The Doors

 

This morning I had a fragment of a dream in which I was in the bathroom at the other end of our apartment.  I extended my hand to turn the door handle, which makes a heavy “clack” sound when you turn it.  At that moment, my dream overlapped with my waking experience, and the same “clack” came from down the hall as C exited the bathroom.

I felt the neutral emotion of my dream get displaced by a feeling of annoyance that C was making too much noise and waking us up.  This feeling wasn’t justified: he wasn’t being too loud, and it was already time for me to get up anyway, and I was already half-awake.

I occurred to me that I had just been presented with a metaphor, at a mundane, micro-level, of the difference between dual and non-dual thinking.  Non-duality is a central concept among the neo-contemplative crowd, including Richard Rohr, Cynthia Borgeault, and Thomas Keating.  The basic idea goes like this: our perception of reality is conditioned by an “egoic operating system” which makes sense of  things by differentiating between them: I know an apple is an apple because it is not a unicycle, I know three is three because it’s not four, and so on. 

Our sense of ourselves and our reality follows the same framework: I know who “I” am because I am not you.  This “this-or-that” logic creates additional binary categories like good and evil, right and wrong, yes or no. 

This way of thinking isn’t all bad.  It comes in quite handy as we go about our lives, doing our jobs, and going from place to place.  But, as Rohr argues, “the dualistic mind cannot process things like infinity, mystery, God, grace, suffering, sexuality, death, or love; this is exactly why most people stumble over these very issues.” 

In The Wisdom Jesus, Bourgeault applies this thinking to an interpretation of the gospels, arguing that JC was not trying to teach us the difference between good and bad, or between “Godly” vs “Ungodly” living.  Instead, he was trying to show us how to evolve beyond our self-centered, nondual way of thinking and being.    

A prime example is in Matthew 4:17: “From that time on, Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’”  An old-school Christian interpretation of this line might be something like, “Jesus says stop sinning and doing other bad things, because God is keeping score and if your spiritual balance sheet is not in order, you’re not going to get into heaven when the time comes.”  This interpretation is not only false, argue the neo-contemplatives, it's also highly dangerous, and it's led to all sorts of suffering, on the personal and societal level, over the last 2,000 years.

The key to interpreting this passage is in the original Greek word which is translated into “repent.”  That word is metanoia, which literally means “go larger than (or beyond) the mind.”  In other words, get out of your own head, because, guess what?  Heaven is not some nightclub in the sky with St. Peter behind the velvet rope checking to see who’s on the VIP list; it’s right here, right now.  And all you have to do to experience it is to see things, not from your small selfish perspective, but as God wants you to see them.

This is enlightening stuff, and I know I haven’t done it justice here.  I also admit I find it hard to completely embrace.  Non-duality can easily get swamped by an inchoate, new-agey vibe of “it’s all good, man” which struggles to get traction.  Taken to an extreme, it leads to passivity and even apathy.  I have a tough time reconciling it with other worthy concepts like growth, accomplishment, and positive action.  Nonetheless, spending some time with it (e.g., in meditation or contemplative prayer) does encourage greater empathy, openness, serenity, and, if you will, peace.  And maybe there’s your answer right there.