Spontaneous Presence

Reweaving a World in Crisis

Humanity is beset with a storm of social, political and ecological crises. Separability, rationalism, materialism and individualism are its root causes. A new vision lies beyond purity, achievement, exceptionalism and the self-made fortress of dualistic mind. Just This! explores non-duality and the promise of a relational world through the non-dual eye. Non-duality is a single seamless, relational process of attunement and co-creation: the world-as-subject. Spacious non-dual openness is immediate, radically inclusive and suffused with non-discriminating compassion. A relational, responsive and responsible world is the only sustainable path to a livable future because non-duality is the nature of nature, our nature. Just This!  addresses the divisive character of law, sovereignty, migration, property, finance and development in the Anthropocene through the uncompromising ‘tough love’ of non-dual vision. To restore equitable ecological relations is a ritual of recovery. Meta-crisis and a destabilized climate demand that we leap out of dualistic capture to recover a connected world. Divided consciousness plays at life; the relational universe plays as life. 
A thousand generations await. Let us become ancestors worthy of their regard.

When you see how perfect everything is, you will lift your head and laugh at the sky.–Longchenpa

Table of Content

  1. Introduction 1
  2. The Dismemberment of Culture                                14
  3. The Spell of Becoming                                                 31
  4. Getting There & Being There                                    45
  5. Seeing Through Duality                                             62      
  6. The Nature of Nature                                                 80
  7. The Listening Body                                                   104
  8. The Architecture of Wholeness 125
  9. Kali’s Totem: The Anthropocene                            144
  10. Water, Space & Light                                         157 
  11. Law as Tensional Integrity           175
  12. Migration: Humans Being Illegal                            197
  13. Naturalizing the Human                                          215
  14. Property as Rupture                                                227
  15. Finance: Development’s Double Bind                    246
  16. Epilogue           269
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NON-DUALITY

If the human drama were a spaghetti western, non-duality and duality would meet on a dusty street in the center of a ghost town under a blistering sun. Duality would think, ‘This town isn’t big enough for both of us.’ Non-duality would think just the opposite. ‘I see you,’ she says to herself. Sweat glistens. A trumpet wails of missed opportunities and final reckonings. In perpetual duel, duality, in his arrogance, believes non-duality must die. Non-duality feels no threat. She is not defensive in the least. She has no gun, no bullets. She holds duality blameless for his violent tendencies. If duality should fire, the bullet instantly boomerangs. Non-duality is unscathed. The truth dawns. Duality, noticing his wound, realizes it is self-inflicted. Beneath patterns of thought, attachment and denial, this drama is repeated everywhere, many times a day. We are just beginning to realize what we have inflicted upon ourselves. But deep inside, we know. By shooting first instead of surrendering, we defeat ourselves. Yet we still bear the wound, desperately wanting to heal. 

What readers said:

★★★★★

A fierce, tender, unsparing love letter to a burning world. From the body’s floating bones to Kali dancing on courthouse steps, this book dismantles property, law, finance, and the myth of separation while never letting go of the living, non-dual pulse beneath everything, the unbreakable remembrance that we are the Garden we thought we’d lost. Revolutionary, mythic, essential.   

                                       Ayomide Adebiyi, Sparkle Writers, Lagos.

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