Nisagardatta was very fond of pain. It keeps you awake, he said. While pleasure puts you to sleep. You have to be awake in the dream to be able to see it this way. If you are still asleep, you will not be able to. You are rendered a plaything, you are duality’s punching bag, you are the Gods’ running joke. You live under the illusion that something can be wrong. You live with the constant pressure to make things right.
You need to wake up from duality to be able to see it for what it is. Only then will you be able to appreciate its full spectrum. If things go to shit, for example – you don’t compare it with things going well. You don’t compare it with anything else in duality. You compare it with the absence of duality. Just like people compare life with death. In this context, existence within duality is life. And the absence of duality is death. So you appreciate the ability to feel and experience anything at all.
This is how nightmares like this dreamscape come into place. The appreciation is unconditional. Any possibility within the full spectrum of infinite possibilities is equally welcome to become manifest. Any dream is equally worth appearing. And any appearance is equally welcome to disappear. Even appearance and disappearance are equally welcome. Nothing is more holy or worthy than anything else. It is all one consciousness. One playful spirit.
If you are still asleep within duality, you are unable to see that. Simply because you haven’t realized yet what you are beyond duality. Your comparison of life with death can only ever be conceptual. You have no true insight whatsoever of life. Or death. Let alone nothingness. You don’t see consciousness behind life. You don’t see infinity behind death. You don’t see nothingness behind consciousness. Just like pure beingness, nothingness cannot be imagined. Both can only ever be realized as part of your true nature.
Yet being asleep within duality, you are not awake to your true nature. So you can only ever approach the underlying reality with your dual mind. Yet both your imagination and your understanding are worthless in terms of awakening, because all the dual mind can ever do is compare a part of duality with another part of duality. With the dual mind still in charge, you cannot realize any part of the truth. Nor can you be free from judging things as right and wrong.