One's Ordinary Is Not Necessarily Natural

There are many who speak of the ordinary nature of nondual awareness. I’ve taken issue with this word because I believe it’s deceiving to many. Definition is crucial. So what is ordinary?

When I first began hiking mountain trails, I discovered there came a point in that hiking when all thoughts, whether they be about the previous week’s concerns of family and work or the thoughts about the difficulties of the current trail itself, would suddenly disappear. And all that remained was the hiking itself. It was as if the person disappeared and only the trail remained in the clear mountain air of heightened awareness.

I called this the wall. Before the wall, there was anxiety and fear. After the wall, there was only the mountain. For many people, if not most, the state of consciousness before the wall is their ordinary state. Telling one who is lost in the world of thought that nondual awareness is ordinary is like telling a single mother of three who just lost her job and is living from paycheck to paycheck, she’s rich.

Yes, once one has experienced walking through that wall, one knows what came before the wall is not ordinary at all, but a fabricated abnormal world of memory and desire. What came before the wall is past and future; what comes after the wall is now. And what comes after the wall could be called ordinary, if that word had not been debased and devalued by the world before the wall.

This is why I much prefer the word ‘natural’ to describe this state. It’s a word still holding its innate value. And, for me, it describes much more clearly that experience on the mountain. I had come from what I thought was ordinary to what I know is natural.

Before hiking there appeared an ordinary mountain of anxiety and fear. During the hike there came a sudden wall. After the wall, there was only the natural mountain, the clear space of pure awareness.