#45 - Part 2 - John Astin - Home Is Where Reality Is - The Nonduality Podcast

Here’s part two of Paul’s conversation with nonduality author and teacher John Astin. Our primary idea is of being separate from the whole of reality. We imagine we exist as independent creatures like waves imagining they are separate from the sea. We’re searching to feel at home. Our habitual instinct, however, tells us, “This moment isn’t home. It doesn’t look or feel like my idea of home. I’m going to do all these spiritual practices and inquiries and I’m going to find home.” In actual fact, there is only home. Home is reality; it’s the reality of home. We are the expression of some indivisible ocean of existence. Conceptually we can conceive of distinct objects, but experientially we don’t actually experience separation. We only ever experience experience itself and experience doesn’t have boundaries. We can see if our unquestioned ideas have an empirical basis in experience. When we explore with care the field of experience, we discover the nature of life and find that it doesn’t collapse into definitions. We find that life is not actually divided in any way, and we realise this fact by simply looking here and now within the unlimited field of what is. There’s the possibility of a relaxing of the search for something else, for answers, for solutions to apparent problems. Real equanimity is in the discovery that there’s only equanimity. The wave-like movements of the mind are being moved by the ocean of reality. The one reality is moving all waves, each manifestation of itself. Everything is that totality. We are never not at home. We are the home we seek. Our site: https://nisargayoga.org Music by Scott Buckley - https://www.scottbuckley.com.au/library/