‘Can Nonduality Help Me Heal?’

Nonduality is simply pointing to the wholeness you already are. And when this wholeness is seen, it is seen through the being of it. And that is already happening, right now, wherever and whoever you appear to be.

The separate self cannot really hear that though. The separate self (or ego, call it what you will) always feels incomplete and so insists that enlightenment or awakening (again, call it what you will) provide some kind of benefit for the individual self. So, this question of healing (and other questions like it) tend to come up.

This question arises from the belief and experience of separation and the fear, vulnerability and anxiety that the separate self can sometimes feel as a result of that separation. Nonduality is pointing to the absence of a separate self, the absence of the duality that says you and life are separate. This is the suggestion that you do not live your life, life lives you. If you try to find this self that so desperately wants to feel whole, wants to heal, wants comfort and so on, what do you actually find?

You can ask that question now. Who are you? What conditioned answers can you see arising?

You’ll likely find answers about your identity, your memories, your feelings. Deep down however, you know you are none of these finite, passing states. Health also is a state. It comes and goes, it is in constant flux. It is an ever changing state, an organic flow. Sometimes illness or sickness happens and sometimes healing happens also. As separate individuals, we so desperately want the spiritual search or the spiritual way of life to bring us great benefits.

The paradox of awakening however is that no one wakes up. There is no one to claim enlightenment. Suddenly, all that is left is what is happening. That might be illness, that might be health. Sickness and health dissolve here. They arise and fall away together. The idea of health never appears without the idea of sickness. In the end, it’s just a lot of words and concepts, or as Shakespeare has it:

‘it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.’

In the paradox of enlightenment, the idiot is the genius, the sound and fury is silence and calm and nothing is being everything.