareness.
This can be seen from direct experience. Can anything you are aware of be separated from awareness? If it can be separate from awareness then how can you be aware of it as a separate thing? So if it takes awareness to be aware of "things" then how in your direct experience can you say that there is anything else other than awareness?
When this is seen there is a natural unfolding love that is always present. It's not a love that the mind can understand. It's unconditionally there. It needs no condition to be a certain way. It is unattached and yet completely intimate. It loves contently. It's an unknowing love. Loves without reason or why. It's storyless. It's unexplained and needs no explaining.
In the same way you could say awareness is everything. Awareness can be replaced with love and it would be pointing to the exact same thing. Love is everything. Awareness always leads to love and vice versa.
You can't explain why the love is here anymore than you can explain why awareness is here since those seemingly two words are pointing to the same exact thing.
6. *Understanding that there is ultimately no separation between what I call my “self” and the whole of existence.
The only thing that seems to separate is the labels/names/words/thoughts/mind (or whatever word). Get rid of the label space/air/formlessness/emptiness (or whatever word) and you can see intellectually how it's all one seamless reality.
It's only the space surrounding things, in which give things an independent looking nature, right? So without that label, what is separating the other labels?
It's not really an understanding, more like an unwavering seeing.
7. *Feeling deeply at ease, wherever I am or whatever situation or circumstance I may find myself in.
Outside the thought "I am not at ease." how would you know that you are at ease or not?
Being deeply at ease (it's not feeling, feelings are always fleeting), is just about seeing the default that is always there. Only a thought would suggest otherwise.
8. *A sense that my actions in life are motivated by fear or mistrust.
Based on the world we were are conditioned to believe in, fear is big motivator. Usually the process goes something like this:
-The body/mind gives rise to an awareness. We are only aware of life
because we are a body/mind that is aware. The body/mind comes first, and then as a result of that, this awareness comes second.
-As body/mind’s, we are individuals. We are separate from everything observable. We are the main subject and everything we view in our reality is an object separate from the subject.
-As separate individual body/mind’s, we have choice. We have control. We shape our own destiny. If life does not turn out the way we planned, it’s our fault or there is somebody else to blame. As individuals who have choice, since we are separate, everything is
riding on the choices we choose or don’t choose.
-We have an incredible responsibility for our lives because of the huge
amount of choices we have to choose from. Life is very serious and fearful because of this responsibility.
-It has been hinted to us that our job in life is to lower the responsibility so that life will not be so serious and fearful.
So if any part of this process is seen through as false, the whole thing collapses.
Actions are seen not be motivated by anything particular. Since it's all awareness, there is no reason behind actions and yet actions still get done.
It's unexplainable and unknowable by the mind. The mind is always making-up a reason, a logical explanation, and a why behind every action because it believes it is deciding.
I heard once that everything is directly motivated by fear or love. Everything else is a twist of fear or love. And I used to believe that too because it simplified the meaning of actions.
However, the question that seems to come up now: "What motivates a mother to save her child from being killed, is it love or fear?" The question shows how love and fear arise together as one movement and the mind pretends to choose between a split where there is only one seamless unfolding.
9. *Conscious awareness of my nonseparation from (essential oneness with) a Transcendent Reality, Source, Higher Power, Spirit, God, etc.
Awareness is always presently here. If that awareness is not seen, it can seem that it's not here and an isolation can seem to appear from awareness to getting lost in thoughts. The thoughts can seem to stop awareness from being consciously seen.
However, thoughts are harmless and empty. They don't stop awareness from being consciously aware. If anything they are proof-positive that awareness is there since you have to be aware in order to be aware of a thought.
Thoughts cannot take anybody out of being here since here is always here. It's a conceptual idea produced by thought that thought can hide one from being consciously aware of awareness.
Eventually it is seen that thoughts are not separate from awareness and it's only thoughts that seem to separate. As soon as a thought arises, it arises as awareness. It might as well be called awarethought since it's not awareness then a thought and finally an awareness of that thought. Thought and awareness are inseparably one.
10. *Not being personally invested in or attached to my own ideas and concepts.
Since present awareness is everything, it's all perspectives, ideas, beliefs, opinions, concepts, etc... it seems strange to attach to one idea and centralize it.
However if you believe that every thought you are aware of is your thought then when an opinion/idea is expressed it would be remembered and repeated everytime that topic arises.
Since I am not sure what this body/mind is going to think, say, or do (just as equally as I have no idea what any other body/minds are going to think, say, or do) in any given second; there is no central personalization of anything it thinks or says.
What is seen here is that there is only one mind and 6 billion bodily appearances of that mind. Whatever can arise in another, also has the potential to arise here since all human potentiality's are equal. Therefore, there are no ideas that any particular body/mind can own.
Not that I am aware of every body/mind, but that awareness is every body/mind.
11. *An unwavering awareness of a stillness/quietness, even in the midst of movement and noise.
Imagine that you were not aware of anything except for sight. If you were only aware of sight, then when the body walked, you would not feel it, therefore, you wouldn't think that it is you who is walking. It would look very much like you were not moving, but instead the images on the screen of awareness are changing (like watching a movie on screen in a first-person perspective). It wouldn't feel like you were going anywhere, it would seem to awareness that there are appearances passing the awareness but the awareness is still and unmoving. As if everything is coming to awareness, rather then awareness moving.
Nonduality (or whatever label) pointers use many different words to describe the same exactly "thing". We are all conditioned to think that words mean things, so everytime a word is being used, a concept or idea about that word is seen as a very particular thing and description. But what is being pointed to has no description because it's not a thing, it's everything/nothing. It's this one life without the mental concept of separating life into parts or things. It's a nonconceptual seeing of what is here.
Therefore, whatever word is being used: Awareness, Consciousness, Nothing, Silence, Freedom, Oneness, Energy, Love, God, Divine, Timelessness, Beingness, Perfection, Enlightenment, Nonduality, etc... what is being pointed to is always describing a never-changing and always-present presence that is awake, alert, and aware right now.
This never-changing and always-present source can also never be created because it is constantly there. There is no way to create silence, silence is always there as a continuous constant. Sound can be created in the foreground but the backdrop of silence never actually vanishes, even in the foreground of loud noisy obnoxious sounds. The same can be true for any other word mentioned above or otherwise. These are just words to point.
Really there is no backdrop or foreground. There is no silence versus sound. Every word that is used, an opposite can be suggested but only in the appearance of the first word. What is being pointed to is wordless because no word or description can capture it, no word is more true, accurate, or better than any other word.
12.*Acting without assuming a role or identity based on my own or others’ expectations.
It's all conditional stimulus responses to the unfolding environment and nobody has control over the environment or the responses. Therefore the actions don't seem to matter or have an influential solidity to them, even if the action seemed to be influenced by expectations.
13.*A sense of immense freedom and possibility in my moment-to-moment experience.
The body here is not experienced as a container, but only an appearance. It can only be experienced as a container if there is a thought overlay being identified with. Being contained within the body is not a direct experience of anybody, only a overlay of that conceptual belief. There is nothing about the senses that convey "I am in this body"... only thought could ever convey that belief. So freedom of the body is really only freedom from thought identification.
Therefore freedom is default and thought is the overlay that stops that from freedom from being seen. Hence there is no opposite of freedom (prison), only a prison created by the mind of thought. A false overlay.
When you see the freedom you are, thoughts become obvious and possibilities are seen to be endless. An uninterest in thought and what it thinks is possible seems to unfold.
14. *A desire to be understood by others.
You reach a point where every desire outside this hereness is seen to be insanity of thought creating stories.
Moreover, you can't understand yourself or know what you are on a intellectual level, so seeking to find other in this is more story creating.
In other words, the only way for "I wish others could understand me" to look real (more than just a story of thought) you have to be coming from an idea that you do understand yourself and also the idea that there are others out there who don't understand you. Yet it's seen that the only way to understand yourself as something is to understand other as not that (the play of nonexistence opposites and comparing again).
It can seem that through nondual pointing something is known but really it's a dropping of all concepts and arriving at place where nothing it truly understood or known with certainty, except the obviousness that something is aware right now and the direct evidence that unfolds from that simplistic seeing. Everything else is up for question.
15. *Concern or discomfort about either the past or future.
Thoughts of past and future still arise but there is no identification that thoughts hold anything other than awareness. Awareness is as equally empty as the thoughts it is aware of, since thoughts and awareness are not two.
16. *A sense of fear or anxiety that inhibits my actions.
There is nothing wrong with fear or anxiety since it is none other than awareness itself, but it doesn't seem to come up anymore. Not that it won't or can't, since there is no knowing what will unfold next. And it really doesn't matter which way it does unfold since it's all awareness (or whatever word).
17. *A feeling of profound aliveness and vitality.
See through all concepts as false and only than can every concept be fully enjoyed. Without the conceptual overlay, there seems to be a raw seeing that isn't blurred by "knowing" what something is. You see it for what it is, whatever it is.
For example, when you look at mountain, your mind says "that's a mountain" and now that it knows what it is, it doesn't really see it. It sees the label. Now that it has the conceptual label, it doesn't have to really look at it, be curious about it, or enjoy it's beauty since it's just a mountain.
Without the conventional labels overlaying it, it can be enjoyed for what it is without knowing what it is. Everything has its own unique beauty and it's enjoyed as such. Awareness is as infinite in its appearances as it is itself. Unique qualities of one infinite awareness.
It doesn't always feel profound, sometimes everything in life can be seen as mundane, normal, and boring too.
There is no telling what feelings, experiences, states of mind, or sensation will show up. It's all equally there for availability.
18. *Acting without a desire to change anybody or anything.
Being everywhere as everything and everybody, what could you possibly want from anybody or anything?
19. *Feelings of gratitude and/or open curiosity about all experiences.
Feelings and experience come and go. They don't seem to hold that much importance on what is felt or experienced. Sometimes gratitude and curiosity seem to be there and other times not but the feelings and experiences don't really add up to anything or change what is here.
Once feelings and experiences pass, there is no proof outside the present that they really happened anyhow. It's all finite and fleeting holding nothing but a faint memory created by the story of thoughts in the mind.
There is a simply beauty in seeing this. It might sound apathy but it's really an unconditional loving. Loving what is without conditions.
20. *A sense of the flawlessness and beauty of everything and everyone, just as they are.
Not that everything is perfection. Perfection is just a concept. But that everything couldn't unfold any other way otherwise it would. Who am I to say how the universe should unfold? It will unfold how it pleases, with or without my opinion about it. It is what it is, how can it be other than that?
Awareness doesn't need to goto the mind for a second opinion.
21. *A knowing that whatever manifests, manifests; and that it is always beyond and different from what could have been predicted or expected.
You can only expect something based on holding the conceptual idea that there is a past and there is a pattern to how that past unfolds.
The same holds true for predictions. Holding the idea that there is a future that somehow repeats itself only then can the idea of prediction ever been seen as a real reality.
Since it's obvious that there is only now, those ideas seem to hold no foundation.
Everything is seen to be fresh and new since there is no evidence of a past to claim it being otherwise.
Even if there seems to be an appearance of something reappearing, that can only be based on a memory of thought that is happening now.
I am not saying things don't work in cycles or patterns that repeat, I am saying there is no proof outside the present that anything else happened outside the present.
Based on that evidence, you are always meeting each person you claim to know for the first time everytime you see them.
So it's really about an unknowing rather than knowing. I unknown everybody and everything based on the basis of direct experience. There is a seeing that anything is possible. Any unfolding can occur, even things that seem to have a solid record for "reappearing". Even the Earth could stop rotating right now and the Sun will not rise or set (one of many things people claim to know is constant).
I don't predict or expect to know what manifestation is going to unfold.
Life is more mysterious than we were conditioned to believe and our direct experience can collapse any notion of it being otherwise.
22. *Great wonderment that is so humbling that what results is only surrender.
It's simply a seeing that you can't know this mystery or ever solve it since it holds all paradoxes.
When before the mind was creating the idea of a split and choosing one or the other (where there is only one). The mind eventually surrenders to the fact that it can't solve this. It can't choose because the seemingly two both seem fitting. It surrenders.
23. *A knowing that the appearance of the world is simply unfolding with no decisions or actions being taken by me.
There is this knowing that there is no decider, but sometimes it feels like there is a decider. All states and experiences are allowed in this but in the core (even when the decider seems to be there) there is knowing that nobody chose anything.
The body/mind who thinks it is the thinker of the thoughts, will only see one state or experience and that is the experience of a thinker, doer, chooser, decider since that belief allows them to ignore every other experience that doesn't match that belief.
Since experiences and states are always temporary phenomenon, they are always changing and therefore many experiences/states are seen to come into focus from moment to moment. And the "decider" is one of that many.
So the knowing is always there but the experience of it is not always there.
24. *A knowing that what can't be expressed is reality while appearances are just a dream.
Like a dream at night, there seems to be many events taking place in the dream and all those events seem to be real while the dream is happening.
Yet when you wake-up from the dream and look back upon the dream, it's seen that all the events that seemed to take place were all awareness (since that is where it all stemmed from).
Reality is comparable to the dream except without a dreamer. And the appearances or events in the dream that seem to take place, are just the dream.
In other words, what can't be expressed (reality) and the appearances (dream) are not two. They are both one. Both dream or both reality if you prefer. Some would say that this life is an illusion and doesn't exist at all, but what are they comparing it to that is real in order to know this life to be an illusion? What part of life is more real than any other part? It's just a way of pointing. This life is not an illusion, it is both illusion AND real simultaneously because both appear in this one life. What it is appearing to, is you. Every idea, thoughts. emotion, feeling, sensation, state, experience, etc... is an appearance that is appearing to you. The appearances and what is witnessing the appearances are the same exact thing. One life, one environment, one dream, one reality, one seeing, etc...
