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One of the great things about using a blog is that readers can comment on what they read. Comments come in many varieties – some praise, some misunderstand that these writings are pointers rather than descriptors of truth, and some intelligently challenge an aspect of the writing. These latter are among my favorites, as they often represent questions that many readers have regarding non-dualism. A recent comment questioned the presence of intention-manifestation-related writings on this site – and questioned it on two levels. First, on the level of functionality – does I-M really ‘work’, or is it just wishful thinking? And secondly, on the level of materialism – should we really be wanting more, or should we learn to simply enjoy what we have?

Is Intention-Manifestation Just Wishful Thinking?

A common critique of I-M (as popularly outlined in ‘The Secret’), is that it is simply a method of wishful thinking. This tends to divide opinion into three camps – those who use I-M and swear it works, those who try I-M and find that it’s just another method for us to dream and become disappointed when our dreams don’t come to fruition, and those who dismiss the whole idea as ludicrous.

So what’s really going on here?

To understand, we have to step back and take a look at our regular lives. For instance, if we question the veracity of I-M, are we prepared to turn those same questions onto our regular way of doing things?

Let’s imagine that I want to purchase some land. I-M suggests that the way to acquire it is to apply the proper mental processes. We might say this is ridiculous – the only way we will acquire the land is to save up the money, contact the owner, and arrange a purchase. To most minds, the first method sounds like New-Age hocus-pocus, while the second sounds like common sense.

But is the second method common sense?

Seeing the Ridiculous

As we journey into non-dualism, we begin to see how very odd and marvelous our world is. Ridiculous, even.

What’s happening is that we’re beginning to see that, usually, we’re missing most of what’s going on around us. A person talks to us, and we fail to see that they are moving their mouths in strange patterns and making a bunch of strange sounds. We fail to appreciate (or even notice!) how marvelous it is that we can understand these sounds and make strange sounds in return (that they understand!). Flopping our tongues around and shaping our mouths into ridiculous shapes, we manage to communicate! As an experiment, take some pictures of a friend as they speak – you’ll get to see their faces frozen in very odd expressions.

But we miss all these expressions, and miss out on the miracle of speech – it’s just ‘perfectly normal’, and we walk around in a world that becomes more and more normal and dull.

If we turn this ‘marvelous-vision’ to something like acquiring land, we suddenly see that our ‘regular’, common-sense way of doing things is in fact very, very strange.

To illustrate, imagine that you and I are stranded on a deserted tropical island. You’ve landed on the half which has trees loaded with coconuts, and I’ve landed on the half which has trees loaded with mangoes.

You walk over, all friendly-like and say, “How about we have a coconut-mango feast!”

Now, you might think I would say “Sweet! Let’s eat!” But instead, I look at you as if you are crazy.

“Well,” I say, “that would be nice, but we really have to have an equal exchange of resources. Let’s collect shells and scrape numbers on them to signify different denominations of currency. Then I’ll have to take an inventory of mangoes and you take one of coconuts, and then we can do a market analysis to determine fair pricing. After that we can exchange coconuts and mangoes for shell currency, and that way we can be sure that we’re both getting a fair deal.”

Our Usual Game

You see, we are all playing a huge role-playing game according to certain rules (which vary from culture to culture and age to age), which we all take for granted as being ‘real’. We fail to see that this game is marvelous and ridiculous – nothing but a funny method of living that we’ve all more-or-less agreed to. So when I look at purchasing my land in the ‘regular’ way, what I’m actually doing is engaging in a very strange and complex ritual which, from many perspectives, is rather pointless and silly.

What about I-M? I-M might indeed be silly, but it’s definitely not any more silly than our usual way of doing things. Indeed, when we look at our Standard Dualistic Model (which is basically sanctioned insanity), and then take a look at the I-M model, we’ll probably find that the I-M model makes just as much (if not more) sense! For instance, if I want a girlfriend and I start using I-M, I’m probably going to find myself a lot more confident. This is likely why love potions and other such things can work so well – because in reality, the world is not made up of ‘facts’ such as market fluctuations on coconuts and mangoes. It’s made up of people-interactions (which is the only way we can have market fluctuations). We think it’s external facts (a shortage of coconuts, for instance) which create something like a market fluctuation. But it’s actually the system we’ve created and continue to create via active participation.

We’re making the game, and we’ve forgotten we’re doing it!

It’s All About People

When we see that we’re making the game up as we go along, we see that a world-view that focuses on our own (and on others’) mind-sets makes a lot more sense than our usual world-view of trying to wrestle with all the imagined external forces of the world.

At issue here is that we are all living by a world-model. And all of these models are versions of dualism. If you’re going to use a version, which one makes the most sense to use? If you think it’s the one the rest of the world is using, you might want to take another look . . .

Is Materialism Non-Spiritual?

One might also ask why we’re wanting things in the first place? Isn’t it more spiritual or enlightened to be in the Now?

Non-dualism is often described as ‘being in the present moment,’ or ‘being in the Now’. But this description is just as faulty as saying that non-dualism is ‘dwelling in Yesterday’. This idea of ‘being in the Now’ can be useful for pointing toward non-dualism, but it doesn’t in any way describe the pure experience of non-dualism.

If we turn non-dualism into an idea, it’s easy to say that it has certain properties – such as being happy with your present circumstances. But what we’re failing to see is that we can’t be anywhere but in our present circumstances. In Zen, it’s been described in a little saying about seeing the nature of mountains – in the third viewpoint described in the saying, we come full circle and see that everything in our ‘regular’ life (all the marvelous, ridiculous games we’re playing) are just as much a part of ‘reality’ as anything else. In this way, truly-realized non-dualism is almost indistinguishable from dualism. The non-dualistic mind is free to think of yesterday (it’s simply aware that it’s doing this in the present moment, and thus can fully immerse itself in the illusion without becoming lost in it). It is free to dream of tomorrows. It can hope and wonder and experience emotion and live more fully than our dualistic mind-set could ever dream of.

Non-dualism is not about following certain rules of behavior or favoring certain thoughts over other thoughts. It’s simply about seeing all our illusions for what they are. Not as realities. Not as illusions.

As what they are.

Gimmee More Stuff!

For most of us, the ‘material’ world of cars and food and houses is actually a symbolic world. We not only miss out on the reality of what ‘things’ are (just as we miss out on how very strange the act of speech is), but we attach symbolic meaning onto everything in our lives.

In this way, when we decide to scorn material things, or to try to develop an appreciation for the things we have (which includes not only objects, but people, relationships, security, status, etc.), we’re just playing a more refined and subtle game of making things into symbols.

If we can find our way through our illusions, we can see material things for what they actually are, and in that way, become true Materialists in a world of Symbolists. Here, we truly appreciate material things, for we see them in both their dualistic nature (as marvelously ridiculous symbols) and in their non-dual nature (indescribable). Our relationship with the material world changes completely – so fully and completely that it actually resembles our prior relationship with the material world.

This is a state where you can simultaneously appreciate what you have and still strive for more – all without any real desire for a certain outcome. It’s an immersion in the game that is quite indescribable. It is not something we can try to act out – it’s actually more like a symptom of ‘going non-dualistic’.

We’ll do ourselves a great favor if we stop trying to turn non-dualism into a ‘thing’ and then try to behave according to our imagined definition of it. If we simply experience non-dualism directly, all of these complicated matters become perfectly clear, and we come to understand what is meant by ‘non-dualism.’

It’s not a matter of creating another world-model – it’s a matter of direct experience. It’s available to us all in the moment we stop our constant symbol-creation and experience what’s actually going on.