A Case of Mistaken Identity

Sometimes I wonder if there is anything more to say in these episodes. Then I get emails from listeners which remind me there is still more to say because the gospel of nonduality is so easily misunderstood. Nondual awareness is so simple it is missed. It is so close that people don’t see it. It is hiding in plain sight. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth and people do not see it.” Tony Parsons calls it the open secret.

The common mistake I hear in questions and remarks is that people assume that what they are looking for is not here now. That it is out in the future. It is one practice or one insight or one teacher or one retreat or one teaching away. Then they will get it. They assume something is lacking now. 

The only problem – if you want to call it that, which it really isn’t unless you see it as a problem – is that we forget who and what we are. We have spiritual amnesia. The misapprehension of our essential identity is evident in most of the questions that people ask. Alan Watts has a famous book entitled “The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.” That title sums it up. I read it first over fifty years ago, but it was only ten years ago that I knew what he was talking about.

Watts was right. People don’t know who they are. That is the problem. For that reason every question they ask comes from who they are not. In other words it is a case of mistaken identity.