Nonduality in an Age of Outrage

We live in an age of outrage. Everyone is outraged about something or other. The most recent outrage is over the war in Gaza. Students on college campuses across our country and around the world are calling attention the unending killing going on in Gaza. That is causing outrage by counter protesters who support Israel and see the protesters as terrorist sympathizers and antisemites. 

Politics these days are no longer civil statesmanship. It is the politics of outrage with each side casting the other side as a danger to our nation and our rights. Culture warriors on the right and Social Justice warriors on the left, both outraged at the other.  We live in an age of outrage. If you are not outraged about something, then people think you do not care.

It is so easy to get caught up in this outrage. To be outraged by the threats to constitutional rights and freedoms. To be outraged at the destruction of our environment. To be outraged at callous disregard to human life and human suffering and human rights. I am not immune to these feelings and thoughts. No one is immune. It is part of our American culture and even our world culture.  Yet when one views all this from nondual awareness something shifts.

This episode explores how nondual awareness changes our perspective on what is happening in the world and in our society.

Transcript

We live in an age of outrage. Everyone is outraged about something or other. The most recent outrage is over the war in Gaza. Students on college campuses across our country and around the world are calling attention the unending killing going on in Gaza. They see it as a disproportionate response by the Israeli government to the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas upon Israeli civilians that killed 1200 people and captured a two hundred more. 

So students are setting up encampments on their campuses. That is causing outrage by counter protesters who support Israel and see the protesters as terrorist sympathizers and antisemites. University administrations say that students are breaking the rules and threatening the reputation and smooth operation of the college. So they are outraged at the students and cracking down harshly. Meanwhile others are outraged at what they perceive as the antisemitism of college administrations, which they see as bastions of woke ideology. 

So the cycle of outrage continues on the right and the left. Politics these days are no longer civil statesmanship. It is the politics of outrage with each side casting the other side as a danger to our nation and our rights. Culture warriors on the right and Social Justice warriors on the left, both outraged at the other.  We live in an age of outrage. If you are not outraged about something, then people think you do not care.

It is so easy to get caught up in this outrage. To be outraged by the threats to constitutional rights and freedoms. To be outraged at the destruction of our environment. To be outraged at callous disregard to human life and human suffering and human rights. I am not immune to these feelings and thoughts. No one is immune. It is part of our American culture and even our world culture.  

Yet when one views all this from nondual awareness something shifts. For one thing one see that this is all a play. As important as it feels, it is not real in an ultimate sense. No more real than a novel or a film. Often this human drama feels more like a tragedy than a comedy, but it is a drama nonetheless. As easy it is to get wrapped up in a play or movie when viewing it and especially when acting in it, still at a deeper level we realize it is just a play. 

We play our part and we feel the emotions. We weep and laugh. We get angry and are relieved. We shout with victory and cry at defeats. Were really get into character. But it is fiction created by the human mind. We sometimes forget that when we get caught up in our roles, but it only takes a moment of mindfulness to wake up from the dream and see reality as it really is.

When we see the world and history and current events from unitive awareness, then we come in contact with the peace beneath all the turmoil, the eye of calm at the center of the storm. This is a source of comfort and strength and hope. It is seen that there is no need for despair. Most importantly there is no need for desperate actions that violate human moral standards.

When we forget the nondual perspective and lost in the dualistic world, then it is easy to convince ourselves that the ends justify the means. It is easy to justify violence. We convince ourselves that our cause is so righteous and important to the survival of our nation or our world that we need to do anything to reach our goals. 

That is the origin of evil. Often it is done in the name of religion. Steven Weinberg famously said, “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.” That is when we cease to be authentically human and become a monster. Friedrich W. Nietzsche wrote, “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.”

That is what is happening today. Good religious people – including good Christian people – become monsters because they have convinced themselves that their fight against evil requires drastic action. They cannot see that evil or admit it to themselves. 

That is why the Bible says that the Antichrist – that famed boogeyman of apocalyptic texts – will deceive if possible – Jesus said – even the elect. The church is the most vulnerable of all to the deceptiveness of evil. That is the danger of viewing the world exclusively in terms of good and evil. 

There is good and evil – relatively speaking. Some of the things that have happened in history and some of the things that are happening now are evil. But only within the context of the human drama. When a play is over and the curtain comes down, all the actors – both heroes and villains - join hands and bow for the applause of the audience. Those who died in the tragedy rise again and receive a standing ovation. This play is called lila (lee-la) in Sanskrit. The cosmic play authored and directed by God. 

What I am saying is that we are part of this cosmic drama of good and evil known as the pageant of  human history. And we must play our part. We cannot do otherwise. After all the illusion of free will is as much of the drama as anything else. It is fine to be passionate about your beliefs, as long you recognize them as just beliefs. Beliefs are nothing but ideas in the mind.  They have no reality outside of the human mind. 

The animals of this planet care nothing for political parties or ideologies or religions or races or ethnicities or countries or human rights or any of the other ideas that are so important to us and which we are willing to fight and kill and die for. And some things are worth sacrificing one’s life for, which is what Jesus’ life and death teach us. Although I am not sure anything is worth killing for. As noble as our human ideals are in the context of the story of human history, they are illusory when seen in light of Eternal Reality. 

Nondual awareness is always aware of the deeper reality - what is real and what is not. Aware of the Real behind the unreal. Spiritual awakening is waking up to Reality. Once Ultimate Reality is seen, it cannot be unseen. Everything else is seen as shadows, like in Plato’s allegory of the cave. We can never go back to believing that the world of shadows is real. Like in the Matrix, once you are unplugged, you can never go back to believing that the Matrix is the real world.

That changes the way we feel and the way we act in the world. For one thing it gives us courage to speak up and share our views. It gives us courage to act. It can give us courage to die. That is what Jesus meant by taking up the cross. We can take up the cross and follow Jesus because we know that life does not end at physical death. What we really are cannot die because it was not born.

That is what the resurrection of Jesus is about. Intelligence – some call it consciousness, but I hesitate to use that word because people confuse it with human consciousness and I am talking about Divine Consciousness, Cosmic Consciousness – this Awareness does not die, because it is was not born with the body and is not a product of the body. It does not die with the body. It is eternal. 

This nondual perspective on everything defangs outrage. It comes on occasion. We can feel our blood boil at injustice and evil, but then we remember what we really are and we let the emotions run their course through us like a storm front passing through. Then we can see the world clearly again in the light of nonduality and are not lost in the shadows of duality. That is how nonduality is lived out in an age of outrage.