Hello Magdi,
I am new in the “non-duality” journey. One of the things that is really confusing me is : Who’s is the Source of everything in this world ? Good and bad ?
In other words if God (true Self) is internal, inside of us as per the advaita teachings, then why do I still feel comfortable, peaceful and love in the conventional ways of prayers (talking to God) and asking for things from God?
Isn’t God the source of everything ? Why do I still feel that this higher power is external and not internal ?
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Dear friend: There is one source, one reality. It does not matter what we call it, God, Truth, Brahman, Consciousness, etc.
Good and bad are conceptual labels that are expressed as thought and belief. There is no absolute good and bad. No reality to good and bad.
Advaita means non duality. Therefore the duality of inside and outside is not Advaita.
I am not sure why you feel comfortable praying to an outside God. Maybe you feel reassured and safe by believing and praying to an outside reality. When we experience ourselves as an internal self, we feel separation and we imagine security from an outside source. We seek security in the conceptual realm and in other mind projections such as money, power, religious belief, community identification, patriotism, family, etc.
But, if you contemplate your experience, you may come to understand that you never experience anything outside of yourself. All your experiences are intimate. Projecting an outside reality is what the mind does. It creates a fictitious world out there with a fictitious God.
Experience is beyond inside and outside. Experience is complete intimacy in a non-dual manner. All thoughts, perceptions and sensations are intimate with the consciousness that conceives them and perceives them.
Even the thought of an external power is experienced intimately.
What matters is that you come to understand that whenever you refer to ‘I’, you are referring to the reality of consciousness, to the one reality that perceives this perception. Not a concept, but the fact of awareness.
There is but one reality, one Brahman, one God.
Given awareness/consciousness is real, isn’t this reality the reality that I am? This reality we refer to as God, Truth, Consciousness… Beyond inside or outside.
I would invite you to drop all your beliefs, drop the past completely and look directly at what remains, without going back to old thoughts.
When you drop the mind, what remains?
Is it inside or outside or neither inside nor outside?
What is it?
What is the reality of your experience when you do not invite the mind to answer?