Sagehood - Radical Self-Inquiry

Enheartenment / Sagehood / Radical Self-Inquiry

In Theohumanity, enlightenment practice of the mental body in Sagehood attainment has two interlocking paths. One is the path of radical self-inquiry and the other is that of Meditation. First healing all the overattachments of the ego in enlightenment of the emotional body in Personhood and then combining the traditional Rinzai and Soto lineages of Zen to heal the overidentifications of the ego redefines the task in Buddhistic enlightenment from one of transcending an illusional ego to one of healing the fear of ego-death, and results in a deeply more effective path of what has been called enlightenment in Buddhism.

The path of radical self-inquiry moves the seeker through deepening degrees of access to the Nondual aspect of God, which Theohumanity refers to as Isness, Oneness, and Notness. Each step has its own set of specific practices that over the period of some years will yield the fruit of the Lotus in satori.

Isness refers to the fact that as humans, we are taught that things are what we call them. Then we forget they are what they are. Then we start deeply relating to them as if they were the things we call them, which they’re not. And then, by virtue of deeply relating to things as what they are not, makes us start deeply becoming what we are not. All caused by being deeply duped by the duality mechanism of our mental body.

In the same way, you begin our journey to enlightenment in four steps. First you unhook from thinking that things are what you call them. Then you can start realizing they are what they are in their Isness. And once you begin to live into the fact that things are nakedly what they are underneath the name-calling-clothes you are no longer calling them, then you start relating to them, not as the dualistic clothes-things you used to call them, but as the naked is-things they really are. Then you yourself start becoming the naked is-thing you are underneath all the dualistic name-calling things you’ve been calling yourself.

Oneness is a theme of Reality in all levels of Being and Consciousness, in content and context, because everything we ascribe thingness to is part of a larger Whologrammatic Reality of God wherein all the thingnesses are holons within the Oneness of the Whole. This Oneness or Unalistic aspect of everything is different than everything’s Isness aspect. Isness refers to everything’s quality of being of and to itself, and Oneness refers to everything’s quality of relating with other elements of Isness.

This is an important distinction to make, because while Isness and Oneness are both ‘qualities’ of Nonduality they represent two different semi-Nondual ways of experiencing experience. Some people call this Oneness aspect of reality Presence, and get stuck there and never move through it to the third level of Nondual access because Oneness-Presence is so satisfying a place to stay in, where everything feels like One and you don’t ever have to confront how much fear there is in losing your connection to it. In this way, Oneness-Presence extends the Now-Isness of things into the way Now-Isness things relate to one another, and together comprise the first two levels of access to the Nondual Aspect of God.

Accessing the Notness level of Nonduality is what has been traditionally described as ‘consciousness without content,’ in that the consciousness of the Sage is no longer primarily identified with dualistic this-or-that content of experience, and instead is primarily with Nonduality’s ‘from afar’ meta-contexted way of relating to the dualisms of life.

But this ‘from afar’ view and Heart-Peace imparted by Sagehood mental body enlightenment practice does not set a truly enlightened being apart from any ordinary cultural context or milieu they live in, because to them the ordinary and mundane are the means through which they express their enlightenment. Doing anything to separate themselves from the cultural milieu within which they grew their ego will ultimately create a more limited exclusionary and not more expansive inclusionary form of Nondual awakening.

A related item to this idea of ordinariness is how critical it is to note that a true awakening to the Nondual Aspect of God does not secondarily relate to Nonduality as a duality of a Nondual vs. Dual. Relating to Reality as Nonduality vs. Duality would still be the unenlightened tension of duality. In this way, Nonduality includes all of the dualistic bits of Reality that exist in their Isness, in that Nonduality is the Root-Reality of all dualisms, not dualism’s opposite, which would make it a ’thing’ because it has a ‘versus’ opposite. Nonduality has no dualistic opposite: It just is what It is as It is. Despite the many distortions of modern Advaita teachings and freelance gurus, Nonduality includes duality, includes the ego. Any tension held or taught between Nonduality and duality or Nonduality and ego is a gross misinterpretation of what Gautama was trying to teach. True Zen Buddhism has always known this truth.

The best metaphor for this inclusionary picture of Nondualism, Unalism, and Dualism is one of letters carved in stone. If the stone is the level of the Unalism of Oneness, and the letters carved in it are the Dualisms of thing-ness, the letters are all stone, in that all their edges and bottoms are made of stone. In this way Dualism is ‘contained within’ Unalism in the saem way fingers are ‘one’ with the hand at the level of the hand, but fingers at the level of fingers. Nondualism is the ‘air’ or ‘space’ that allows both Oneness-Unalism and two-ness Dualism to arise or be in the first place. In that sense, you would not say that the stone and the space of air are opposites or versus elements, only that the stone and its letters arise within the space of air that allows it to be in the first place.

So unenlightened mass consciousness is about living exclusively identified with, and as, the dualistic words-and-letters level of life. And Oneness forms of enlightenment are about living at the level of the Unalism of the stone. And true Nondual awakened consciousness is not about ignoring or making either the dualistic letter-levels of life or the Unalistic stone-level of life unreal, it is about relating to them ‘from afar’ from the Nonduality meta-‘space’ within which both levels arise.

Notness access is moved through three deepening movements of its own: unknowability, invisibility, and inexperiencability, each with its own set of rigorous practices to allow the seeker to invite the Nondual ever closer as the de-dualizing happening in the mental body through radical self-inquiry work and linked to the meditative path, occurs.

If I am thinking, then I am desiring to understand
If I am desiring to understand, I fear not understanding
If I fear not understanding, then I anticipate a future moment of lack
If I fear a future moment of lack, then I am out of the Isness of Now
If I am out of the Isness of Now, then I am thinking and so will never understand
Leaning surely against a tree, I fall!