I’m having an argument with myself.

The non-dualist and the dualist in me are disagreeing with each other.

Non-dualism is a focus on God as the transcendental One (Brahman in Hinduism). It creates an illusory world (Maya, Shakti) and peoples it by temporarily individuating itself (Atman)

I call this the Divine Father, Mother, and Child. Hindus call it (different order) Brahman, Atman, and Shakti. Jesus called it the Trinity of (different order) the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. In the end, all resolves itself back again into the One.

Dualists think of God as over there and me as over here. We’re forever separate although we share a common essence.

Both views are true in their realms of application. Dualism is not true at the Absolute level of reality. Non-dualism can barely be appreciated at the Third/Fourth-Dimensional level.

***

One side of me says that when God sat down at the drawing board and drafted the Plan, the One created some things being more desirable than others almost right from the beginning. Certainly God wrote it into the Plan.

It was more desirable to know the One than it was not to.  Knowing Father/Mother God brought ecstacy, bliss, and other forms of love. Not knowing the One brought various forms of deprivation and misery.

There was always the need to choose almost from the word “Go”  and this created a game,.

The game involves choosing between remaining with not knowing ourselves as God or moving to a point of knowing ourselves as God. And then playing that choice out to see what it brings. This act of choosing in the moment is like dealing ourselves a hand of cards or rolling the dice. We then see what our choice brought.

If God didn’t want to play the game, Father/Mother God could have remained One and only, eternally blissful. But S/he set in motion a game that led to the creation of universe upon universe, time out of mind.

***

The non-dualistic monk in me wants to abide in choiceless awareness and thinks enmeshing myself in choices is a distraction.

The dualist doesn’t think that choicelessness is right for this generation. It certainly isn’t part of my plan for this lifetime or the Divine Plan for this era.

I’m here … we’re here … to build a new world, the dualist says. Choicefulness has always been part of the equation.

Just as we leapfrog from Self to No-Self to even wider vistas, so we also leap from a lifetime of introspection and enlightenment to another of service and embodiment, and back again. The journey is long and has many phases, many of which repeat themselves. That’s why evolution is pictured as a spiral upward.

This lifetime is one of service and embodiment. That involves me, not in rejecting nondualism or endorsing dualism, but in recognizing the necessity to make choices in the service of the Mother.

Making choices is not time away from my mission. It’s the essence of it this lifetime.