Base Reality

Being Is a Verb explores wisdom traditions and the philosophy of mind from the perspective of contemplative Christianity and Advaita (Sanskrit for “not two”).

Contemplative Christianity emphasizes a direct experience of God. Likewise, Advaita signifies the absence of a fundamental separation between the individual self* and the ultimate reality.

Setting aside Advaita for now, what is a contemplative Christian?

A contemplative can be described in various ways, but, here, a contemplative is someone for whom every phenomenal experience is understood to be an activity within awareness, or, in religious terms, God’s being. The contemplative understands that it is only through awareness that anything has experiential existence. Since this is the case, awareness can be described as the ground of being, or as the foundation upon which all perceptions and conceptions arise. A contemplative is simply someone who enjoys spending time resting in or as this awareness of oneness.

Contemplation is analogous to the experience of lucid dreaming in which awareness is aware of the dream while in the dream.

Another analogy is that of a stage actor in a play. The actor embodies the role with total conviction, through sorrow and joy, all the while aware of his or her true identity. This true identity is not the character; the true identity is the actor, or, more precisely, the actor’s aware presence.

For the contemplative, then, life becomes less dualistic. Phenomenal appearances are understood to be the activity of one consciousness in the same way that waves are understood to be the activity of one ocean.

This shift in understanding opens the door to peace and clarity. Emotions are still evoked, but they can be addressed without entanglement. Desires still arise, but they are no longer embedded in egoic agendas. Actions flow more spontaneously and effortlessly from a place of openness and, when we listen, wisdom.

So the contemplative life is less about retreating from the world and more about the dynamic expression of fundamental oneness experiencing a first person point of view.

*In Advaita, there is no separation between the individual self and the ultimate reality because there is no separate entity with its own existence apart from consciousness. Consciousness is the ultimate experiential reality. Similarly, in the Christian tradition, Jesus, using the language of his culture, says, “I and the Father are one.”

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