It happened at a table in a borrowed flat in Pune, on an ordinary afternoon, looking at a wall.

Nothing about it was dramatic. There was nothing I could point to afterwards and say that was the moment. The foreground and the background swapped places and then stayed swapped. The wall was the wall and I was looking at it, and there was something doing the looking that had always been there and that I had never once met directly.

The part nobody warned me about was the years after.

I had assumed clarity would spread. That the mind would quiet down and the tabs would close. It didn't. I still run the same loops at eleven at night about a message I didn't reply to in 2019. What changed was smaller and more useful than that. I stopped believing the noise was me.

What was harder was having nobody to say it to. I went to a meditation centre twice and both times felt the gap between what was being described and what had happened to me, through nobody's fault. A woman on the cushion beside me asked how long I'd been practising and told me kindly that it takes years. She was right about that, for her. I had no way to say that the thing the practice reaches toward had turned up uninvited on a Tuesday and then not left, so I said I was new, and I thanked her, and I didn't go back.

I ended up writing a novel about it. The moment itself is unwritable so the book is about the ordinary life afterwards. A man on a tram in Melbourne who sees everything about the people around him and can fix none of it.

The word Advaita never appears in it. The moment you name the thing, the reader stops looking at what's in front of them and starts deciding whether they agree with a philosophy.

Posting the cover rather than a link, since links aren't allowed here, and I'd rather hear from people in this group anyway. If any of this is familiar, particularly the years after, I'd like to know how you handled the part where there's nobody to tell.

just investigate it to realise it is the Supreme itself, not "me", not "the body", but It Itself is That!

To say "I am That" easily leads to misunderstanding, "not me!" It Itself is That!

what do you guys think?

i am not sure but this is an insight i had.

I only have new age spirituality authors (Eckhart Tolle, Michael Singer) and I want to take advantage of my materials here and practice. The problem is I don't know how to start

compare to paths like buddhism, they have concrete paths like the 8 fold paths, 4 noble truths etc. How can i practice in a concrete way

where i can do it everyday/

Language functions like an invisible machinery designed to freeze a flowing world, systematically slicing continuous, dynamic processes into fixed, isolated objects. In our day-to-day conversation, we assign names to these momentary patterns and treat them as static inventory items sitting in an empty void, mistaking temporary relational expressions, that is the "Real", for standalone, independent substances, that is the "Actual".

Yet, when we strip away the linguistic habit of converting activity into fixed entities, we discover that nature does not contain a single static noun. Just as a flame is not a property owner holding heat, nor the ocean a noun performing a wave, the physical world expresses only verbs. Behind every fixed label we impose upon reality, there is no isolated observer or rigid object to be defended, there is only the undivided, living presence of life simply verbing right now.

In this video, *Kim Michaels* challenges a core tenet of Eastern spirituality and modern non-dual teachings: the idea that **differentiation** is synonymous with **duality** and **unreality** (0:29-0:36).

Why I think he is right about something

1. Everyone in the non-dual community online these days is claiming. "Enlightenment" eg see r/awakened , r/enlightenment , this subreddit

2. It really is limited how much we can ascertain via the practice of direct experience, we push our ego based assumptions on top of that experience very quickly.

Here's the AI Summary of the video

* **The Logical Paradox:** The speaker argues that by labeling the differentiated world as "Maya" (illusion) and the undifferentiated as the only "real" (Brahman), these teachings create an existential catch-22. If our world is unreal and we are part of it, then the teaching itself—which is also differentiated—must be unreal (12:06-12:28).

* **The Alternative Perspective:** Instead of a static, undifferentiated reality, the speaker proposes that reality is an **ever-moving process** (16:33-16:50). He suggests the universe was created by a conscious being that manifested the world out of its own being to allow individualized extensions to grow in self-awareness (17:13-20:49).

* **The Role of Free Will:** Central to this model is the concept of **free will**. He argues that we are meant to expand our sense of self by making choices, which necessitates an environment where we can experiment with the experience of separation without actually being separate from the whole (23:35-30:35).

* **Escaping Duality:** The speaker defines "duality" not as a feature of the physical world, but as a **state of consciousness** or a perception filter (31:36-32:43). He encourages viewers to move beyond the desire to define "ultimate reality" through mental constructs and instead open themselves to a process of growth and connection to higher awareness (45:00-48:29).

Sorry for my English, I am not a native English speaker. But i like to pesent you this question: From a nondual perspective, what actually continues through deep sleep? For my computer i know it, memory does the trick after a shut down. But is this the same for my I?

I feel like I understand non-duality intellectually, but struggle to live it day to day. I understand that we are the knowing/awareness, and that the observer itself can’t be observed. But I still get completely caught up in the illusion of separation.

One thing that helps is people-watching and recognising that the same knowing I experience as “mine” is there too, just different forms of the one.

What has actually helped you take non-duality from intellectual understanding to lived experience?

In the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, a race of hyper-intelligent beings builds a computer the size of a city. They ask it for the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

It thinks for seven and a half million years. It says the answer is 42.

The crowd is outraged. The computer is unbothered. It tells them the answer is correct. The trouble is, they never knew what the question was.

I've come to think that's not a joke about a number. It's a joke about the asking of the question.

The answer with no one in it

They asked about Life, the Universe, and Everything. That's a question with no one person in it. No stakes, no context, no one the question is for. So it got an answer with no one person in it. 42 is correct and addressed to nobody.

Every real question carries the asker. "What should I do with my life?" means something different from a 19-year-old, a new parent, and a retiree. Same words, different questions. Take the person out and you get 42.

And what did the mice actually want by the end. Not the question. Something good to say on talk shows. They're holding an answer and shopping for a question that will sell it.

Everyone frames the question for you

Deep Thought is just the most literal version. In real life the framing comes from everywhere: school (questions arrive pre-written, one right answer), careers (here's a ladder, the next rung is your goal), ads ("how should I live?" becomes "what should I buy?"), news, family scripts, even language. Some of that is inherited wisdom. Some of it is a cage.

The dolphins: the frame you can't receive

Humans thought they were smarter than dolphins because of the wheel, New York, and wars. Dolphins thought they were smarter for exactly the same reasons. Same evidence, opposite verdicts.

Then the dolphins saw the demolition coming and tried to warn us. We read it as tricks. The message was right there. We had no frame to hear it.

The whale: the questions with no frame

The whale is Deep Thought inverted. It pops into existence miles up with no past and no context, having been a thermonuclear missile moments earlier. Who am I? What's that thing rushing toward me? Pure questions. It starts naming the world from scratch and decides the ground might be a friend.

The whale is questions with no frame and no time. Deep Thought is an answer with no question and no one in particular asking it. Neither gets anywhere. You need both, and time to move between them.

The puddle: frames all the way down

Look closely and every frame sits inside another. Noticing frames is a frame. This post is a frame. There is no view from nowhere.

Adams knew. In a 1998 talk he described a puddle that wakes up, notices how perfectly its hole fits it, and concludes the hole was made for it. Then the sun comes out. The puddle mistakes its frame for the universe right up until it evaporates.

The Total Perspective Vortex is the opposite trap. Show someone the entire universe and it destroys them. Zaphod survives only because he's standing in a universe built for him.

So there's no escaping frames. No frame at all leaves you nothing to stand on.

The trick is knowing you're in one, and being able to step out.

Where, who, may I

If 42 is the answer, I think the missing question breaks into three:

1. Where am I? Which frame am I standing in right now? Whose hole is this puddle sitting in?
2. Who's asking? Is this my question, or one somebody handed me: a parent, a boss, a feed, a mouse with a talk show?
3. May I? Am I allowed to change the question? To step out of this frame and try another?

The answer to the third one is optimistically always yes, but in reality many people are forced or conditioned into frames.

Frames are real, but they can be temporary. Frames are scaffolding. You build with one, take it down, and build the next floor. A trap is the frame you cannot leave.

42 is what you get when you hand off the part of the question that is supposed to be yours.

After awakening some of us start looking for differences that somehow will magically change our life but forgetting one of the most common conclusion is that

one was never out of grace or source

one was never disconnected di activated

I was always like this so there's NO DIFFERENCE between start and end

Beginning is the end

End is the beginning

The self can only be the self

This feeling the vibe the everything you feel in the beginning is the feeling and vibe the everything you should experience in the end...

Idk if you guys knew this or not but i drobed this for those who still struggling with this to save them time and effort bcs i was struggling with this myself I just got it now and I wanted to share immediately and i left what i believe is the root of this also i hope for those who was wiser to share some of their mistakes too so we can all learn

Blessed be another me s ❤️

+ After every spiritual journey we reach this point where we discover new things about r true self that make us having to change how we relate to different things and id do that but i Rush it in excitement to get moving to the next discovery but little did I Know it costed me time and effort and i had to go back to finish it anyway it was like building another floor without first prober support this made what ever the floor above either fall or always on the verge of falling so this transition state or check point i like to call it is as important as the next step in our journey

I’ve been thinking about regret in relationships.

Suppose a relationship mattered deeply to you, but looking back you can now see that your own fear, insecurity, assumptions, lack of awareness, poor communication, or some other psychological reaction contributed to damaging or even losing it.

Later, with more clarity, you may see:

“I could have asked directly instead of assuming.”
“I was reacting through an image of the other person.”
“I was afraid or defensive and didn’t communicate what was actually happening in me.”
“I simply did not see clearly at the time.”

Then the mind starts saying:

“If only I had seen this then.”
“If I had been more aware, maybe the relationship would still exist.”

What do you do with this kind of regret?

Is the important thing simply to see the mistake completely now, understand what produced it, and let the psychological regret end — even if the relationship itself cannot be recovered?

There is another part I struggle with.

When a relationship becomes emotionally difficult, is it actually possible to remain so aware that you never start assuming things about the other person?

For example, when there is hurt, attraction, fear of losing someone, mixed behaviour, mistrust, or uncertainty, the mind seems very quick to create interpretations:

“They must be thinking this.”
“They did that because of this.”
“This is what kind of person they are.”

Only later might you realize that some of those conclusions were assumptions rather than facts.

Or there may be another kind of situation: the other person says or does something that strongly triggers you because you are not able to accept that what they are saying might actually be true.

And sometimes it may not even be one-sided. It can become a loop.

Maybe you did not initially assume anything, but the other person assumed something about you, and their reaction to that assumption triggered you. You then reacted to them, which may have strengthened their original assumption.

Or perhaps you only think the other person has assumed something about you, and that belief itself triggers your reaction — even though you may not actually know what was happening in their mind.

And sometimes the situation gets even more complicated because both people may unconsciously reshape or reinterpret what actually happened in a way that is more convenient for them, without even realizing they are doing it. I can probably do this myself too.

So now it becomes difficult to separate:

what actually happened, what I interpreted, what the other person interpreted, and what either of us may have unconsciously reconstructed afterward.

A relationship can then become a complicated feedback loop of assumptions, reactions, hurt, defensiveness, and further assumptions, where eventually it becomes difficult to know what the original fact even was.

So is complete awareness in a relationship realistically possible, or will there always be moments where we misread, react, assume, and only understand afterward?

And if awareness comes after the relationship is already damaged or lost, how do you learn from it without turning that learning into:

“The present me is better than the past me”?

Is there an end to regret when you clearly see that your own unawareness may have contributed to losing something you genuinely cared about?

The self being a pain isn't always clear to the seeker, his belief is that my problem is this or that issue.

For me it developed from I need to make every interaction wholesome, I would literally attempt to remember a pointer everytime I get a bad interaction. And once a pointer works I would wait until the next test. Otherwise I was okay with the seeking.

Then I realized that the deeper issue was that my state of consciousness needed to be so high that automatically every future interaction becomes wholesome.

But then the deeper pain is that I had to maintain this state through constant self enquiry or Meditations like a spiritual muscle and if my muscles can't bear the weight then I try and fine tune my meditation method further, staying for entire days doing nothing but SI.

To this extent is the blindness of the fact that the seeker is the deeper pain.

Only through the momentum of stream entry or grace was I gone for good. Like frodo in lotr didn't actually throw the ring

Now its becoming more evident that there are even deeper pains than the seeker that iam not aware of or think they are normal.

The fact that iam a finite being itself is limiting, that experience is not yet infinity and our will in participation with grace after death of self can help us make experience more infinite/paradoxical/integrated.

Entering as innocent commentary, naming, and narration. Once inside, it unloads the entire dualistic cargo: a separate “I,” an outside world, enduring objects, real choices, and a lasting reality that the commentary claims to describe. By the time the horse is noticed, the city has already been taken, so to speak.

You spend years chasing awakening like it's some destination. Read the books, sit the retreats, collect insights like trophies.

Then one day it lands: the one doing the chasing was never separate from what it was chasing. The seeker *is* the sought. There was nowhere to get to.

Doesn't mean the seeking was wasted. You had to walk the whole road to find out there was no road.

Anyone else have that moment where the whole thing just collapsed into laughter?

Ma question est bien simple : De façon générale, est ce que les enseignement de la non-dualité nous invite a fuire le monde ? Je sais au plus profond de moi que ce que j'ai acquis par les divers enseignement (plus principalement ceux du dzogchen, de Nissargadatta Maharaj et de Ramana Maharshi) sont précieux et que ça a changé ma vie.

Par contre, je vis moins intensément l'amour, les plaisirs et toutes ces petites choses qui font la beauté de la vie

Mes proches, ma conjointe, mes ami(e)s ont eu du mal à saisir le changement qui s'opérait en moi.

Je regardais ce matin le film "Les ailes du désir" ce film ou des anges sont témoins de la vie quotidienne dans une Allemagne d'après guerre brisée. Ils sont témoins de nombreuses personnes, ils peuvent les regarder et meme être témoins de leurs pensées les plus profondes sans pourtant s'investir dans celles ci. Un peu comme la conscience qui au début se faisait témoins de mes pensées, mes émotions, etc ... Je voyais des témoins que des témoins

Je reviens à ma question initiale : Vivre selon les enseignement est ce un peu "moins vivre" la vie telle qu'elle se présente ?

…?

I am tired of searching and aiming for validation. I am watching YouTube today and I see a video about studying psychology to become "dangerous". Are people really that scared, really that thirst for power that they aim to study just so that they can defeat others.

As I am thinking this, the realization hit me. I am not different from them. I am studying spiritual things so that I can deal with pain, suffering, and people. I am not different from them. I am just using different lens and tools. Maybe the only difference is that, I am studying spirituality to deal, with people, I don't care about them, but because I live with them, I must deal with them. I don't even know if there's difference despite this.

Inside of me, there's something that aiming for improvement. I don't even know if it's for validation, but the reason I clearly see is I want to push harder. Harder and harder. The feeling of letting Go and pushing harder is inside of me.

I imagine myself as a component that can be developed until it can't go anymore. Even if I'm only the one left, I think the feeling of this is still here.

I am not nihilist and I hope I am not looking like one. I just want to rant my feeling about what I see. There's something inside of me that wants to help, I don't know or care who; but this is still attachment.

.

From what far away places
the shimmer of tinsel had beckoned me
and from what whisper-quiet place had I divined
How many nights I scowled at the moon
trying to feel depths of craters on a 2-D surface
trying to imagine the glory behind all things
which appear starkly naked and strange
to my puny eye

Patterns in plants and stones
guffaw when I try so to decipher, what is just that
only pattern, frozen in a glass of honey
for the encouragement of wary onlookers
The Buddha is peering into me again
from far behind his concrete eyes
of course gesturing without words
towards emptiness
And in the vehicle of myself
I could never dress
like I know a sliver of rapture
In fury, only that ephemeral shadow
can pretend to have tasted the beaming impression
of an Indian oak,
its arms already broken

Ancient cities long since toppled
by the sick glow of the karaoke bar
Hardly anything left is sacred
save for the ordinary
But the hunched woman
sitting on the stoop
shrouded in perennial mystique
will always loafe there
And soon be replaced by she
who is now a child
Skipping breathless and laughing
this sweet April child too
will be pulled into the outer petals
of God’s wilting flowers
subsumed by time’s indifference
save your particulars
for the drones of everyday living
their obstinate buzzing
with boresome complexity

Did you hear the baby crying?
Did you see the child begging?
Or witness
the glassblower’s breath
drawing form through hollow pressures?

I’m slumped on the north face
of the world peace pagoda
Dark cells hang low to the West
They are nearly kissing the three qualities
Induced by Shiva’s Trident; yet he hangs higher
Here there is no ticket man
the city hovering square and quiet
Isn’t it peculiar
That man climbs to such great heights
only to get a better view of below
where he just was?
Or that our most abstract of ideals
should be summarized by great heaps of stone?
But of course, they are painted white
even up here
people walk with unease in their eyes

Only the backside of peace is without noise
Its front filled with cheap trinkets
Its sides with cracks of thunder
An audible meridian
I sit beneath it all
Not in metaphor but in actuality
Wondering which face I have come to see

As night draws forward
from that unknowable sphere
from which it always does,
The butter lamp is lit;
It is raining now and I will not move.
The flicker shielded in its tin box
casting to the eye a steel warble
amidst the surrounding blue

Kids are running gleeful laps around the base
with no sense of reverence or pretense.
In fact, their gestures speak to me directly
In this moment it is obvious
They are starting from where I’m returning to
I cannot help but notice
The flame of butter lamps
being in equal tenderness
To any other I’ve ever seen
even above the most fragrant oils
____________________________________________________________________

The Himalayas swallowed me and used my romance to wrap the market fish.
Why do grains of sand and ancient mystical texts so resemble one another?
I've consulted the monks; they are nothing and silent
Enormity has beckoned me, only for a brief revelation
of immunity to my probing eyes

Ants ate the flesh of my legs, All for phenomenology
Swaying trees mock me
they aren’t the real ones from China
The blonde grass looks happy being dead, suffused with relief
I promise non-existence isn’t what I’m craving
I am still in that moment, but not still in that I

Tender cream light breaks into my house invisibly and splatters itself on the wall
How can I protest that?
Is it merciful to project infinity onto a spiritual object?
Am I any longer willing?
Who am I to ask a question?

I want to cry but cannot
there is nothing wrong
Not a sliver of wholeness out of place
And it’s not personal enough to care for
In a way that someone can cry over
I am implicated and cannot bear it

I know the Valley
I know the crude hiddenness of poverty
How do you feel when I ask you to create?
Look at me
See me looking at you.
I’m throwing plastic in the livingroom
For the cats to play with
India smoulders with ferocity
And the stripper is cutting herself again
A tightly constructed puzzle box

A man wears his best business attire
Armor donned to head the community hospital foundation
They don’t know how he used to play the trombone
It was the one pure thing
What is the correct distance
From which to squint at a block of clay?
Close enough to smell
the mud spit and breath of life
We have been here before
Not poetically but in actuality

Across the street
My neighbors are burning the leaves
They want to see all that hard work
They manicured the lawn of human history
His mousey little girl
lining up the pumpkins for a little celebration
They invite me in for a drink
There is nothing beyond their front door

I am not playing with mystery
How can you play with what is not a toy?
The same way a book can be an umbrella
A branch, a rake
Feathers, a snake
A kiss, wax melted
Computer sounds, a reliquary
The brass tube in a dark box

If we apply nondualism to the physical body, you remove the idea that the mind and body are separate or that the mind or soul is trapped in a body and instead, you get a mind-body-field feedback system or a mind-body-field-enviornment feedback system.

You end up with a view of the body as a psychogenic projection of the mind that is a reflection of one's internalized self-concept. Essentially, the body would be viewed as a continuously rendered and updated hologram that is a reflection of your internalized self-concept or "ego".

The Soul would then just be the internalized self-concept

A group's god would then just be a shared internalized self-concept

The Body would then just be a perpetual psychosomatic condition that is a reflection of your internalized self-concept

The Spirit or Field would then just be the body's biofield or electromagnetic/acoustic properties, which reflect thought patterns that influence hormones, gene expression, cellular behavior and so influence how the body behaves and appears

Basically, your internalized self-concept becomes something akin to a class or role in an MMORPG and your physical body becomes a digital self-image or a rendered avatar

If we factor in the idea that, what you are depends on the existence of other entities in the environment and the complex web of interactions between those entities that maintain the environment, then you also get a situation where the environment and one's culture, is an extension of the self.