You Can Wake Up From the Dream of Separation

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]In my book, I promise that you can dissolve the illusion of separation or wake up from the dream of separation.

[00:00:09]And I've seen many people do it uh almost universally surprised by the the experience of the world being not apart from them. The experience of the sense of the body engulfing the external environment.

[00:00:29]The sense of me being over there and over there being here.

[00:00:36]The feeling that there is no uh division between who I am and what the world is, what others are.

[00:00:49]this um realization, this realization of not to non-duality is remarkable.

[00:01:00]Um but it's also available and the tendency when we hear about this is to try to imagine how it would be.

[00:01:15]Um, another tendency is to try to chase it or put it into the mental framework of desire. Like, oh, that that sounds really good. I'd really like to have that. But the funny thing about this is that that seeking, that wanting, that feeling of not having something and seeking it through fantasy, through mental fantasy, through thoughts.

[00:01:43]Um what it is you realize with non-dual uh insight actually comes before that. It it comes before that mechanism of thought. So it's fundamental to that mechanism of thought. And this is why when this insight dawn you realize universally that and I say universally I mean everybody does that this is actually the way it is. that this is more realistic, more accurate, uh more real than the way we think about duality, separation, self and other. And even the way we think about non-duality, non-separation, because what is realized is not a thought.

[00:02:34]what is realized or I could say remembered but it's not remembered in the way we remember a typically encoded memory. We just remember that the way our mind is imagining duality does not actually exist. [snorts] And it is a remembering in that sense because there was a time when you process the world this way.

[00:02:59]when you saw without the illusion of division when you saw without the illusion of self and other you were probably very young and don't remember it almost certainly some people do remember it but the vast majority of people don't um so it is a kind of remembering and it's a reclaiming of the way reality actually is um and the reason I'm just the reason I'm going through this this kind of preamble is [snorts] that there's an aspect of this that that is really about trusting your instinct. But you often have to be reminded what your instinct actually is.

[00:03:42]Because what happens is our instinct gets replaced with thought. Our instinct gets replaced with seeking, daydreaming, imagining, fantasizing.

[00:03:52]And what's revealed with non-dual realization is that um this truth of not to this truth of boundlessness is already here. It's already realized.

[00:04:16]It's already the case, I should say.

[00:04:19]>> [snorts] >> Uh we use the word realization to um point out that we've established or reestablished our perception in total alignment with reality.

[00:04:33]But the reality of it is not missing.

[00:04:35]The reality of it is not somewhere else.

[00:04:37]It's here in your experience.

[00:04:41]So starting from there when we start to contemplate or inquire into the nature of perception in real time in our own experience in your visual experience in your felt experience.

[00:04:57]You can start from a place of instinct that says it's already this.

[00:05:06]It's already um undivided.

[00:05:12]So let me see if I can find whether or not the perception the overlay of separation of where I become that where this becomes that or inside becomes outside.

[00:05:29]Um, when I look for that evidence, what it is that makes me think that or feel that, I'm doing it from the place of a deep knowing that separation in the way we think about it and perceive it doesn't actually exist.

[00:05:49]So perhaps I'm saying that there's a trust that that comes into play >> [snorts] >> uh in this process because why else would you do it? Why else would you really take this up? Why would you believe what I say if if some part of you doesn't actually know it? And I would say you probably can't.

[00:06:07]So some part of us knows this for sure.

[00:06:11]Um when we're able to attune to our own instinct in this way, it it helps us relax a kind of relaxation that is not just physical relaxation but a Yeah, mental relaxation, but a a bit of a relaxation of spirit that we don't need to find anything that's outside of oursel or beyond our experience or so something that's superhuman is not required to to realize this.

[00:06:46]Rather, it's just a kind of settling back into what's real and then just testing that with our perception and seeing why does our perception seem to overlay separation.

[00:07:04]And I mean this like in real time as you're watching this, looking at the screen or listening to this, looking at the sky or a tree or a car or your hands, noticing that there's words that say those are different than me. The sky is separate from my body. The words would say that's obvious, right? The concepts make that seem very obvious. But look and see.

[00:07:33]Do you believe that? Do you find evidence for that?

[00:07:38]And if so, where?

[00:07:40][snorts] Where's the evidence that when you see sky and you see body or hands or arms or tree or cat, table, chair, when you're looking at that, which those labels point to that we use thought labels for, where's the evidence that there's actually a boundary?

[00:08:12]between perceiver and perceived.

[00:08:17]Where's the evidence that those labels actually point to something tangibly separate?

[00:08:24]And you will find that you can't see those things. Those I'm sorry. You can't see the the labels. You can't see the division. You can't find the evidence.

[00:08:37]It's not hard to figure that out because you'll see you have to actually reference a thought.

[00:08:42]So that's the beginning. And then you just keep at it. Keep looking.

[00:08:49]Well, I certainly can't find evidence because I have to actually reference a thought to say that over there is over there. That there's over thereess in it.

[00:09:00]And that there's an it that has the over thereess. like they're mutually dependent concepts, but without those concepts, what do I actually see?

[00:09:09]You just keep at it. That's how this works. You could call this the subject object construct.

[00:09:16]You could call it the fundamental misperception of division, whatever. But that's how you do it. And it's it's a precise inquiry.

[00:09:24]And it helps to be relaxed. It helps to have clarity. It helps certainly to have had an awakening. Without that, it's pretty tricky. But yeah, I mean, you can get a glimpse of it before an initial awakening, but it won't stabilize.

[00:09:44]Actually, more more accurately, everything I'm saying, if you haven't had an awakening, will just turn into a concept anyway. So, so more than likely, you'll just want to argue with what I'm saying because you live in a world of concepts. But when you start to break that spell of the world of concepts which is awakening, you you see directly recognize that what you are is not something in concepts, thoughts, beliefs, time, all of it. Now you have the opportunity, you have the space, the curiosity, the naturalenness, the access to really start to look and see what that illusion of separation does. And that the illusion itself isn't really out there. It's only in the mind.

[00:10:32]The illusion is thought.