Qualities and Life Skills

There are qualities and life-skills that support meditation and the related practices. Consciously developing these are essential to progress towards realising the truth of non-duality in our own experience.

The path begins with ethical living based on goodwill to all and the desire to cause no injury to others.

By living these qualities we put into action our belief in the unity of life and the oneness of our deeper Self with the Self of all. In this way we affirm that our true nature is not fundamentally disturbed by what happens among the passing phenomena and on the surface of our mind.

This is the beginning of what is called right discrimination and true evenness of mind or detachment.

The vision of underlying unity and our at-one-ment with the whole does not require a particularly clever mind. What we do need is a purified and expanded mind. Practising these qualities is the way to bring about purity and expansion.

The right way of doing things in general is known as Dharma, which is the foundation and prerequisite of inner growth. For more on Dharma see this article and this extract.

An important part of the non-dual practice is learning how to perform our actions and make efforts in the right way. There is a way of dedicated action that leads to inner liberation, which is described in detail in the Bhagavad Gita.

Another helpful practice is self-examination, done in a constructive, balanced way.

It is useful to choose one of the life-skills that support meditation and consciously focus on it for a certain time, say a day or a week. Such qualities include patience, contentment, tolerance, kindness, honesty and truthfulness.

 

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