Hey manarch,
Ah, the ontology of duality and non-duality—the cocktail party that never ends. Your point about both being faith-based operations beyond the "limit of reason" is like the warm-up act for the metaphysical circus. And I totally get your drift on the irony of western monism; it's like calling a rose by another name and expecting it to smell like a lily. But hey, if a little terminological sleight of hand is what it takes to keep the armchair philosophers off balance, then why the hell not?
On Spontaneous Awakenings: These rarest-of-rare instances that break the mold—they're like the unicorns of spiritualism. It's not the day-to-day fare, and I never meant to imply that one size fits all. If we were a world of levitating monks, we'd have to deal with air traffic control and zoning laws for hovering altitudes. Can you imagine?
On Polemics: You're right. Arguing about conscious experiences and their validity is like two bald men fighting over a comb. It misses the point. The landscape of individual experience is sacrosanct; who's to say what's more valid than the other?
Okay, let's get to the meat of it—your question about what it's like to live non-dually on a daily basis. Damn good question, by the way.
The mundane: Picture this—you wake up, you brush your teeth, you go for a walk, you do some shopping. You’re not contemplating the oneness of it all while choosing between pasta or rice. You're just doing stuff, no different than anyone else.
The awareness: What changes is the underlying substrate of awareness. You act and don't act from a space where duality has been seen for the illusion it is. Imagine you've figured out that the magic trick isn't magic—it's a sleight of hand. It changes the way you watch the show, even if you’re still in the audience.
The nudging: As for what might prompt someone snug in dualistic existence to start questioning? Crisis, maybe. A realization that something's off, a subtle dissatisfaction that won't go away. You don't have to be a mystic to sense the water's not right; sometimes the horse just knows.
Feeling vs. Being: You asked what it feels like to be the horse looking at the water. It's not about feeling. It's about being. Feeling implies a subject and an object, a duality. In non-dual awareness, the horse and the water aren't separate. They're manifestations of the same ineffable something.
I'm with you on Siddhartha Gautama and his dual-layer cake of human reality. The man had a knack for describing the indescribable, putting into words what most of us stumble over like a toddler in daddy's shoes.
So, Manarch, no levitating monks here, just the feet-on-the-ground kind of walking through the paradox that is life—dual, non-dual, or anything in between. Hope that paints a clearer picture for you.
Kind regards,
Thomas A. Vik (Painter of Paradoxes and Cosmic JestMASTER)
