Further thoughts on the Non-dualistic position

Non-dualism valuable but not ultimate
To the Buddhist and to many Christians influenced by esoteric ways of thinking 'non-dualism' (or 'and/also' as opposed to 'either/or' thinking) is an ultimate goal. To me from a Christian perspective non-dualism is not an end in itself but a means to a higher calling. I refer not to our ultimate end after death or in the Apostle Paul’s words “The mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus”.  I refer to our calling here on earth. A passage which comes to mind in this context is that of the experience of the 3 disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration -  the great mystical experience of seeing the transformed  Jesus was immediately contrasted by what followed - a (dualistic) confrontation with the demonised child. This seems to be also how Jesus operated. He came as a light shining in the darkness and the darkness was not able to contain it. Spending time with his Father was the source of His power to do his His will and advance His kingdom. (the Lords prayer). Jesus was acting out an aware dualism due to his time with God his Father and this too is the Christian calling.
Onenesswith God not equivalent to non-dualism
 I’m not sure if oneness with God is identical with the non-dual way of thinking. It does not seem to me to be how Jesus viewed it - his praying and fellowship with God seemed to not be reducible to an internal impersonal enlightenment but more an objective personal relationship with a God who was ‘out there’.  Perhaps that is why we have recorded in scripture an external voice saying 'This is my Son in whom I am well pleased' also at the Mount of transfiguration and at our Lord’s baptism. I’m sure non-dualism was an important aspect of Jesus thinking which we should recapture but to extrapolate it to being equivalent to our ultimate end or goal seems to be overdoing it a bit. Non dualism was made for man not man for non-dualism. Whatever unity with God means it will transcend and eclipse any concept we can come up with that relates to our internal experience. From a biblical viewpoint it will be personal – we will see Him and be like Him which is our Christian hope (1 John 3).
Grace the foundation of relationship with God
This leads to my other point in that the Trinitarian relationship towards which we are called through Jesus and his Cross allows for objectivity and reciprocal relationship available to the poor and the outcast, the afflicted and the powerless through grace. This is a far cry from the elitism of higher consciousness implied by Ken Wilber’s Integral Model. I am sure I would be placed well down the scale. 
Christianity more suitable for proactive Love
I believe that Buddhists are seeking to move away from a more passive state. However as much as I know about western Buddhism and modern esoteric teachers we are to love unitively loving you as me because I am one with evrything - there are no (dualistic) distinctions - just perfect oneness. As with her relationship with God the Christian’s love has to do with loving the other who is different from me. The one is subjective and unitive embracing isness, the other embracing 'otherness' and difference. Some have said that love can only exist if there is another to love – hence the Trinity. Perhaps it is for this reason that Buddhism tends towards introspection, quietism, divine egoism and social indifference But by insisting on the transcendence of God (the qualitative distinction between divine and human) we get wonder, astonishment, fear and trembling, curiosity, moral and political adventure, righteous indignation and social justice – Christianity.

Richard Rhor (2) - "The Naked Now" - Dualism. Ken Wilber insufficient

I have further thoughts also about the dualist/non-dualist dualism! I think Richard R is being very fair and wise in the way he chooses his words. He recognises duality thinking to be something that has been very beneficial to our culture: P32 - "Binary thinking is not wrong or bad in itself. In fact it is necessary in many if not most situations..". Also he is willing to own his own tendencies towards such ways of thinking (p40).
JESUS AND NON-DUALISTIC THINKING
The values of non-dualistic thinking are evident in his experience. It is also evident in some of the teaching of Jesus in the gospels that He is non-dualistic. The one that stands out for me is the fact that when he was challenged with questions (perhaps at the attempt to control) Jesus simply answered with another question perhaps switching the balance of power or simply refusing to be forced in the 'either/or' way of thinking. I love it!

JESUS AND DUALISTIC THINKING
However on page 32 RR goes on to say that dualistic thinking is "completely inadequate for the major questions and dilemmas of life" but in my mind this is precisely where Jesus comes down strongest on the dualistic side. To deny this would be to do the gospels a great injustice. The idea of conflict is central to the life of Jesus. Again this is not to devalue non-binary thought but if we reduce the life and teaching of Jesus to it exclusively it would be  too simplistic and convenient. Reading the gospels is an untidy business and in them non dualism and dualism rest side by side.

INTEGRAL LIFE
Integral Life and the likes seem to say anything that purports to be anything less than unitive (non-dualistic) is of a lower order
I quote from a post on Integral Life:
The Wilber Integral Vision is generally good at seeing different traditions in their own terms and integrating them through a pluralistic/aperspectival vision or seeing how they fit via "orienting generalization", to the larger model.  However this model is biased towards non-dual traditions which are radically apophatic, causing blind spots in looking at traditions which are not.  The outcome is, that Wilber's Vision seeks out the spiritual representatives in each tradition which confirm his model, and writes off the ones that don't as simply being "lower" on the color scale (e.g. they may be authentic representatives of a tradition, but at a lower level, then this enlightened fellow whose model we are endorsing).  This means that the Wilber model sets up a perspective which is not questioned, but used to evaluate all other traditions. This can lead to a type of Integral Facism! (we the elite understand you, you must grow according to our model).

ABSOLUTE DUALISM
I put forward the idea that non-dual consciousness is not an end but a means to something higher to which Jesus, His teaching and life call us. He calls us to a new type of dualism - an absolute dualism. A relative dualism is one that consists of equal and opposites but an absolute dualism is one where one side of the dual is superior. Through Jesus light conquers darkness, Life conquers death, Love conquers hatred. How? Through the Cross where Love non-dualistically absorbs the hatred and in so doing overcomes it dualistically! In the Cross the dichotomy between the two ways of thinking is transcended through this Absolute dualism.

Just a thought but in my mind Centering prayer is not to lead us ultimately to a passive state of acceptance most perfectly symbolised by the inward looking of the Buddha important as this is. The symbol of Christianity is the Cross – The symbol of the agonising Saviour-God reaching out to embrace a suffering world in love. Whilst we accept the injustices of the world as the ‘way of it’ we are to be those who do not leave it there but in the spirit of love go out and make a difference pro-actively which I am sure many of you are doing so much more than I. The negative side of dualistic thinking, for the purposes of his argument, has been adequately documented by RR.  However, so much has been and is being accomplished by the Church and that not necessarily by those who hold exclusively to the non-dualistic mindset.

Intimacy v Scientific separation

The western scientific world view does not lend itself to participation/intimacy with God. It needs to separate in order to observe. Behind this we can detect the need to control.  Theologically I understand the Desert Fathers went to the desert to continue in their relational/participational interpretation of the Trinity rather than formulating doctrines. The Trinity was not to be understood through analysis and categorisation but through participation and relationship. Their theology was not conceptual but relationally intuitive and thus was best defined by how they lived their lives as a result.(Karen Armstrong’s book 'The case for God' I found very informative on this)
At the other end of the timeline (I'm no scientist) I understand that advances have been made in quantum physics - the study of subatomic particles. All sorts of weird things happen on that level that indicate intelligence and relationship between observer and the observed.
 If we are not careful we can be so non-dualistic that we reject dualism to the extent that we have created another dualism! ... After all any 'non'-anything is potentially creating duality. OAnother way of puuting it may be "We can be right in that which we affirm and wrong in that which we deny". We are right in affirming the non-dual dynamic participation in God but wrong as a consequence in denying the value of scientific observation even if it merely serves to show its limitations and  its existential emptiness in order that we may explore the ways that invite the dimensions of intimacy.
Truly we all long for intimacy and Centering Prayer is that consenting to the activity of God's presence within. In so doing the false self must surrender to the Cross. Awakened by His risen power we are empowered to love and to serve.
And it is not our doing but we are being 'done unto' and He gets the glory!

Ken Wilber - The Great Search

I read an article on the Integral Life Website which is a portion from a book by Ken Wilber. In it he makes the statement that “The Great Search is the great enemy of what is”. To be searching implies that “you have not got” so to be in a searching mode you never actually arrive. It is only when you stop the search you begin to realise all you need is all you have and all you are. There is no longer any separation – no dualism – just being and connecting with all that there is. “This realization undoes the Great Search that is the heart of the separate-self sense.” This realisation affects our relationship with all that ‘is’ around us: ”… you simply are the mountain, you are the sky, you are the clouds, you are everything that is arising moment to moment, very simply, very clearly, just so.”
This is great stuff and a much needed call to awareness and to the present moment in which we become conscious of our aliveness and the goodness of all that is. It also helps us to come to terms with the pain we suffer as we in the words of Byron Katie ‘Love what is’.
As an addition and further development of these thoughts I would like to consider some words that Jesus is recorded to have said “Seek and you shall find”. In this case it is quite clear that seeking is a favourable thing and certainly not seen to be an enemy. Admittedly Ken uses the word ‘search’ and not ‘seek’ but I do not think this matters. The Greek meaning for this word ‘seek’ is actually in the present-continuous-imperative … literally ‘Seek and keep on seeking’. Sadly our own language does not have such verb distinctions so we often miss it in translation. I believe that a good interpretation of the passage above would be ‘As you keep on seeking you will keep on finding’ or  conversely ‘The moment we stop seeking is the moment we stop finding’ … almost like saying the moment the water stops flowing out the water stops flowing in. It seems in this context the enemy is quite the opposite of seeking. It is FINDING! … because once you have found you have stopped seeking and therefore you no longer are finding … Yo! Well actually to be more precise it is not the finding but the grasping that is the problem ...  finding is perfectly acceptable provided we do not seek to possess what we find for then we have returned to the egoic as our centre. There is a dynamic in Jesus view of God not dissimilar to the concept the Desert Fathers had in their perception of the Trinity in the word perichoresis which means to dance around … one part of the Trinity flows into the other in continuity … a constant movement. Another popular word used is self emptying the Greek word being  “Kenosis” used once by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Philippian Church where he says Jesus did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but (Kenosis) emptied himself. So as long as the seeking/ finding dynamic keeps moving all is well but as soon as egoic grasping and spiritual possessiveness kicks in there we have our “enemy”.
So it seems that another dualism is broken by Jesus – that is the dualism of seeking and having by making them dynamically mutually co-existent. Ken Wilber has created a dualism where there does not need to be.
“Should we simply cease the search?” Asks Ken. I would agree and answer” No”, but for a different reason. In Jesus teaching we do not have to. The activity of searching is accommodated for and anticipated by Spirit which pre-empts our searching. The moment of searching is the moment of finding.
Instead of saying the Great Search presumes the loss of God I would say the Finding of God Assumes or even CONsumes the great search.
Ken is left with the meaninglessness of all the effort made through prayer and other disciplines. If God is immediately present any act of seeking is perpetuating the lie that He is not. Eckhart Tolle perpetually makes reference to wasted effort in attempting to attain to that which is already here present in this moment. Ken’s argument is that the only use of such discipline is that it ‘speeds up the folly’ but surely better still not to enter the folly – let’s throw all the millennia of spiritual seeking away as one big collective enemy. However if we take the kenotic view above we find that we don’t have to because the seeking is the finding ... there is no dualism here.