page thirty-nine: Salvation or Self-Realization?

Christmas and Hanukkah are around the corner—two bright traditions arriving side by side. When holidays converge, they offer humanity a quiet invitation to revisit the roots of our faith. Just as birthdays help us renew our relationship with ourselves, and anniversaries help us reflect on the bonds we share with those we love, sacred holidays call us to reconnect with the heart of what we trust.

Whether one calls it God, Spirit or the Universe —or, like the atheist, places trust in science, ethics, or a chosen guiding principle—each of us anchors our life to something that helps us navigate uncertainty. How we greet fortune and misfortune, how we relate to others, and how we interpret our unfolding story all flow from this inner orientation.

Yet this relationship, like any meaningful connection, calls for regular check-ins. Does this anchor help me grow? Inspire me? Make me more aware, compassionate, and capable of showing up for myself and others in the ways I would like to?

Following these questions back through time, we can trace how humanity’s understanding of the sacred has evolved. In early traditions, God often appeared as a Divine Being—high above, watching from the heavens. “God is in heaven, and all is well with the earth,” as Robert Browning put it. This was an omniscient presence, keeping careful score, perfect and powerful, to be feared and obeyed. Within this dualistic view, human beings were seen as flawed and separate from God, and salvation was something bestowed through grace from above rather than discovered from within.

Over time, new perspectives emerged—particularly in the East—inviting us to widen our understanding and move beyond this divide. God was no longer seen only as an external authority, but as a presence woven through all of creation. Buddhism, for example, speaks not of a distant Divine Being, but of Interbeing—a living thread connecting the inner microcosm with the outer macrocosm. From this perspective, the sacred is neither good nor bad, but a presence without beginning or end—an ocean of consciousness of which each of us is a drop.

Here, salvation is not something granted from outside, but something realized from within. It is the recognition that the events of our lives, the roles we inhabit, and the stories we tell change over time, against the backdrop of the witnessing Self. They matter—but all of this neither adds to nor diminishes our essential identity as the presence that remains. As Pema Chödrön reminds us, “You are the sky. Everything else is the weather.”

As we move from a faith handed down to us by our families to one that is consciously examined, we inevitably face the essential question: Which view is true?

Are we fragile mortals wrestling with primal impulses and occasionally rising above them? Or are we Divine consciousness having a human experience, emotions and all? Who are we—sky or weather? Do we look up, or do we look within, for freedom and salvation?

These questions have shaped civilizations, sparked wars, and continue to echo through today’s world. And reflecting on them is important. Believing we are fundamentally flawed can trap us in cycles of guilt and shame, while believing we are gods on earth could lead to vanity and avoidance.

I grew up with grandparents whose beliefs could not have been more different. My grandmother was devoted to a dualistic view in which salvation was the only relief from our sinful nature, while my grandfather extolled self-realization. Their debates echoed through my childhood, and as a teenager I finally asked my grandfather to help me understand what they were really arguing about.

He answered simply that the moment we believe ourselves to be separate from God, we begin to imagine a second power running the world—something fundamentally at odds with the monotheistic principle at the heart of all faiths. Despite our imperfections, he said, we were intrinsically made of “Godhood.”

That explanation stayed with me and became a quiet guiding light. Years later, while studying the Gita, I came to understand that Hinduism honors multiple viewpoints, recognizing that truth can be approached from many directions. The glass is both half full and half empty. Just as beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, the Divine, too, is a deeply personal discovery—found wherever we learn to see it.

Perhaps what we need is not a resolution to the debate, but a faith that gives us both wings—to rise toward our Divine potential—and roots, to ground us in compassionate accountability (not guilt) for our human frailties. A faith that doesn’t ask us to deny our limitations, but invites us to meet ourselves with honesty, patience, and stewardship.

When this inner relationship is tended with respect and kindness, it naturally shapes how we meet the world around us. Across traditions, this balance is echoed in a simple ethic: love your neighbor as yourself. The Bible offers it plainly; the Bhagavad Gita mirrors it when Krishna teaches that the realized person sees the Self in all beings and all beings in the Self. In this light, nonduality is not merely a metaphysical insight but a lived practice—one that trains us in conscious, compassionate relationship with ourselves and one another.

Holidays, milestones, and quiet moments invite us to ask not merely what faith tradition we follow, but how our practice needs to respond to what the world is asking of us at this time—how, in our own small way, living faith-fully can serve the needs of our world.