The Steak and the Video Game
El bistec y el videojuego
A question about whether pursuing life changes and personal healing conflicts with non-dual teachings, and how to hold both without falling into avoidance.
The Steak and the Video Game
A question about whether pursuing life changes and personal healing conflicts with non-dual teachings, and how to hold both without falling into avoidance.
I feel like I'm trying to do both: engage with non-dual understanding and also improve my life. But I worry about whether one undermines the other.
I think that's the better approach. But through an approach where you understand and look at the paradox, you'll be able to navigate it and have it be part of the transformation. You can start to see where you are seducing yourself into something that helps you avoid something else. That could be a practice of non-duality, or it could be some form of life improvement.
Not two things
Because the point of non-duality is that there aren't two. How could improving life be an avoidance of non-duality? It must be the same thing. Non-duality must be life as well. If you just take the truth of the concept: Advaita means "not two." So the sense of worldly living and spiritual living must be the same. Otherwise, it's duality.
Right. And there has to be something going on in the world. We're not here just to sit and do nothing.
The pointing of non-duality as a teaching (not so much what non-duality is, which is a map of the truth of this reality) is that what you're trying to get to, you won't find by improving or changing your life. I fully agree with that, and I repeat it a lot, especially in the meditations. But that in no way contradicts living life to the fullest. Those two completely coexist. You can live life to the fullest without expecting to find in some future experience that which you most deeply want.
So both just bring you into the now. It's the same thing, even.
It is the same thing. In fact, there is only this, which you could call non-duality, or you could call life. If you start to break it up and name it, you start to say something that is less and less true, because the more you name, the more you move away from reality. You could call it time, space, a world, life. It's also non-dual. It's also what is here now. You could call it presence. All of the naming of it is not what it is.
The steak and the video game
It's like this: say you love video games, and right now the thing you most want to do is play. But you're actually really hungry. So while you're playing, you're eating a steak. What you really need is the steak, and you can eat it while you're playing. You're trying to be the best gamer in that moment, having a lot of fun. In that sense, you can have the cake and eat it too. You can be living life to the fullest, but you're not expecting to get the steak tomorrow when you win. What non-duality as a teaching points to is that the steak is here. You can eat it now. You can start eating it now.
Some people then think, "I have to ignore tomorrow and not even try to live well; I just have to find a state that is here." And I'm saying: keep living the best life you can, but make sure you're not trying to get the state tomorrow, because it's not tomorrow. It's right here.
And that includes the emotional healing journey as well? That's also part of life, but I can engage in it while still recognizing something deeper.
Yes. But I want to be precise about something. You said "the play of duality." People talk that way, and sometimes it's an appropriate description. But there is no duality, literally.
From the higher sense, right? Everything is just on a spectrum of the same thing?
Not from the "higher" sense. From the reality sense. They literally are not two things.
But there's also the perspective that there is.
Only as a map.
And is that the trap?
The map and reality
Yes. To believe that the map is reality is the trap. When you start to refer to reality but you're actually pointing to the map, I'm saying: wait, you're talking about a map here.
Right. And that keeps you stuck, functioning from that level.
If you know you're looking at a map, it can help you get somewhere. But if you think the map is reality, you're going to be stuck in a map, not moving anywhere.
So would it be more correct to call it the play of form?
It's just life. The mystery of life. Yes, healing and all of that happens in life. It happens in a process, in a movement. The healing isn't going to get you to the steak. The steak is here. You can eat it now. The healing is going to add salt and pepper to the steak. The process of healing is like: "Oh, I can play the video game while I eat the steak. That's awesome." Or: "I can watch a movie while eating the popcorn. I don't have to pause the movie to eat the popcorn. I don't have to skip the popcorn to watch the movie." It's all what is here now: the movie and the popcorn, the game and the steak.
A couple of months ago, in a moment of desperation, I booked a psychic reading. She told me I was really spiritual but blocked, and that she could help. Of course, the mind wants to jump in: "You're blocked, you've got to fix this, something's wrong." But then I tried to reframe it: whether I'm blocked or not, it's all part of what I've come to experience. I can still set intentions to work through it while awakening to deeper levels of truth.
You could take the message and be curious. "How does this inform me to look at something that might be helpful?" In no way does that go against eating the steak now. You can do that and also see what better flavors and marinades are available. Maybe you've been putting on a seasoning you don't really like. Maybe what the psychic reader is pointing to is something that could shift at some level, making the taste of the steak a little richer. Because right now, having reality directly and fully as it is can be too much. Our true nature, the present moment, is sometimes too good to eat directly.
I don't quite get that.
Too much, too direct
Until you have the experience, you won't fully realize how intense it is to drop completely into now, to drop fully into yourself, and that it's not always comfortable. That's why we're constantly trying to move a little bit into tomorrow: "I'll taste this moment once I get to the door, and when I get to the door I'll taste it a little more when I get to the stairs." There's this constant small distraction because the taste of it fully now is a little too much. But it really is what we want the most: to just fully drop into this and taste it completely.
I definitely recognize this perpetual cycle of seeking and trying to make things better, and that lasting fulfillment isn't going to come from that. Being in the self is beautiful. Everything feels wider and more clear. I guess it just feels underwhelming as well, but I need to sit in it more.
The sense of it being underwhelming comes from a focus on thought. The seeking is that process of "I will taste what is a little more once I get over there."
I recognize that pattern. I do. I can see that it's not the awakening journey.
Resolving the paradox
But at the same time, if you say, "I notice I'm trying to get to the door so that I can taste the moment," and you recognize that as seeking, and so you decide, "I'm not going to go to the door; I'm just going to sit here and try to taste the moment," you've only resolved the paradox in one direction. You can actually go to the door and taste the whole movement as now. That's what I was pointing to in the meditation. You resolve the paradox not by endlessly pursuing and seeking, and not by refusing to move because movement seems to take you out of the moment. You resolve it by doing both.
Definitely. I try to practice being in the self throughout the day when I remember. I guess it's about balancing that with the intentions of the mind.
There is no balancing. The mind is going to make this sound complicated, and it's literally just: do what you want to do and taste every moment of it. Don't stop yourself from walking through the door because you project too much expectation on what's on the other side.
Yes. That's a good pointer.
Whether it's "It's going to be great" or "It's going to hurt" or "I'm going to get what I want and then it's going to hurt," none of that matters. It's going to be walking through the door and experiencing what's on the other side. Some of it will be painful, some of it will be great, but the living of it is wonderful. The mind will try to turn the whole thing into a very complicated puzzle, and it's literally the Buddhist teaching: don't attach to the outcome of your actions. That doesn't mean don't act. Obviously, there will be preferences: "I'd rather this go well, I'd rather eat something tasty." But the non-preference is that if it doesn't go that way, it's okay.
Trust as the antidote to fear
That's where trust comes in for me. I've really been experimenting with trust. I guess it's the opposite of fear, really.
It is. It's the antidote. And your life force, your vitality, your deepest desire in life: that needs to be nurtured, not pushed aside. Any spirituality in service of pushing aside your vitality, your life force, your deepest desire for this life is not a spirituality I recommend. It has to fully embrace that.
Yes. I see that very clearly now.
Because what happens in that kind of spirituality is that ultimately what is operating is a fear of pain.
I feel like I just got the wrong messaging, or maybe I interpreted it wrong.
It's a very tempting message. We as humans all have our temptations and forms of avoidance, and so there's going to be a message out there that we'll buy into, one that becomes the way we avoid fear and pain. For some of us it's spiritual, for some of us it's money or status, and there are millions of forms. The way we convince each other of the promise of happiness and well-being tomorrow, if you live in this specific way: it's all really a way of avoiding pain.
For me, the biggest pain was that I just didn't know what to do with my life. I feel like there's more clarity now. It still feels foggy, but I'm taking whatever bone the universe throws me and moving toward that.
Experimenting with desire
That will be clarified more and more through experimenting with what you are drawn to, which simultaneously scares you, because there's more anticipation of pain around the things we want the most. The pattern is that we settle for something simpler and easier, with less risk of pain, but then we're not satisfied. It wasn't really what we wanted.
This, to me, is part of spirituality. Because if it's not, then it's a dual spirituality where life is excluded. At the same time, nothing you want in life will, once you get it, fulfill you absolutely. Everything you attempt to be fulfilled by in life will fail. Every single thing. I guarantee it. It will give you momentary pleasant experiences, but what we really want is here always.
Which doesn't mean don't go for it fully. You can have both. You can have the most abundant life, going after every form of deliciousness, while you are fully delighted in the presence of what is, all the time. It can all be delightful, and that, to me, is the true non-duality. Even the pain, even the loss, even the moments of fear.
Thank you. I feel good about my understanding with this.
You're welcome. It's very delightful for me as well.