Hey guys, this is Pablo with Meditation Amsterdam, and in today's video, I would like to do something a little bit different than the typical talking that I do in these videos and take you through five different ways in which the non-dual experience can be tapped into.

This can be done even if momentarily or fleetingly, so to speak, or perhaps in a very deep way depending on how ready your mind is or how well the guidance is tapped into. Before launching into what could be an interesting experimentation with the senses and our attention, I want to make the caveat that this kind of touching the non-dual experience can be done, but is rarely going to make up for the process of working with embodiment and trauma resolution.

It involves clearing out mental tendencies and mental density that will likely keep bringing the mind down to the pedestrian day-to-day type of consciousness in which we feel separate from everything else and potentially contend with the world or even with our own emotions and thoughts. So even though it seems to be fashionable nowadays to say, 'I'll point you directly to non-duality' or 'this is the direct path, and once you have it, you have it,' I'm much more of a proponent that this should be attempted often.

However, the clarification of the mind and the cultivation of a mental field that is free from hang-ups and distortions doesn't only show us non-duality but keeps us there. That is my perspective.

I believe this process is essential to truly engage with the non-dual experience.

don't think that that process can be sidestepped and even the good teachers will tell you that even if you do arrive and stay at the non-dual state in a single go, then all the work is still

ahead of you in terms of clarification of the mind and resolution of karmic tendencies, vasanas, samsaras, whichever name we want to give those. Right? So that's the caveat that I do stand by that philosophy of

cultivation, embodiment, and the rest of it. Now, having said all that, we're going to launch into these experiments. You don't need to be sitting or lying down or in any particular position or do anything

particularly special, nor do you need to watch the video while doing this necessarily. It can be an audio experience, but it is better if you are in a quiet space and not operating heavy machinery or anything of the like while you do this because it

does require you to play with your attention in a very specific kind of way. So, one of the first things that you could try in order to get acquainted with non-duality—oh, let me take a step back. What we're aiming to do is to

collapse the sense of subject and object into a single reality. Yeah, so this division of 'I' and my experience is what we're trying to collapse into a single unity. So, so long as it feels like we are separate from experience, then the non-dual

is not quite there but there are also degrees to this, so once again let's try the first experiment. This can be done with the visual field. What I'd like you to do is take your sense of sight and rather than zeroing in

on perhaps my face or this video or whatever it is that you were looking at at this moment, I would like you to use your eyes to take a panoramic view of the entire room and to use what would be called a soft

gaze, which means that your eyes should not be darting around looking at objects or analyzing any particular detail in what's in front of you. Instead, open your visual field to try and capture everything that is in front of you visually all at the same time, almost as

if you were trying to gobble up the room with your eyes, taking in all the light, all the colors, and all the shapes at once—everything from the ceiling or the sky to the floor or the ground in front of you, and everything that can be seen

peripherally to the sides, both at the same time without trying to gather any detail or do anything special. I want you to just take it in and notice that as you do this, you realize that this entire oval of light, shape, and

color that's in front of you had always been there. In other words, this was transmitting all along, and you're not really looking at things; it's more like sight is happening to you, and you are at the receiving end of it. I want you to get a

Feel for how when we use our eyes in a broad and receptive way, it feels less like we are reaching out to the objects, which is what happens when we narrow our gaze, and it feels more like the entire experience of sight is immersive, and we are at the center of it.

If you go one step further than that, you allow that experience to completely envelop you, and you can become sight. You can allow sight to be what you are at this moment, and you may want to ask the question if there's any real difference

between the experience of sight and what it is to be you. See if you can find any division between those two. This is perhaps a little bit easier when sight is being used in a soft, broad, and non-analytical kind

of way, in an immersive kind of way. So you really want to immerse yourself in the experience of sight and then ask the question, or rather use your attention to investigate: is there any difference between my sense of self and my sense of immersive sight at this

moment? A second way to have an inroad to nonduality could be to feel your body and notice all the bodily sensations that it's transmitting at every point in time. You want to become acquainted with the sense of having skin, the weight of your

muscles, how whatever you're standing or sitting on creates a lot of pressure because gravity is pulling on you, the touch of clothing, temperature, friction, the movement of your breath creates sensations in the body, your heartbeat creates sensations in the body, and there's a general sense of aliveness.

to the field of the body, and you can sense-check on that. So I could ask you, for example, 'Can you feel that you have a left foot?' and notice that you don't need to check visually to know that you have a left foot because there are

sensations present that confirm this to be the case. This can be done with every single part of the body. Just as with the eyes, it can be done with all the sensations of the body at once, allowing yourself

to take in almost a concert or an ocean of sensations in the body that you can feel immersed in. You can take a plunge into the bodily sensations, allowing them to essentially permeate you completely. This can be a very

intimate and very sensuous or voluptuous experience. It's not a clinical or analytical experience, but rather a felt experience. It's also very immersive and intimate. You can imagine yourself as being a sponge, a sensitive sponge, and the

sensations of the body are like water. If you let yourself absorb them in a totally intimate way, then you can ask the question: 'Am I, in what I believe myself to be, any different from the sensations of the body at this

moment experientially? Where is the difference between bodily sensations and myself? Investigate with your attention if there is any difference between the two, and what that difference is, if any. Can you preserve that difference, or does that difference vanish? Can you find yourself not so

much as the observer of the bodily sensations, but rather being the bodily sensations, can you be the body feeling itself for a moment and have that be what you are at this moment experientially? A third pointer to the nondual experience would be

to go directly to the sense of self, and rather than using the sense gates, if your attention is stable and refined enough, or if you are simply ready to do this, you can try with your attention to investigate and find out what it is that

you mean when you say 'I' or 'me.' Use your attention to investigate what the sense of 'I' stands for. Investigate with your attention: when you say 'I,' does it reside in a certain place, perhaps near your chest or behind your eyes? Is that place visible to you, or is

it hidden from view? Does it feel like an obscure something that you can't get close to? Does it have qualities? And once again, the equally, if not the most important question is, is that sense of 'I' any different from your current experience? In other words, you have a

sensory experience at this moment, and there is an 'I' claiming to be the witness of that experience. You can use your attention to investigate what you mean by 'I,' and you can equally use your attention to investigate how that 'I' is separate from

experience, if at all. Where does the separation sit between the two? Is there a difference between what I call 'I' and my experience at this moment? A fourth pointer towards the nondual would be to try and notice how there is, in you at this moment, something

that resists or wants to stay separate from your experience. So, you could say there is the experience of the now in the exact shape and form that it takes, and that now is as it is. And there's a witness or an eye that feels like the

opinion. I want something else, something better perhaps, or I want to be different, or I want to look away from this. A certain sense of wanting to stay separate from experience, as if to keep the prerogative to look away from that

experience; to brace away from that experience, or to ideate a timeline that is not here and now. See if you can investigate that sense of not this or against this, and see if you can fully allow that to be there and notice how that sense of not

this, that sense of 'I', is but another sense together with the sense of sight and the sense of having a body. But it is a sense that is a little bit more primary to those because it feels like where you're coming from. In other words, it is a more implicit sense and it feels

like you. It feels like 'I'. That 'I' is the eye in the flavor of wanting to be separate from experience, and I want to keep the prerogative to reject experience, to imagine a different experience, and to look away from the current experience. And the final pointer and

perhaps a rather difficult jump would be to notice that there is the sense of self, there is the experience of the senses. So there's 'I' as a witness, there's the senses, and both of those are completely contained as a single reality in the fact

of beingness. In other words, regardless of the notion of 'I' and 'other', both 'I' and 'other' are actors or players in an immutable present reality that is unalterable, in which the sense of 'I' arises and disappears on a constant basis, and that reality is singular.

And it does not have any particular qualities or boundaries. It is the self-affirming fact that enables the sense of self and other to play as characters within it and disappear, and it is behind the duality and the non-dual. It is the very

fact, rather than any particular shape or form that things take. To the mind, it is utterly abstract, and it can't be found, but it is undeniably— or rather, undeniable. It is its own very fact in which self and other

collapse. So from there, the sense of self and the sense of other can be known, but that fact cannot be known because it is a knowing fact, a self-knowing fact. And with that, those are five inroads to the non-dual experience. Um, with a bit of luck, one of

them worked well for you. Perhaps they all did; perhaps none of them did. This is a video that you could rewatch and experiment a little bit with, um, and notice that we are constantly trying to challenge the mental notion that our sense of self is somehow separate from

experience. There is a certain use of the mind which is more inward-oriented and also broader in nature, rather than analytical and narrow, which tends to enable that understanding to arise experientially. This is not meant to solve our problems or densities of the

mind that need to be worked through, as I explained at the start of the video. But if the nonu taste arises, it gives us a great opportunity to get a feel for it and to be more incentivized to work with our mind and our

cultivation, and to know that there's a 'there' there, which is very important to stay motivated and to continue in this lovely journey that we're on. So that was today's video. I hope you find it interesting and that it helps you. I'm keen to hear in the

comment section what you make of it. And as usual, if you think these are handy videos, then your liking, sharing, and subscribing is always appreciated. So thanks for watching thus far, and I'll be back with more pretty soon. Cheers and bye-bye!

Five Fast Ways to Enter Non-Duality by Using the Sense Gates and Pointing of Your Attention

Scripts