Awakening is full of paradoxes, and anyone who begins to develop a non-dual understanding starts to see them. Most of them circle around what is the self? And the complexities of the one seeking freedom is the very one who doesn’t exist..
All the teachings, all the philosophy, all the practices are addressed to the individual self, and yet that self, as a separate identity, doesn’t actually exist. So who is all of this for?
This is the terrain a non-dual therapist has to navigate. You move between levels. You have to know where the person is, speak to their identity in a way it can understand, while also bringing awareness to the space around that identity, and gently guiding them towards spaciousness. Which, paradoxically, no one can be guided to, because they are already there. They just can’t see it yet from the perspective of the thinking mind.
This is where hand analysis, seen from a non-dual perspective, becomes very interesting.
Reading hands existentially
I have practised chirology, the modern, research-informed approach to hand analysis that grew out of traditional palmistry, professionally for over 15 years, and studied it for much longer. I have also trained as an existential therapist, and I used chirology existentially too: as a way of understanding someone’s character and nature, and also their limitations. In existential terms, these are what Heidegger called our thrownness, the circumstances and nature we find ourselves thrown into, and what Sartre called our facticity, the given facts of our existence.
From this perspective, chirology is a remarkable tool. It shows a person’s inherent limitations as a being in the world, but also their potential. Through a reading, people can make choices about how to shape their lives in light of who they naturally are, and where they are most likely to find satisfaction and fulfilment.
I had always had an intellectual interest in non-dual philosophy. Metaphysical idealism, the view that everything is consciousness, was something I had studied in depth. But living it was another matter; the mind could not embody it. In the past two years, however, that changed, and it became something experientially understood. With that shift, non-duality became the foundation from which I understood reality, and with it my work. Surprisingly, this didn’t diminish the value of hand reading. It deepened it.
What the hands show
From a non-dual perspective, hand analysis becomes a tool for understanding and working with the different layers of identity, on the way to seeing through them altogether.
In my experience, hand analysis is a truly remarkable way of exploring someone’s thinking patterns, habits and sense of identity. It offers a visible, physical reflection of self-beliefs, psychological drives and desires. Being able to identify these clearly is enormously useful, because it helps people see the patterns of their own mind, of their own ego, sometimes for the first time.
And it helps with something even more important: seeing where an intention is coming from.
Separating the wheat from the chaff
Chirology can show where something is genuinely part of someone’s nature. Take someone with a very physical Earth hand, one of the four elemental hand types, and the robust physical constitution that comes with it. For them, physical rhythm and routine may be a natural need. They can live this out directly, without turning it into a statement about who they are or what they need to prove, without a psychological concept or identity attached.
But psychology usually does get attached. Think of three people going to the gym, and how the same action can come from totally different places. One goes out of a negative self-belief, not feeling good enough and needing to be better. One goes in a superior, egotistical way, thinking they are the best and reinforcing it. The third goes because they simply enjoy it. The action is the same. Where it comes from, and what is attached to it, is completely different.
From a non-dual perspective, the aim is not to stop anyone going to the gym. It is to make them aware of the psychology getting in the way of the pure action, so they can live out the needs of their physical being without notions of self attached. This is where chirology is such a brilliant non-dual tool. It separates the wheat from the chaff. It shows where someone’s natural proclivities lie, so the unnecessary psychological attachments around them can be seen for what they are, and let go, leaving just the joy of being.
Your unique expression of the one
Everyone’s being, as an expression of the one, has its own essence, its own particular way of being expressed. Chirology is a way of aligning someone with that natural expression.
When someone lives in greater alignment with their natural inclinations and becomes aware of the unnecessary psychology attached to them, things begin to clear. They understand themselves and their behaviour more clearly, while some of the psychological layers that once seemed inseparable from who they are begin to fall away. In that space, there is a greater openness to the awareness beneath the identity.
This is how I work with hand analysis now. I use it to help people recognise their identities: their habits, their limitations, their ways of thinking, the beliefs they hold about themselves. I help them see through these, and I use their fundamental, unique expression of being, which shows so clearly in the hands, as a way to guide them closer to their own truth. The closer someone comes to that truth, the more psychology they see through, and the more space opens around them.
Why knowing your personality won’t free you, but can point the way
This is the heart of it. Understanding your personality, however accurately, will not by itself set you free. Personality belongs to identity, and knowing your identity in more detail is still knowing your identity. Used the existential way, a reading can even strengthen identity: this is who I am, so this is what I should pursue.
Used the non-dual way, the same reading points in the other direction. It shows you what is natural to you, so you can let it live freely, and it shows you what is psychology layered on top, so you can stop feeding it. The map of the hand is not the territory of who you are. But it can be a very good map for finding your way past the mind.
And still, a paradox
Even as I describe all this, it remains full of paradox, and not only the paradox of the self. From the non-dual perspective, at the deepest level, there is no separate causal agent directing events. From this perspective, non-dual therapy is itself a paradox. Nothing is ultimately being done by anyone. It is all simply happening, phenomena arising in the single, infinite present moment.
And yet, within the story, a reading can still be the moment someone first sees their own patterns clearly, and begins to see through them.
If you would like to explore this, you can read more about chirology, book a private hand analysis reading, or learn about my non-dual psychotherapy work.
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