This episode begins with Rupert’s early introduction to the spiritual path, and his recounting how an experience of loss in his early twenties proved to be a catalyst that intensified his interest. Dave then asks him to explain to the audience just what is Non-Duality? Rupert replies that it addresses three fundamental questions:
- What is the source of lasting peace and happiness?
- What is the nature of reality, and what is our relationship to it?
- How should we live?
In relation to the first, Non-Duality suggests that happiness is the very nature of our being, and it can never be found outside ourself. We don’t experience happiness all the time because lack of self-knowledge often veils it. Step 4 of the 12-step programme is to take a searching and fearless moral inventory, and to have a look at our character defects. However, when the Non-Dual teaching speaks of knowledge of self, it isn’t referring to our character, but rather to our essential self, which is always present beneath all the layers of experience that come and go.
The first step on the Non-Dual path is to recognise ourselves as the presence of awareness, within which all experience appears. To discover this is a tremendous liberation, because otherwise we are completely at the mercy of our painful thoughts and feelings, and we habitually seek to alleviate them with substances, activities, relationships. For addicts, these emotions are turned up very loud, but all of us have the wish to escape; even thought, in the form of fantasies about the future, is an addictive tendency.
When asked, ‘What is God?’, Rupert replies that God is our very own being. We’ve allowed ourselves to become so entangled in the content of experience that we feel incomplete, and we are always seeking to complete ourselves through something external. But when the layers are removed, what remains is infinite being, or God.
You can listen to this episode on the Rupert Spira Podcast
https://rupertspira.libsyn.com/episode-21-alcoholics-anonymous
For more similar content, we would recommend taking a look at Rupert's conversation with SHINE Metropolitan Police
