"As long as you believe in God, you remain separate, and fear survives.” This is not an attack on the sacred — it is an exposure of illusion. Belief creates distance. The moment God becomes an object of belief, something outside you, separation is born. And where there is separation, fear naturally survives: fear of judgment, fear of punishment, fear of losing grace, fear of being unworthy. Mystics never asked you to believe. They asked you to see. In the silence of true seeing, God is not “there” and you are not “here.” The division collapses. Fear cannot exist without distance. Fear needs a gap — between you and life, you and truth, you and existence. This is why mystics dance, sit in silence, laugh, disappear. Not because they believed — but because belief dissolved. Attributed to the spirit of Rumi, this insight points beyond religion, beyond theology, beyond ideology. It invites you to drop belief and enter intimacy with existence itself. No belief. No fear. Only presence. If this resonates, sit with it — don’t agree, don’t disagree. Let it work in silence. Source Mystical insight inspired by the non-dual tradition and the spirit of Rumi’s teachings on direct experience over belief.

I've put together five practical ways you can start practicing non-duality today. It's about shifting your attention from the stories in your head to the raw, immediate experience. 1. Melt the Observer and the Observed (Chores as Practice). Think about doing the dishes or folding laundry. Usually, your mind says, "I am doing this boring thing." That's the split: I (the subject/doer) and dishes (the object/done). * The Shift: Try to drop the "I" label. Don't do the dishes; just let the experience of washing happen. Notice the warm water on your hands, the rough texture of the sponge, the squeak of clean glass. The sound, the sensation, the movement—it’s all just one unbroken experience. The washing is what you are right now. * The Payoff: When you really pay attention, the boring chore becomes vivid. You stop resisting the moment, and that’s a direct taste of non-duality. 2. Question Your Reactions (The 'Who is Annoyed?' Inquiry) Life throws curveballs, right? Maybe a driver cuts you off, or a coworker annoys you. The dualistic mind immediately yells, "They are bad, and I am right." * The Shift: When a strong emotion hits, don't follow the story. Just pause and ask, "Where is the center of this anger?" or "Who is feeling this annoyance?" Look for the solid, separate I that is getting upset. * The Payoff: You'll find that the "I" is elusive. It's not a thing you can grab, just a fleeting bundle of thoughts and sensations. The anger or annoyance is simply an event arising in a vast field of awareness, just like the sound of the car horn. See it as an event, not a personal attack. This process of self-inquiry is one of the quickest ways to see through the illusion of the separate self. 3. Drop the Judge (Accepting the Unacceptable) We're all walking, talking critics. We label everything: "This feeling is bad," "This weather is terrible," "That thought is stupid." This is the essence of duality: good/bad, right/wrong, self/other. * The Shift: Practice radical acceptance. Let everything be as it is. When a "bad" feeling like sadness or restlessness appears, don't try to fix it, judge it, or push it away. Just let it be. It's just energy moving.

When a teacher instructs to "let awareness rest in the body ", the mind may confuse the instruction with interoception. The practitioner is then mislead into shifting cognition from visual or auditory cognition to somatic perception, while the teacher was pointing, not to the idea of the body, or the sensation of it, but something prior to representation: the field of presence that transcends all representations. A better pointer would have been "let the body be the place where awareness forgets itself as a mind."

Happy New Year from the Shangriballa team. We’re watching the clouds drift over the peaks today, reminded that the sky doesn't try to hold onto them. We wanted to send you a thought that grounds us: May you find a sense of peace that doesn't depend on what’s happening around you. In our trauma-informed workshops, we see how often we try to "think" our way into clarity. But knowing the self is only half the story. The body holds the history that the mind tries to forget. Real peace happens when we stop treating the body like a separate object and let it release what it's carrying. Letting go of the body-mind is just as vital as any intellectual insight. When you stop bracing against life, the boundary between "you" and "the world" begins to soften. You realise you aren't a person in a body trying to find peace; you are the awareness in which the body and the world appear. The tension we carry is just a story we tell ourselves through our muscles. This year, we’re rooting for you to drop the story and be. We’re honoured to walk this path of release and realisation with you—all the best for 2026.