Ever since I was a very young child, I've pondered the questions, Who am I? and Where am I? I remember first asking those questions when I was about five years old, standing on the back lawn and looking up at the cloudy sky. I've always found 'reality' a bit, well, surreal; I have a strong sense of being an observer or, more accurately, as if my life is an ever more lucid dream. Those two questions have been a driving force in my life, and led me on a wonderful journey to some surprising answers and a very blessed life.
"Do you believe in God?"
Not in the usual sense.
"What do you mean? Do you believe in God or not?"
I believe that ultimate reality is One.
I don't believe in a personal God separate from the self or the world. I also don't think reality is godless. I reject that whole divide.
"But if you don't believe in a personal God, doesn't that make you an atheist?"
I am not saying, "I believe in God."
But I am also not saying, "There is no God."
What I am saying is, the category itself is mistaken.
I'm neither theist nor atheist. I'm non-dualist.
What I mean by that: reality is fundamentally One. The apparent multiplicity of the world — objects, persons, forces — is not ultimately real in itself, but a manifestation of a single underlying principle, or thought. The sense of being a separate self is not the deepest truth of what you are. The individual and the world are not two different things, but aspects of one thought.
This isn't a moral framework. It has nothing to say about how to behave or what to pursue. It is simply a description of what is — arrived at not through faith or tradition, but through direct observation. The seeing through the illusion of separateness doesn't change the world; it changes what you take yourself to be. One reality, mistaken for many; insight, not belief.