To understand the nature of mind, the nature of self, and the nature of reality, use your intuition more than your thinking. Everyone has a natural inclination to seek understanding, and at the same time, everyone already has understanding within himself or herself. This understanding is the only deep understanding. It is not a grasp of a factual list of things but more of an imagined sense of things. It is more like a feeling coupled with imagination than something you would normally call practical or factual.

There’s really no way to ultimately describe the understanding that is beyond the practical; there is only a bit of referring that can be done. We can refer you to any kind of initiatory experience you have ever had or to an “aha!” moment. We can speak about One Life or One Life consciousness or nonduality reality or the deep self, and everyone will have his or her personal notion of what those are. Each person will imagine something a bit different from everyone else but will also understand that there is some consensus to this very mysterious yet absolutely understood notion of things.

What you might be looking for is the ability to communicate your sense of the nature of mind, the nature of self, or the nature of reality. Yet every word that can be used is just a meaningless symbol solely informed by the meaning you give it. People come together to share their meanings, to speak about their beliefs that have become the foundation for the meanings they ascribe to their words. Belief systems are created among people to reinforce those beliefs, but understanding still has to be intuited, and you can never really understand another, no matter how many agreements there are between you.