Be whole human
The conditions of your life are distinct. Sure, you share a lot with others, but you and your life are distinct, unrepeatable events. So what wisdom means for you can’t be found in a cookie-cutter ensemble of commonplace ideas. It’s enmeshed in your life.
It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.
— J R R Tolkien
Still, there are truths and guideposts that we might find that could help us to live a wise human life. Coming to terms with these truths and guideposts — reflecting them in our lives — is what I mean by being a whole human.
See, I’m not naming a specific religion, process, perspective or attitude for you. I think we’re at a point in our human journey where specificity and dogma no longer serve us.
Even the idea of being spiritual, for instance, locks us into a set of patterned responses that do not enrich our lives and often shore up a set of intolerant impulses.
These are foundational cultural assumptions that we need to open up.
So instead, let us meet at the crossroads.
Nondual humanism
The term nondual humanism is a way to articulate a certain orientation towards our deepest questions, questions that are central to human life and our place in the cosmos.
It’s a way to place a stake in the ground at a crossroads — a liminal boundary between religions, philosophies, thoughts and experiences, none of which we privilege.
I use nondual to avoid simple binaries, easy assertions and convenient answers on matters of human life; I use humanism to avoid tying us to any existing religious, philosophical or scientific attitude and instead to centre us on the human.
Sitting with the subject
Another way of thinking about these crossroads is that we’re sitting ourselves in the mystery of human subjectivity again — the central light of our existence from which and through which our experience flows.
But what that really means is that I place the question of wisdom squarely back with you, your life and your experiencesas a whole human being.
So let’s walk down to the crossroads together.