Moving toward Advaita/Jnana

[GliderGuider]

I realized about 3 years ago that I was moving away from my lifelong atheistic materialism and becoming a spiritual seeker of some sort. Since that moment my problem has always been figuring out what "spirituality" means to me, especially since I have no interest whatsoever in gods or worship. It seemed that every form of spirituality I encountered demanded some form of belief in things I couldn't believe in, or some form of worship that was interesting but didn't feel real. The closest thing I discovered to a compatible form of spirituality was Zen, but even that struck me as too arid and formal.

Along the way I got tantalizing hints, especially during meditation -- a repeated sense of oceanic consciousness, and even a couple of fleeting instances of complete nondual awareness. It was those experiences that steered me away from the more traditional bhakti or devotional approaches that I'd been exposed to, and toward a pure nondualism.

The final impetus has come from being re-united with a woman who seems to be my own self in another body. She has been on a similar path since we lost contact 27 years ago, and has pointed me towards the Advaita/Jnana approach of "pure wisdom". I'm relieved by the sense of rightness in this approach, as it fits my nature to a T. And it turns out there are a LOT of people on this path, both teachers and students.

This new awareness has given me a framework for discernment -- a welcome ability to give the teachings of Tolle, Adyashanti, Nisargadatta, Ramana Marharshi, Osho, Robert Wolfe and so many others a perspective within my own life.

I just started reading Robert Wolfe's eBook Living Nonduality, and that prompted me to write this post in the hopes that it might interest a few others.