Fred Davis - Beyond Recovery-FAQ.pdf

8/12/2019 Fred Davis - Beyond Recovery-FAQ.pdf

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21/07/2014 03:30Beyond Recovery FAQ

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FAQ

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Im interested in addressing questions from readers, and you can reach me through the contact page.

Please put Beyond Recovery in the subject line to insure that it gets read. I have posted here somegeneral FAQs that you may find helpful. These questions build on each other, so its important that

you read them in order if theyre going to make much sense to you.

1- What is Nonduality?

Nonduality is the term we use to label the examination and exploration of oneness. Non means no

and duality means more than one, so this is the philosophy of not-more-than-one. There is just

one thing going on. Everybody and everything are part of this one thing. Nonduality takes the Golden

Rule one step further. Its not telling you to treat others as you would have them treat you, but rather

that as you treat others, so are you treating yourself.

There is no room for accidents in this kind of spontaneously arising environment. Its such an

extraordinary concept that the mind cannot hold it; it can only beholdit. It is this very beholding that

was experienced by Jesus, Buddha, Rumi, St. Francis, St. John and St. Teresa of Avila, Mahatma

Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and many, many more of whom the average person has never heard, and yet

more that even the specialist cannot uncover. For all those numbers, for thousands of years, Nondual

awakening was nonetheless an extraordinary and isolated event. Its still extraordinary, and still

unusual, but glimpsesof reality, which can forever alter our lives, are simply no longer rare.

The effectiveness of this teaching is measurable. We change, or we dont; we can judge it for

ourselves. We wake up, and/or we see others wake up, or we dont. Again, we ourselves are the judges.

I know of no other spiritual teaching whose success or failure is so clear, evident, and public. Youre

surely going to be hearing more and more about oneness teachings in coming years as they quietly

spread like an ocean of dye while making their way around the globe. Wherever it reaches there is

markedchange.

Once we enter the stream of this teaching we dont need science to convince us of anything, but its

nonetheless interesting to note that many branches of science, from quantum physics to advanced

neurology, are pointing to many of the same conclusions advanced by Nondual teachings.

Even if you have never heard of Nonduality, it doesnt matter. That might even workforyou, simply

because you wont have to unlearn or overcome a bunch of intellectual knowledge. Such knowledge can
http://www.beyond-recovery.org/contact/http://www.beyond-recovery.org/contact/


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be very helpful, particularly at the beginning, but if we dont stand uponit and reach beyondit, then it

can become a hindrance. I have seen two men, neither of whom had even heard the word Nonduality,

come to an awakening as we were going through some investigation together. They didnt need

background. Just like in recovery, they needed honesty, openness, willingness, and in their cases,

trusted guidance.

Its the principles themselves that are important, not the student or the teacher. In reading Beyond

Recovery and exploring this website youll feel a strong pull if this is your path. And ifit isyour path,

it cant be avoided. Your time has come, ironically, to peer beyondtime; to move beyondrecovery.

Nondual awakening is what has traditionally been referred to as enlightenment. All of this is

explained in more depth in the Q&A below, and much, much more fully in the text ofBeyond

Recovery. Suffice to say, awakening is real,and the path to its recognition can essentially be taught.

2 What is awakening?

Awakening is actually something of a misnomer. What were speaking of is simply the recognition of

your true natureseeing/being that which you already are. As explained in Q&A 1, there is just one

thing going on, and awakening is the seeing of this truthfor ourselves. When this occurs it tends to

feel likean awakening from a dream. However, what is experienced is that which is always already

awakewhich in fact never was asleep to begin with. This is not something we can figure out; it has to

be seen for ourselves. This seeing can come as a glimpse, or as a full seeingwith a whimper, a bang, or

anything in between. Awakening can seem to come quickly, or slowly. Most often its a combination.

It may appear to require special spiritual practices, or be shown to completely transcend them. It can

and does happen any way it wants to. Any attempt to explain what awakening is, including this one,

will ultimately fail. That which is always already awake is also that which is beyond words. Still, we

try!

The personalitythe one looking to wake up, get enlightened, find liberation, whatever you want to call

itwill never actually awaken. The personality, the character of the so-called individual, and hence that

entire play, ispreciselywhat is seen through. In the absence of a personal me, reality appears to

spontaneously arise. In truth, reality is always already arisen. Its right here, right now. This is it, but

its so close, so obvious, so incredible that we cant see it. Until we do. Once we do, if its thoroughly

seen, we can see nothing else. Our story is like clouds in front of the sun. In the absence of clouds, the

sun is seen, but the clouds never affected either it or its shining. In the absence of story, only truth

remains.


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3 What can I do to help myself wake up?

If you mean, what can the non-existent character do to bring about a change in its hypothetical sleep

statewell you see it right there.Nothing,not directly. However, dont despair. While its true that

from the absolute view there is nothing to do and no one to do it, thats just a view. It feels like the

whole, but its really just half; its 180 degrees of seeing out of a possible 360. It could be said that

thats the absolute denying the existence of the relative. It happens a lot, especially with glimpses, or

less than full awakenings, which are by far the most common sort. After spending most of our lives

identifying as the relative, once we get a glimpse we completely shift our loyaltiesto the other side of

limitation! If we embrace this limitation after our own experience, or borrow it from others, then our

view remains incorrect, but in a wholly new way.

The true Nondual view, the 360, as I call it, denies nothing.Nonduality means that theres just one

thing going on; how can we deny any part of itabsolute, relative, real, unreal, permanent, temporary;

all of those are just halves, which is the tip-off that although our view may have significantly broadened

or deepened, were still seeing from duality. Neither yin nor yang is true or complete, but the pairing of

the two is both, so to speak. Let me add that there are fully awake teachers who employ this no-method

methodas a teaching strategy. Thats their story and theyre sticking to it. When this strategy works,

it works well, but I still think it works with only a narrow band of seekers.

Regardless of what we may see, know, and experience from that absolute view, there is nonetheless a

body still here on a planet called Earth, and its still going to want lunch and a nap. We can, in essence,

enlist the dream character to work within the dreamtoward the apparent goal of awakening. From a

higher view it could be said to all be part of a spontaneously unfolding script, and thats fine. None of

this makes any logical sense. If we insist on putting everything into neat, logical boxes, then we are lost,

because at that point even doing nothing is seen as a practice!

Again, this is not something we can figure out. We have to experience it first-hand. There is a series ofexperiments, inquiries, and meditations in Beyond Recovery, all of which are designed to help you

awaken within the only point in time and space that awakening can occur: right here, right now.

4 Do I have free will, or not?

Neither. Both. Actually, its a moot question.

Once again, this has to be looked at from the larger picture. Once we enter Nonduality, we have left the

land of easy answers, and entered the land of difficult questions. Who is itthat is supposed to either


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have free will, or not have free will?

Ah, yes, were right back to our old friend, the imaginary character! Answer in the negative, and were

saying that no, I as a separate being do not have free will. Answer in the positive, and we are stating

that yes, I as a distinct object, do have free will. The trap is successfully sprung either way we go.

This is precisely the kind of question that human minds love to get involved with, because we can take

a stand and battle over it forever. In fact we have already done so: clerics and philosophers have had

an ongoing argument over this for several thousand years; were just the latest generation to address it.

Ego delights in all of this, because it gets to keep churning along no matter which side has the

temporary upper hand. All ego needs to survive is resistance in any form, and war in its thousand

costumes is the single most common phenomena on our planet.

Nonduality is not declaring that you do not have free will. Nonduality is not declaring that you do have

free will. Nonduality is declaring that you, as a separate entity, do not exist.

5 How do I stay awake?

This question is a doozy. I say that, because it haunted me for so long. We get a glimpse, or maybe

even have a major seeing that lasts for days or weeks, but gradually we begin to see it soften and slide,

and the next thing you know, were right back in the mud. We had it, but we lost it. We have lost our

connection!

In order to answer this question, I have to ask the once-enlightened human a couple of questions of my

own. What was the primary knowledge you received from your awakening experience? If it was for

real, there can only be one answer. (Of course you can nowfake this answer, but thats a whole other

bucket of misery.)

The only legitimate answer is, I saw that the there was no separate me. I saw that there was just one

thing going on, which left no place whatsoever for an individual. Personalities are stories, nothing

more.

Very well. Then let me ask you a few more questions that you dont even need to answer. I really hate

to do this, but I have no choice. Who is itthats lost their connection? Who is itthat has fallen out of

the one thing going on? Itcouldntbe that imaginary character creeping back into the picture, could it?

Not everyquestion that arises in Nondual teachings comes back to this one question, but damn near

every one of them does.


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One more quick note here. The chief reason we feel like weve lost our connection is that weve lost

our buzz. Addicts just hate that,you know? Very often the penetration of reality is accompanied by

waves of energy, blissful highs, hallucinations-which-we-call-visions, and any amount and variety of

fireworks and candy. We confuse that with the awakening. We confuse the bugle with the sunrise, and

we happen to like the bugle a lot. And who is itthat likes the bugle? Youtell me.

Having said all of that, let me end this by saying that there are things we can do to encourage stable

awakeness. I discuss these in the book.

6 Is there really a planetary shift taking place?

Apparently so. There certainly appearsto be a dramatic shift taking place in the number of

awakenings that are taking place, particularly in the number of initial penetrations that are occurring.

For thousands of years we believe awakening was a rarity. While we certainly cant knowhow many

men and women woke up historically, the records we have received concerning saints, mystics, and

those who seem to have been Nondual heretics indicate that it was extremely rare.

Granted, in the West, few would have been very keen to come out of the closet, what with a stoning or

stake burning awaiting them, so the records are less than infallible. But in the East, where such things

have long been more culturally acceptable, reports of authentic awakening have never been abundant.

From a first-hand perspective, I can only Ill offer here my own story of what I think is happening in

this era, how I see it occurring, and why I think its taking place now.

While these principles have been studied and debated by Western philosophers prior even to Socrates,

it was in the East where the experiencingof them was turned into an art. In the Nineteenth and

Twentieth Centuries, as both local and world travel became more common, Nondual teachings could

move more easily, and they began to come out of hiding. America had its Transcendentalists

Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman and the like. The Indian saint, Sri Vivekananda came to the West at the

close of the 19th Century. Beginning in the 1920s D. T. Suzuki (with a little help from Carl Jung)

brought Zen from Japan, and a decade later Paul Brunton introduced the world to Ramana Maharshi

via his book,A Search in Secret India. In the 1950s, after China swallowed up Tibet, those long-secret

teachings began to emerge. By the 1960s and 1970s there was a flood of information moving West, and

a river of spiritual seekers moving East. All of this was the foundation for the detonation to come.

In this century, with the rise of the Internet, the teaching found an easy way to spread, a comfortable

place to call home, and Nonduality exploded. Its a perfect marriage of information and utility. Long-hidden teachings were suddenly just a click away. The most obscure volumes could now be easily


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discovered on Amazon.com. And people began to wake uplotsof them by any historical standard.

(Although its a brief penetration for many, thats often enough to change the life of the seer.)

Simultaneous to all of this, the health of our planet has grown more and more dire. Of course the

planet itself is in no danger, but the living species are, particularly the human being living species. The

West is no longer the primary culprit; we are simply the primary examples, the poster children for aworld of culprits. Everyone in the world wants two cars and a McMansion. Everyone wants cheap,

abundant electricity, enough water that they can waste it, and all the fossil fuels they can burn.

Everyone wants to eat meat twice a day and throw their garbage in burgeoning landfills.

We have just a few generations to solve these enormous, fundamental planetary problems, or the

planet will solve them for us, and we wont like the fix. Probably the only acceptable way out of this is

through a matching level of enormous, fundamental change in human behavior. There is nothing so

inspiring as self-interest, and once it is seen that there is just one thing going on, then all interest is

self-interest. There is onlylooking out for number one, and thats onlyachieved by looking out for

everyone and everything.

Not everyone has to wake up in order to achieve this, but significant numbers will need to. Assuming

thats whats happening now, then at some point the weight of all these enlightened people will tip the

scales toward rational living and rational governing. The rest will follow; they always do. From an

absolute view, none of this matters much. I find that view cold and pointless, and I dont find it

enlightened.

There is a story about a Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki, when he was on his deathbed in California. A

friend brought him some tea. Suzuki swooned a bit and the friend jerked to help him. When she did

so, the tea cup she was carrying careened toward the floor. Watch out for the cup! Suzuki hollered.

But Roshi (teacher), I was trying to take care of you, said the friend. Taking care of the cup istaking

care of me, Suzuki replied. Thisis enlightened living.

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Fred Davis - Beyond Recovery-FAQ.pdf