When you think you've overcome dualistic thinking, you probably haven't.
When you get to the place where there is no good and evil, no self and other, and when you are able to see these things as judgments and illusions — you will very likely reject the old reality you used to live in where these things actually existed.
In your new reality, none of these things are real, there are no opposites, nothing is separate, and all things come and return to the same source and are part of one unified whole. Hurray! You have overcome dualistic thinking.
However, to the extent you are now firmly rooted in this non-dualistic experience of reality, you have actually engaged in a different type of dualistic thinking. Just as you used to believe something is either good or evil, self or other, it can't be neither or both at the same time; now, in your apparently "enlightened" non-dual state of observation, you are, in fact, on one side of a new and more subtle "either/or" proposition — reality is either dualistic or non-dualistic, it can't be neither or both at the same time.
The Integration
True integration is when you can hold both dualistic and non-dualistic experiences of reality simultaneously — when you can say, "Yes, this is one unified whole; and this individual experience of suffering matters and deserves compassion; and this choice has consequences; and there is beauty in the distinct, individual expression of each unique soul."
This is what I call integrated transcendence. Not the transcendence of the world, but the transcendence of the need to transcend the world.
When you reach this place, you discover that the world is not actually an obstacle to enlightenment. It is the arena in which enlightenment expresses itself most fully. The market, the family dinner, the illness, the heartbreak, the financial challenge — these are not distractions from the spiritual path. They are the spiritual path.
The Full Range of Motion
Integrated enlightenment means having a full range of motion of consciousness — the ability to be in non-dual awareness one moment and fully present to the exquisite particularity of a single flower the next. Neither state is higher or lower than the other. Both are expressions of the same unlimited awareness.
This is the goal: not to rest permanently in transcendence, but to be free to go anywhere consciousness wants to take you — and to bring your full presence, your full love, and your full compassion to wherever you find yourself.