Cherrypicking

Be clear on this. No one individual, philosophy, guide-book, guru or religion has all the answers to your life. If there was one such universal source of truth (and many claim they have it - at one time so did I) there would be just one philosophy of life and we'd all be following it, rather than the myriad of beliefs past and present that people have followed to varying degrees of success. However much the Dalai Lama is a wonderful advert for Tibetan Buddhism, Richard Dawkins a powerful advocate of rationalist atheism, Mother Theresa a stunning example of Christianity, none of these great figures are YOU in your situation with your experience.

I was once a champion of Nicene Creed Trinitarian Christianity as the source of all truth, and the answer to all your problems. Now I advocate non-dualism as truth, the reality of a single consciousness, but do not ask me the answer to your problems. Ask me to tell you where the answer to your problem can be found and you may find my answer unsatisfying - it is found within you.

So how do you find answers within you? And why haven't you found the answers already? It is the destiny of many lives not to even begin this journey. Some take as read that the conclusions they have drawn is reality, and simply do their best to fit into it. Some never get the chance to even consider such questions as circumstances either end their life beforehand or force them to focus on simple survival. Others are forced by the prevailing majority view to accept one philosophy on pain of death or suffering. Sometimes there is only one belief you hear of that everyone accepts unchallenged.

Only a precious few are free enough, have time enough and sufficient access to the world's accumulated wisdom to be in a position to undertake the journey to true-self discovery. It is a journey you must make alone. Not being where you are, my guidance is inevitably limited.

Advice however is plentiful. In every philosophy, even those rooted in hatred, there is at least one useful nugget of helpful advice. Just by having access to the world-wide web, an infinite source of helpful advice from every philosophy can have application to your unique life. Out there is a vast goldmine of suggestions.

I have learned to cherrypick. No one voice or scripture has the credibility in my eyes to tell me how to live my life. However, many voices have great truth to offer me. As I travel my own path, unique to me, I go on gathering, sifting, comparing subjective truths. Only those that fit me, than ring true with my experience do I need to absorb. As my experience changes, some wisdom gets discarded, new truths are absorbed.

And so I am now no witness, no evangelist for any one way, any one path, any single great truth. I am however a proliferator and sharer of advice. It is fun, a joy a pleasure, to discover that advice I passed on helped another. That is why I do it. I love seeing what I do make a difference.

But to carry on doing that, I myself need to carry on learning and listening. Only in weakness and imperfection can we experience uniqueness. We all came from perfection, to perfection we will return, and be one once more. With all eternity to be perfect and one, I am happy to experience uniqueness for a time, and bring assistance and comfort to those finding it a struggle.

More on nondualism

This is a reprint from my blog http://www.garyswordsofwisdom.blogspot.com/

Hold an arbitary object in front of you, such as a pencil. Are you a pencil? The answer would seem blatantly obvious - of course not. Everything in your experience and understanding tells you that the idea is preposterous. When however you look further into exactly what a pencil is and what you are, deeply disturbing questions arise about the fundamental nature of everything. I have explored this question and reached a startling conclusion. I am not the first to reach it, in fact countless millions have over millennia.

It is no less shocking to any mind brought up in Western culture. There is no doubt in my awareness that everything I am aware of is actually one thing. All that is within awareness is one universal consciousness. This is at first impossible to grasp, meaningless twaddle to common experience, but there is one very good model by which you may understand - that of the dream.

Consider a dream. When you are having a particularly vivid dream, it seems very real at the time. It provokes real emotions that carry into consciousness. For example when you wake from a nightmare, you can wake up feeling terrified. And yet what was the whole experience made of? What were the true nature of the other people and objects in your dream? Clearly they were all simply your consciousness, as separate and physical as they may have felt.

In the same way, whilst apparently wide awake, what are you experiencing right now? On the most fundamental physical level, energy is simply changing form. It is YOUR MIND that is turning it into the experience that you call "your life". What you think is happening is actually far removed from true reality as much as the dreamworld is from the conscious world. This true reality is nondualism, the acceptance that all things are actually one universal consciousness.

As shocking as the implications are, to embrace this truth makes very little immediate impact on your life, any more than waking "reality" affects a dream. You still experience the dream until you wake. In the same way, knowing what you truly are does not stop you experiencing life. What you will get in time is relief, total peace of mind, that no life experience can take from you. If that is attractive, maybe you should explore further. For those who like logical/scientific argument, follow this link for an excellent beginner's explanation.