THE PLACE OF NON-DUALISM

It’s about perception. Reality is Christ. Non-dualistic thinking is primarily insight that comes from penetrating the superficial and seeing the Real, yet more than this. It is spiritual discernment. It enables us to penetrate appearances and see things as they are – minus the masks and disguises of words and labels. Light is seen in oneness with the Living Word – seldom in words. The ultimate Word is Jesus Christ who is Being itself. Thus ‘In Him we live and move and have our being.’
NOT IN LITTLE BOXES
Non-dualism does not perceive a split world. But it does not believe there is no truth. Glued to binaries we are dualistic. In non-dualism we are open to ‘both and perceptive thinking.’ Dualism is often a weapon of political activists and religious idealogues. Fundamentalism thrives on it. In Christian thought a basic dualism is the sacred/secular dichotomy, which is a function of living in the knowledge of good and evil. And being tied to opposites as a way of thinking.
GOD THERE. ME HERE.
‘Dualism in the realm of cosmology involves the separation of God from his world.’ Dualism in the conception of persons is often seen as a mind/body dichotomy, as in mind is good and body is bad. The restriction of subtlety to words and positions is a feature of fundamentalism both religious and secular. Why contain yourself in a sabbath day when you can have a Sabbath Life?
POWER OF PERCEPTION
Good thinking makes room for dualism and non-dualism and knows where each is appropriate. Dualistic thought will get you to London instead of Los Angeles on your flight. Non-dualistic thinking is about being and is more helpful in revealing who we are.
IT’S NOT ECLECTICISM
We are not non-dualistic because we are well read or philosophically literate. The foundation of epistemological non-duality is a lived oneness with Christ which is a mind that does not live in separation from God or creation. Both John and Paul are proficient in their non-dualistic gospel. The ultimate word is not words but Christ the Living Word. In Christ our life we have more than comprehension and more than understanding. We have discernment – the ability to perceive reality as it is, which Jesus called ‘walking in the light.’
THE WORD IS CHRIST
‘For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart’ Heb 4.12 NIV.
This Word as our being separates guff from wisdom and nonsense from spirituality. Oneness with this word enables us to avoid incompetent political messiahs and deviant gospels.
The door to such ‘seeing’ is the Jesus lens in which Christ is not only our life. He is us. Christ our Light, is the light through which all things are known and understood. The Door to this kind of revelation is the door out of the compartments and false dichotomies of the knowledge of good and evil * – the realm of the letter that not only kills spirit and soul but traps the religious in the world of appearances.
LAND OF THE NEW COVENANT
There is a realm in which such insight is normal. It is the post cross country of the new covenant where we live not from laws and rules in separation from God, but in union with God through the person of Jesus Christ.
MADE THE TWO ONE
In Jesus we are one with God as daughters and sons in Spirit and in truth. Christ came among us in the flesh in Palestine and He comes into us in our flesh in the Spirit of Sonship.
Paul talked of ‘Christ our life’ because only in oneness with Him are we fully alive and exquisitely sighted. The reason being that when Jesus is our life – He not only represents us but IS US, we have become soil in which the Spirit of Wisdom and revelation takes root and flourishes. Holy Spirit and the gifts added to the old covenant, is the same as buying a tree and leaving it in its polythene container all its life and not planting it in the soil. Nothing grows in separation.
SHARPNESS OF THE LIVING WORD
Nevertheless, non-dualistic thinking does not ban logic, the ability to separate good from evil or name nonsense for what it is. Richard Rohr writes, “Once you have gained even momentary access to nondual unity, all previous stages can be returned to as needed, including your dualistic reason. In fact, your reason will have a new freedom and clarity, because it is less needy — it does not need to always be right, self-sufficient, or convinced it possesses the whole picture.” (1)
FALL CONDITIONED KNOWING
Law-based thinking is essentially dualistic, separationist and the epistemology of the knowledge of good and evil. Non-dualistic thinking is the result of union with God. It’s how spiritual people think. It’s the conversation of the sons of God.
If a life given to religion is a life of muffled purpose and confusion, a life absorbed in Christ’s person is clarity with spirit and life. Thus in Jesus we have life and are light.
THE LIGHT
Jesus, John and Paul spoke with precision and clarity because they were absorbed in Christ’ life and had entered the realm of spirit and truth. By living in this mode we know what the Bible is saying and in every other realm we can see things as they are. When the gifts of the Spirit are coupled with this reality (which is the light of the world) we see things as they are – and live with authority and not as the scribes.
* Some religious communities are almost entirely cultures of a Christian version of the knowledge of good and evil. The dilemma of such systems of belief is that they attempt to find liberty from the Fall by the principles of the tree that began  the Fall.
 
(1) Rohr, Richard. The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See (p. 118). The Crossroad Publishing Company. Kindle Edition.