From before recorded history, mystics in the form of shamans, medicine women & men, sages, saints, alchemists, various varieties of artists, and most recently quantum physicists have been pointing out how reality is INFINITELY greater and FAR more complex than we can describe, or even imagine.
Our mind filters out (blocks from our consciousness) most of our perceptions, to prevent us from being overwhelmed, thus allowing us to focus only on what's necessary for survival. So our mind is both an information 'receiver', and a 'reducing valve.'
Our society's mindset has become far too narrowly, self-destructively, self-centered - using Iain McGilchrist's profound understanding, 'Left-hemisphere dominant': http://www.johnlovas.com/2024/03/knockin-on-heavens-door.html Our current mindset is 'Unwise' both in terms of secular academic wisdom research, http://www.johnlovas.com/2021/06/loads-of-information-some-knowledge.html as well as humanity's timeless wisdom traditions.
Wisdom traditions can be compared to politics. Many politicians put self-interest & their own party's success, ahead of the welfare of their country. Such "partisanship" - a form of individual & group narcissism - is tearing the US apart. However, some politicians are decent mature human beings, who take their job seriously, primarily serve their country's, & ideally the world's, best interests. Wisdom traditions, taken seriously, guide practitioners toward ethical behavior, unconditional love of self & others, and the capacity to gracefully navigate life's most difficult existential challenges. Like politics, religions (both often working as one) have a shameful history of incompetence, corruption & criminal behavior. Nevertheless, both politics and wisdom traditions - when taken seriously - are vital & irreplaceable for a deeply meaningful life.
Clearly both individuals and society have a duty to deeply care for, to wisely nurture, themselves & each other.
It takes a certain type of intelligence to quickly become a billionaire, to become a populist dictator, to become a wealthy slum lord, or 'succeed' in any other criminal activity. But to mature into a peaceful, generous, collaborative, loving, nurturing human being requires a rare & infinitely more precious quality: wisdom.
Our society has almost completely forgotten about the value, or even the meaning of wisdom. As a result, we're democratically electing an increasing number of world leaders who have all the attributes & more of Batman-movie villains, but none of the attributes of wise leaders such as: Mahatma Gandhi, Václav Havel, Nelson Madela, Jacinda Ardern, etc.
We MUST re-educate ourselves about, and individually & collectively embody wisdom in order to heal our broken Earth so that our children, grandchildren and as yet unborn future generations can survive & even thrive.
A senior nondual teacher - Tony Parsons - points us towards wisdom which is nondual. Our dualistic minds find nonduality paradoxical at best. The most highly spiritually-evolved mystics & saints of all our wisdom traditions have always lived & pointed toward nondual wisdom, BUT even their own 'conservative' religious institutions have been systematically persecuting & murdering them out of fear, ignorance & jealousy.
HOWEVER, we're NOW at the tipping point where the hubris of our common dualistic 'cleverness' MUST evolve, or more accurately, shift into nondual wisdom before humanity extinguishes itself.
This provides some sense of the direction in which Parsons is pointing:
“It seems that in the boundless energy that is oneness there can also arise a contracted energy which brings about apparent self-awareness. A powerful and convincing sense of self-identity seems to arise together with a belief in personal free will and choice in what is experienced as a real life story. All of these personal experiences can only apparently arise in what seems to be a very real but dualistic reality in which everything appears to be separate. This sense of separation can bring with it a sense of loss and a need to seek guidance, an understanding or a path or process that can promise fulfillment. There are attempts to seek unity which are totally futile because the separate seeker is apparently the very dualism from which it is trying to escape.”
Tony Parsons https://www.theopensecret.com/
“What goes on in these (Tony Parsons) meetings is not so much to do with conceptual clarity. It is to do with an energetic shift, it’s to do with energy. Basically, the energy of being separate is contraction. At a very early age there’s a contraction of energy into a sense of a center, ‘I’m “me.” Oh! Now I’m “me”!’ Basically, the apparent separate individual in the dream is in the contracted state – ‘I’m in here, this is my boundary, and everything else is out there.’ And it can seem threatening, or not.
So what happens in these meetings and, interestingly, directly after them, is that somewhere that contraction meets boundlessness. That boundlessness isn’t anyone’s; it’s just boundlessness. The speaker is speaking to itself. The speaker is meeting nothing and speaking to nothing. So conceptually, there can be a clarity about that. The most powerful thing in these meetings is that the contracted state can open out into boundlessness. It’s an energetic shift.”
John David interviews Tony Parsons in 2007 • Wisdom of the European Masters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvokZJjemfg
“What we’re talking about here is just an energy that can’t be known. The energy of empty fullness. It’s a mystery. It can’t be understood. I use the word energy as everything. All there is, is energy. All there is, is everything and anything. For me energy is a good word, it’s like aliveness. All there is, is aliveness or energy. This is it.
This is energy in the form of a room, people, breathing, thinking, feeling, sitting on a chair. It’s simply energy happening. And that energy is absolutely boundless. Nothing influences it. It’s completely free and wild. It appears as everything and nothing. It’s a mystery.
And because it’s free, it has no purpose or meaning. There’s no meaning to any of this. This aliveness is utterly, wonderfully, meaningless.
But because it’s free energy, it can also be limited. And so in its apparent limited form, nothing is real, everything is only an appearance. In its apparent limited form, what arises in the human being is a self-awareness. At a very early age after birth, suddenly, there’s a sense of self-awareness – a sense of ‘me,’ ‘I am real.’ And that child goes into the world full of other apparent individuals, who also feel that they are real, so it lives, in what I call, ‘a dream.’ It lives in a dream of you could say, of ‘dualism.’ He’s in the dream of being separate. I am a separate individual. The world is something that’s happening to me. So that sense of awareness keeps me separate from everything. That wouldn’t necessarily be recognized by most people, but that’s actually what happens. That’s the dream state of individualism. Most people in the world you could say feel as if that is absolutely real, being a separate individual in the world.
What’s being suggested here is that that whole idea, that whole sense of being separate, and being individual, and having free will and choice, and living in a story that seems to be real - all of that is a complete & utter dreamt illusion. Most people think it’s real, but what’s being suggested here is that it’s an illusion, and there’s something else, another possibility which completely explodes the whole idea of individuality or separation.
So we could talk about how the individual seems to take form, what it’s like, all the belief systems it collects around itself to believe in its life and its story. We could talk about that. And it’s possible, that in just talking about it conceptually, and hearing a few suggestions that come from somewhere else, it’s possible that that whole belief system of separation, that whole belief system of individuality of awareness, can unravel. It may not.
But the other thing that can happen is, where there’s an openness to something that’s beyond the sense of self, when there’s an openness to another possibility – a terrible possibility, but a possibility nonetheless. There could be something energetic that’s very freeing and boundless about that energy, and then, the contracted energy of being the self can melt or fall back into that whole, because the contracted energy is also oneness. Contracted energy is also the boundless in the contracted form.
There is nothing that is right or wrong. There’s nothing above or below. There’s nothing that’s here or there. There just is what is and is not. That’s the mystery we’re talking about. And again, it cannot be known. So what you will go away from here is with absolutely nothing at all. There’s nothing to learn or understand about what we’re discussing here. But something could possibly apparently collapse – but only apparently collapse. It’s the restricted feeling of being an individual in the world that’s separate.
This is not a teaching. There’s nothing to learn. It’s just a communication. It’s an illumination of what seems to be the human condition, and a suggestion that something else that’s completely beyond that but somehow by confronting can also unveil liberation. But you can’t do anything about it. The you that thinks you can do something about it simply can pour water and benefits. Yeah, it’s this. It’s this. It’s nowhere else, it’s this.
Q: When the contracted sense of separate self falls away, are there any physical manifestations that you or others can notice?
Tony Parsons (TP): No, not necessarily. The physical thing that can happen when the whole contracted sense of being a ‘me’ collapses – but only apparently collapses – the body relaxes, because all the time in there’s a sense of me, and the me is trying to maintain its image in the world, who’s trying to play the game of the world, so there’s a lot of tension and fear involved in that, which suddenly falls away, so there’s a relaxation. Noticing that there’s a lot more energy, just available, not to anyone, because it takes a lot of energy to be a ‘me’ in the world, to try to make that illusion work.
Q: I’m here to ... – I’m probably wrong,
TP: There is no wrong.
Q: OK, I’m looking for something
TP: You’re looking for a better experience
Q: No actually, I wondering if I’m looking in the right direction
TP: There isn’t one. So seekers, people come here, apparently come here, seeking a better experience or a different way of living for themselves which will support and bring them a better experience of life. That isn’t available here. This is about death. It’s about the end of that which seeks to find a better experience. This is about the death of that which feels it is separate that’s what can go on here. But there’s no one that can do anything about that.
Q: So what is the point?
TP: There is no point. This is a meeting which is absolutely, completely, pointless. It’s of no value to the seeker at all.
Q: Will it make someone’s life better?
TP: No it won’t. It won’t make your life better. First of all, it will point out what you may hear, that you don’t have a life, and so the whole idea of your life could be better by being here completely collapses.
Q: Will I be a better person?
TP: No, you certainly won’t be a better person. If anything, you’ll be a bit worse. You won’t be anything. What possibly could happen is the sudden collapse of the idea that there is anyone to be anything or to get anywhere. It’s the collapse of the whole sense or illusion that you are someone, who by applying a certain principle or process, can reach somewhere called ‘be better.’ There isn’t a better or worse. There isn’t an inner or outer. There isn’t an upper or lower. There is only what is. This is what is. This is what is and what is not. It is and it isn’t. It’s empty performance. It’s a mystery, and you’ll never understand it. I don’t. It can’t be known.”
Tony Parsons – London, June 2018 https://www.theopensecret.com/ (ABOVE first 12 minutes, BELOW remainder of 2hr mostly Q&A)
