Devotional Christic Nonduality ❤️🔥
🎄 Meditations on a heart-fusion of nonduality & devotional Christic mysticism
“If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.”
― Zen Proverb
True nonduality includes everything, including our mythic and sacramental human journeys.
As a lover of Christ and dedicated family man who loves rich stories, cathedrals, and ceremony, I can tell you that nonduality points to a simple rest that fully includes all these wonderful and human aspects of life.
No illusions, nothing negated.
It points to radiant wholeness dancing itself forth as all this poetry of form.
It points to God’s supra-personal grace.
A grace that transcends and includes all persons.
This grace is right here and now.
It is the simple fact that your experience is shining forth from nowhere as an instantaneous flash of already-complete, fully-orchestrated, seamless presence.
Without you lifting a finger, FLASH, experience is there—in a completed form.
The fullness of God’s voluptuous body—plainly, nakedly, self-evidently displayed before us in every moment. Laid bare for our awe and investigation.
Miraculously, we typically just ‘take the world for granted.’
“Oh yeah, ho hum, this is just me going to the pizza store in my normal human life.”
The key thing to see is that yes, it is that—the perspective of ‘me going to the pizza store’ is fully included—yet it’s also infinitely more than that.
This infinity is not found in some other realm. It’s found right here and now in simply noticing the totally indescribable artistry of even the most mundane moments of life.
The way a person walks, the way light dances on a car window, the way a baby’s face moves, the way a bird lands on a branch, the way clouds morph & drift, the taste of Japanese ramen, the way faces glow & ripple, the way the wind whispers, the way the sun effulges with effortless blinding intensity…
If you let yourself taste these subtleties with the senses of an infant, a poet, or a holy fool, you will notice far more than ‘mundane human life.’
You will begin to see the actual presence of divine artistry. You will begin to notice bottomless richness and purely ineffable poetry as the literal fact of every single moment of life.
Even apparent dullness and boring-ness is totally miraculous. What a hilarious invention! The capacity to feel like infinite kaleidoscopic luminosity is BORING. Hah! Imagine.
Every single mode is miraculous. Every single mode is included.
Peter Brown once told me he doesn’t see any “illusions” in reality. Only reality itself.
Every single mode and perspective is included. Every perspective is a poetic way that THIS can seem to be. Every perspective is true and real within its own context.
What is seen in nondual recognition is simply that none of these perspectives are final. Any way that you hold reality to be, cannot actually fully or objectively contain reality—because reality is just too slippery, too close, too simple, too inconceivable, too nothing-and-everything-at-once.
So you discover THAT which is ‘prior to’ yet fully inclusive of all possible perspectives, modes, beings, and experiences.
You discover bottomless unpindownable infinity as the undeniable fact of this instantaneous flash of textural PRESENCE here and now.
The simple truth that nonduality points to could be codified as:
Your experience is.
What could be more undeniable?
Can anyone actually argue with this?
Being is.
Is-ness is.
Hah!
It’s actually hilarious to write it this way. Because it reveals that it is literally unassailable.
This makes it humorous that people attempt to ‘argue against’ nonduality as if it is a philosophy or belief system.
It’s not.
All it’s saying is, “THIS IS ACTUALLY HERE. Nothing accurate can be said about it. Check it out. It’s fun.”
And when you DO check this out, you begin to discover strange and liberating aspects you hadn’t noticed before:
You discover that its full range of modes always only appear here and now. No one has ever found the past or future; these appear only as imaginative visions here and now. Not even ‘now’ can be found—not as a graspable ‘moment in time.’ Nothing ever stops morphing—not for one instant. Before you could ever pin anything down as being ‘this’ or ‘that,’ it has already become something else. So you discover that the entire sea of infinite modes, flavors, and perspectives appears only in/as this instantaneous FLASH about which nothing accurate can be stated. You discover that this condition-less condition is not a ‘problem.’ For anything to be a ‘problem’ you’d have to actually know what it is. And you don’t—not in any fixed or final sense. You discover that this instantaneous FLASH has inherent qualities of freshness, wholeness, juiciness, at-home-ness, simplicity, rest, intelligence, artistry, and all-embracing-ness. It simply is as it is. God be chillin.’
Hold all words lightly. Even calling this flash of now-ness ‘God’ can begin to feel heavy-handed at a certain point. All words misdirect in unique ways. What is being pointed at is just too close, simple, and ‘obvious.’
Again, simply your experience right now—just as it is.
Devotional Christic Nonduality
I am glad to hold the mysteries of God and Christ close to my heart, though. For my karmic makeup, I find my ancestors’ devotional path of Christic mysticism to be extraordinarily beautiful, heart-opening, humbling, dignifying, human, poetic, mythical, and poignant. This tradition brings the quality of devotional Love into my heart of hearts. And I find that this mystery of Love brings our human world more fully ‘to life,’ imbuing the full relational tapestry with intimacy, innocence, and numinous incandescence. This Love invites us into a personal relationship with God.
The Christic traditions are also simply practical: The values of family, faith, thanksgiving, hope, commitment, loyalty, humility, devotion, service, self-sacrifice, being good parents, being good children, being good brothers & sisters & aunts & uncles & cousins & grandparents & grandchildren, being good friends & family members, community, diligence, groundedness, charity, kindness, beauty, purity, wholesomeness, forgiveness, (self-)honesty, togetherness, rejoicing, revelation, sanctification, plenitude, work ethic, honor, love, grace, worship, and viewing suffering as a purifying fire—are simply some of the most karmically auspicious and functional values for human beings to embody. These values simply work well in the human world, especially in the context of family & communal life. When I became a father and husband, I needed to reclaim & reintegrate a great deal of this ancestral ‘Christian operating system’ to be able to ‘stay put’ in the pressure cooker of family life; to be able to hold it skillfully; and to be able to become the strong rooted father & husband I knew in my heart I was meant to be.
I weep now as I write this, while listening to ‘The Blessing’—such a magnificent masterpiece of a song, clearly writ by the hand of the Creator. One of my most-played songs of 2024, I can easily listen to it on repeat. Thank you to my friend Devin for showing it to me.
Most human beings hold within their hearts a deep devotional impulse toward worship. True nonduality fully honors this devotional impulse.
Perhaps some sages are of a pure ‘jnana’ temperament—simply on the path of clear seeing, with no felt need for a devotional relationship with That.
For lil’ ol’ me that is not the case. I am a feeler. I am a poet. I am a sensual ceremonialist. I am a wild dancer, a singer, a free styler of flow. I’m an Aries INFP with a fiery love for mythic and archetypal wellsprings. I am a father, husband, son, brother, friend, grandson, nephew, cousin. I am a lover of Gaia. I am deeply human.
For me the BLAZING FIRE of luscious formfulness is no less holy and important than the cool, still peace of emptiness. There is no actual dichotomy or hierarchy whatsoever. “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form,” as it says in the Heart Sutra.
We could rephrase this as: “Love is wisdom, wisdom is love.”
As Nisargadatta put it:
“Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows.”
When I am deep in the wisdom of emptiness, even the word ‘God’ can seem like ‘saying too much.’
Yet when the heart cracks and the LOVE reignites and re-embraces all formfulness in a warm eternal bear hug, I weep and make the sign of the cross and say to myself, “Thank you, God. Thank you, Jesus Christ.”
And it is then that I feel the true sanctity, plenitude, and holy mystery of the Word. I feel how the Word can be wielded with utmost reverence. I feel the fragile poignancy of lips, tongue, vocal cords.
Speak your lover’s name as if you were only allowed to utter it once every thousand years. Hold it tenderly like a newborn babe. Release it like a delicate butterfly from outstretched palms. Then is the sacred mystery of the Word laid bare.
Every moment is a gift.
I sit here now in a cafe in a German grocery store—watching as people pour through the check-out lines. Buying food. Everyday activity.
I see the total simplicity and ordinariness of this scene.
And I also see the Creator’s Heart laid bare.
The Creator is this moment now.
His throbbing Heart holds and enfolds us.
In it “we live and move and have our being.”
His Christic Love is made flesh here and now.
His bottomless artistry sprawls tenderly across every face.
What Love! To make each face and each being so totally and utterly unique—never seen before, never to be seen again.
And not only this, but to make each instant fully and utterly unique! Such that no being remains the same for even a microsecond, but expresses an ever fresh soulfulness that continuously dances and radiates anew! Truly we are resurrected in each moment.
How marvelous, how each one expresses this native soul-signature dancing-ness — so truly themselves, emanating ambient them-ness, yet simultaneously embodying a pure mystery and infinity that continuously self-rearranges as unpindownable juiciness.
And when I see them smile or weep—it is then that they look most like themselves, and most like His children.
And how stunning, how all of this shines forth only now—only in this instant—and not even that. An evanescent flickering of unpatterned light-patterning that somehow undeniably presents as a sacrament of incarnation. A miracle of ungraspable hyper-intelligence.
I cry again now. And yes I’m still listening to ‘The Blessing’ on repeat. :’ )
My heart swells with pure pathos.
In all its rugged, ragtag, broken glory, this ramshackle world is the very body of God.
Warts and mumps and cancers and all.
He would not change a single hair on your head.
He loves you precisely as you are.
Precisely.
With no rhyme or reason. He doesn’t need a reason. He loves you as mother loves daughter. He lays eyes upon you and you are His. And He is yours. Forever and ever. Not as a possession, but as a promise—a covenant of Love. You are safe in His keeping.
He wants you to know His Love.
He wants a relationship with you.
He wants you to remember that you are always Home.
I wonder how many onlookers notice me weeping over here. So it is.
This moment now is the Body of the supra-personal Christ.
Pristine Loving Presence.
The undying Light of God.
No other time, no other place, no other world.
This-here-now is the sacramental presence.
Wholeness.
May we know Him.
May we honor Him.
May we partake of His Love, His Grace, His Freedom.
May we drink of the ever-replenishing Waters of Life.
May we feel the sacredness in our Heart of Hearts.
Like the moment we first look into our newborn baby’s eyes.
And know we are redeemed.
I love you,
Jordan
If you appreciated this piece, you may resonate with my book, God’s Love. In many ways it is an exploration of my heart’s path toward devotional Christic nonduality.
a playlist containing the Christ Heart Medicine songs that most deeply touch my Heart:
a video i released today on devotional christic nonduality:
jordan is a friend who wishes you all a very merry Christmas <3
he and cory released a special song called ‘Surrender to God’ today on ~all streaming platforms — you can prolly find it by visiting any of our artist profiles or by searching ‘coryayo Surrender to God’
peace and love,
j