Intervention – The mold of non-duality

Enjoy one of the 60 interventions from my book Not Your Responsibility.

Intervention – The mold of non-duality

A mold consists of two parts: the space around it and the indentation within. You can see your environment as the space around it and the indentation as yourself within that environment. Together, they form the awareness in which everything occurs. The material poured into the mold represents the realization that you are not just an individual. When the material hardens and everything becomes one, a single solid block remains. That is possibly who you actually are.

You could say the environment shapes you. Conversely, you could also state that you shape your environment. Both lead to the same realization. To come to this insight, you need only to flip the mold. The space around it becomes the indentation, and the indentation becomes the space around it. Your perception that the environment shapes you automatically shifts to the realization that you shape the environment. When the mold is filled with material (representing the realization that you are not the individual) non-dual unity remains. From this understanding, it’s hard to imagine how you once struggled to grasp this. It feels so clear.

At first, you thought that understanding non-dual unity was the thought experiment. But when the realization dawns, the opposite proves true: your old perception of separation turns out to be the complex thought experiment. The absence of this thought experiment is the simple non-dual reality. Realizing that the mold was just a thought experiment flips the experience: your environment and individuality were always connected. There was no real difference, you only convinced yourself otherwise. Without the realization of non-duality, the mold can feel highly restrictive in how you express yourself. You, as the subject, come into conflict with the environment, seen as the total object.

The moment you allow yourself to see that the limitation was always an illusion, that perceived limitation dissolves. You suddenly realize it was never a true boundary. The mold’s indentation tried its best to make you believe you were the indentation, unaware that it had always been the entire mold. Whether you experience your environment as limiting or helpful doesn’t matter. In both cases, there is a distance between you and your environment. Conflict, therefore, becomes inevitable.

Concentration meditation is an intervention aimed at awakening non-dual awareness. However, I am not a proponent of concentration, as it suggests you need to focus your attention on something. The one making this choice automatically obstructs the potential of the intervention by introducing separation. From this separation, you try to reach wholeness, but this effort is doomed to fail until the separation is entirely dissolved. Nevertheless, concentration meditation can serve as a starting point. Typically, concentration is focused on the breath, heartbeat, or physical sensations. For this intervention, you direct your attention to something outside yourself, like a candle flame or a clock. It’s not necessary to choose an object that visibly changes, but a dynamic object can help keep you engaged. With a static object, there is a greater risk of drifting into thought, which would be counterproductive. Use the object’s changing nature as a constant reminder to surrender fully to it.

Concentration meditation serves as a stepping stone to undivided attention. You achieve this by fully surrendering to the object you observe. Five minutes likely won’t suffice for this intervention; half an hour is closer to what’s needed. You’ll notice your intervention is frequently “interrupted” by spiraling thoughts. Over time, the thoughts may still arise, but they won’t stick to you; they come and go effortlessly. Your attention remains fully on the object. The thoughts simply cannot persist without your attention. In this way, concentration meditation transforms into attention meditation. At this point, the space of the one supposedly concentrating disappears. Because that, too, is just a thought. You begin to notice the object becoming you. The identification with who you are starts to dissolve.

However, you do not draw conclusions, such as thinking you are on the right path or that the intervention is working. Your attention remains undisturbed. Your identification is entirely taken over by that which you focus on. The moment you become the object, you suddenly become everything. Even the object ceases to exist as a thought. It simply is, beyond thought, just like everything around you. The object can no longer exist because the one observing it apparently never existed. This realization might seem unsettling or even frightening, but in truth, it brings a deep sense of connection with everything that is.