Living from a Non-Dual Perspective: Matt Flickstein

​Living from A Non-Dual Perspective 
By Matthew Flickstein 
 
Everything that arises, disappears; whatever is born, dies. Nothing escapes the cycle of birth and death. It is important for us to directly and experientially realize that there is never a point in time when something “exists” and is not in the process of becoming something other than it was just a moment before. All suffering comes from attachment – trying to hold on to that which is perpetually changing – and all attachment comes from delusion. We need to learn to live in the clarity and space of non-attachment, neither grasping nor pushing anything away. The key is to just be present with what arises from moment to moment, without holding or resisting. At the same time, it is essential not to fall into the trap of denying the relative existence of our psychophysical organism and the world of experience it presents.
 
Compassion is the willingness to play in the field of dreams even though you are awake. Approach life with joy, enthusiasm, love, and an open heart. Take delight in the manifestations of life: It is all a play of consciousness, and it is really all play. If something appears serious or burdensome – even death – then we are lost in delusion. The “field of dreams” is this world of the senses with all its myriad forms. Being awake is the direct knowing that there is no one who suffers, no one who is born, and on one who dies. It is the five aggregates that are born and die. Who we are has never been born and never dies.
 
In actuality, there is no one who is expressing compassion to anyone else. It is all part of the play. The world is our mirror. There is only consciousness rising and falling along with its objects; it is all selfless. Whatever we see as being real is a projection of our own mind. It is where our mind is stuck or identified with the illusion.
 
Nothing exists – not even nothing. Existence and non-existence are both concepts. Not holding anywhere is freedom beyond measure.
 
We must die to each moment and allow life to express itself through and as us. Our lives may not turn out the way in which the ego has imagined, but when we surrender to the truth of what is, we will find freedom beyond measure as surely as the river finds its way to the sea. When we move beyond the dualistic world, there is a rebirth into the deathless. We finally come home to a place that we have really never left.