Great Expectations? “Contemplation of my real nature has certainly taken hold,” you write. “Yet my life does not look much different, and habitual reactions are still appearing.” As a consequence of what one can find in much of the spiritual material, there is sometimes an exaggerated expectation as to how life will “look” after Self-realization. Twenty, thirty, forty or more years of (dualistic) societal conditioning does not necessarily disappear overnight. There are some acquired habits, especially, which may not be amenable to much change at all. The significant change that does relate to Self-realization is the relinquishing of the tendency to hope that the real facts of life will be something other than what they resolutely are. For those who are viewing life from a dualistic framework, there will be an effort to move away from what is perceived as negative (or un-pleasant) and to move toward the positive end of the spectrum (whatever is deemed pleasant). The teachings of nonduality assure us that it is possible to transcend such dualistic distinctions, in our general perception, as “better” or “worse.” In other words, we view matters in terms of ‘what is,’ rather than how they could be or should be. Therefore, in the wake of Self-realization, the world (good, bad or middling) has not changed; but one’s perspective, concerning all that one is aware of, has changed. Put another way, the world looks no different than it ever has— but our expectation, that it ought to appear any way other
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