Reply #25: It's hard to position nondualism in the realm of the everyday

[GliderGuider]

Taken on its own, "spoonlessness" can be seen as an attempt to negate Cartesian dualism. And since dualism is so obviously the underpinning of our everyday perception of the everyday world, nondualism is easy to dismiss as irrelevant sophistry. To those who "get" nondualism however, it's anything but irrelevant - it can be a very fruitful way to view the world.

I use a paradoxical expression of reality that's captured in two pairs of opposing statements that are both simultaneously "true":

||Everything is real||Everything is illusion||
||  Everything is   ||      Nothing is      ||

The first pair expresses the truth of both the everyday dualistic perception of the world as well as the nondualist awareness that the appearance of separateness is an illusion. The second pair expresses the simultaneous truth of both Spoonfulness and Spoonlessness. To me reality doesn't feel complete unless all four perceptions coexist. That can be the hard part...

The Indian nondualist sage Nisargadatta has a famous quote about spoonlessness: "Love says "I am everything". Wisdom says "I am nothing". Between the two, my life flows."