What Does It Mean to Live in Non-Duality? - The Little Prince Series

Daily Spiritual Insight from the Story of The Little Prince

When the Little Prince talks about good seeds and bad seeds that sprout on his planet, someone responds, "But he is judging. It's a judgment to say something is good or bad. We are supposed to move beyond duality into nonduality, in which nothing is either right or wrong, good or evil."

If we live beyond duality, in the oneness of being, do we no longer differentiate between things? Do we no longer taste something as either sweet or bitter, or conclude that something is harmful to us instead of beneficial?

Does nonduality mean we transcend a recognition of some things as good and some as bad?

I can tell you, I judge it not smart to eat arsenic. I judge it not smart to fail to wash my hands before preparing food after using the bathroom. I judge it bad for me to eat something that gives me food poisoning.

But does this make arsenic evil in and of itself? Does it make harmful bacterial morally wrong? Not at all.

It's a common conception that moving beyond duality means we see everything as neither good nor bad, beneficial nor harmful. Well, the Little Prince wants us to know it's a serious misconception.

To live free of duality doesn't mean we no longer differentiate between things. We continue to identify someone as male or female. We recognize that daytime is different from nighttime. We acknowledge that some things are soft, others hard; some things sweet, others bitter.

To live beyond duality isn't to deny the multifaceted nature of reality. Rather, it means we embrace the whole of reality as a seamless fabric, everything part and parcel of everything else.

This enables us to approach life without attachment but with full involvement. We don't cling to some things in our life while resisting others.

Nonduality is about acceptance of everything in our life, grounded in the recognition that ultimately nothing but God exists.

To be nondual is to see that everything is an evolving expression of the divine Presence. There are not two powers, one good and one evil. There is just the one reality, which is an evolving reality that is at different stages of development.

In nonduality there is no clinging and no resistance. There is just acceptance of the whole of our life experience.

Living beyond duality doesn't mean our experience of the vast array of the textures of life disappears. It doesn't mean we vanish back into the no-thingness of the Void.

To live a conscious life isn't to plunge back into unconsciousness of all the different aspects of life we experience each day. Nonduality isn't a rejection of variety.

On the contrary, to become so conscious that we live in nonduality is to become aware of everything, instead of screening much of life out as most people do, especially its more painful or unpleasant aspects.

To express this in Eastern terms, nonduality is the experience of mindfulness.

To be mindful takes us beyond duality because there is nothing we are shutting out, nothing we are pretending doesn't exist.

Mindfulness involves consciousness of everything. It's when we are aware to this degree that we begin to see the entirety of life as a seamless garment.

In a dualistic state we are like people strolling through the aisles of a supermarket, picking up one item, ignoring another, rejecting another.

In a mindful state-a nondualistic state-we are present to everything and therefore open to be taught by all of our experiences, not just the ones we enjoy.

We learn to discern what's to our advantage and what's to our disadvantage. We judge some things helpful and some things detrimental.

David Robert Ord is author of?Your Forgotten Self Mirrored in Jesus the Christ and the audio book?Lessons in Loving--A Journey into the Heart, both from Namaste Publishing, publishers of Eckhart Tolle and other transformational authors.

Join us in the daily blog Consciousness Rising for an in-depth understanding of how we become conscious, truly present in the whole of our life. http://www.namastepublishing.com/blog/author/david-robert-ord.

Also, for an in-depth understanding of the message of The Little Prince, see the Namaste Publishing audio book Lessons in Loving-A Journey into the Heart.