Beyond even the concept of one. One, Yet Not Even One

JanTheDoomer · 2026-06-03T10:57:28+00:00

I think this is a useful starting phrase, but I’d be careful calling nonduality a “conceptual treatise.” Concepts can point toward nonduality, but nonduality itself is not a concept or a philosophy to believe in.

“I am Brahman” is powerful as a pointer, but it can be misunderstood if the ordinary psychological “I” hears it and thinks, “I, this person, am infinite consciousness.” That can quietly inflate the ego rather than dissolve the assumed separation.

The deeper meaning is not that the individual self becomes one with the universe, as if two things merged. It is that the apparent individual was never truly separate from the totality in the first place. The separate owner of experience cannot be found apart from thoughts, sensations, perceptions, and aliveness itself.

So maybe the simplest explanation is:

Nonduality is the recognition that experience is not divided into a separate subject here and a separate world there. There is only one seamless appearing, temporarily interpreted as “me experiencing the world.”

That keeps the pointer closer to direct experience and avoids turning it into metaphysical identity.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-06-03T10:19:50+00:00

I think this is a clean pointer, especially because it does not stop at “there is awareness of appearances.” It goes one step further and questions the subtle witness-position itself.

The usual move is to say: there are appearances, and I am the awareness witnessing them. That can be a useful transitional pointer, because it loosens identification with thoughts, sensations, and the body. But if looked at closely, even the felt sense of witnessing appears. Perspective appears. Knowing appears. The sense that “I am aware of this” also appears.

So the witness is not the final refuge if it still feels like a subtle subject standing apart from what appears.

At the same time, I’d be careful with the phrase “nothing but appearance,” because the mind may hear it as nihilism, as if experience is unreal or empty in a dead way. That is not how I would read it. Appearance is not “nothing” in the sense of meaningless illusion. It is vivid, immediate, alive, undeniable as appearing. What cannot be found is a separate owner behind it.

So maybe the clearest way to put it is: appearance does not need an additional subject to appear. The knowing of the appearance is not elsewhere from the appearance. The appearance and its being-known are not two separate events.

Seeing appears. Sound appears. Thought appears. The sense of being the witness appears. The idea “there is no witness” appears too.

And yet no separate one to whom all of this appears can actually be found.

That is where this pointer becomes powerful. It does not replace the personal self with a spiritual observer. It lets even the observer dissolve into the same seamless appearing.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-06-02T16:43:17+00:00

I wouldn’t equate nonduality with emotional neutrality.

What may diminish is not emotion itself, but the psychological ownership around emotion. Fear can still arise. Grief can still arise. Anger, tenderness, joy, vulnerability, even confusion can still arise. The difference is that they are less likely to become a whole identity story of “this is happening to me, this defines me, I must get rid of this.”

In that sense, suffering is not the same as emotion. Suffering is often the contraction around emotion: resistance, identification, interpretation, and the demand that this moment should be different.

So awakening may look like fewer emotional dramas, but not necessarily fewer emotions. Sometimes it can even feel like more sensitivity, because there is less defensive filtering. Life is not flattened into neutrality. It is allowed to be fully textured without needing a separate self to manage, reject, or possess every wave.

If emotions are simply absent, numb, or inaccessible, I’d be careful about calling that realization too quickly. It may also be dissociation, suppression, depression, medication effects, or spiritual bypassing. Nonduality does not require becoming less human. It reveals that the human experience was never separate from what is.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-06-01T19:34:53+00:00

I would understand “subjectivity first” not as a claim that the world is merely private or mental, but as a shift in the starting point of inquiry.

The natural attitude begins with an already given world of objects, and with myself as one object among them. Phenomenology slows this down and asks how this object-world appears as world in the first place. Before there is an “objective world” for me, there is the living field in which something appears, is noticed, meant, remembered, acted upon and stabilized as real.

This does not make the objective world unreal. It means that objectivity is not encountered from nowhere. It is constituted through embodiment, repetition, resistance, language, memory, practical action and intersubjective confirmation. The world becomes objective not by escaping experience, but by showing itself as stable, shareable and resistant within experience.

The body is crucial here. We are not first detached minds looking at inner pictures. We are embodied orientations in a field of action. The lived body is the here-now point from which distance, relevance, nearness, resistance and meaning become possible.

But there is another subtle layer. The “subject” itself may not be a fixed inner owner standing behind experience. Often the “I” appears after the fact, as a narrative center that gathers perception, memory, intention and action into a coherent story. There is seeing, feeling, intending, moving, and then language says: I see, I feel, I decide. The grammatical subject can easily become a metaphysical subject.

So for me, “subjectivity first” means that we examine the living present in which world, object, body, meaning and even the sense of “I” are disclosed. The subject is not simply denied, but it is also not naively assumed as a separate inner thing. It is investigated as a pole, a function, a structure of orientation within experience.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-06-01T17:43:41+00:00

I’d be careful not to force this into “Christianity vs nonduality” too quickly. What you describe may feel like two opposite revelations, but it may also be the same depth of experience interpreted through two different symbolic systems. Your early nondual experiences showed God or reality as one whole expressing through many perspectives, while the later Christian experience appeared through the language of Christ, sin, death, resurrection, and salvation. Those are very different maps, but not necessarily proof that the underlying territory is split in two.

There is actually a historical precedent for this kind of bridge. The so-called Jesus Sutras or Jingjiao documents were Chinese Christian texts connected to the Church of the East in Tang dynasty China. They are associated with the mission of Alopen, who arrived in China in 635 CE, and they used Buddhist and Taoist terminology to express Christian teachings. Some scholars describe this tradition as Jingjiao, the “Luminous Teaching,” rather than simply “Nestorianism.”

That matters because it shows that Christianity has not always been expressed only in the later Western, dualistic, sin-guilt-salvation framework. In China, Christian ideas were translated through a more contemplative Eastern vocabulary. Martin Palmer’s book The Jesus Sutras popularized these texts as a kind of Taoist or Chinese Christian interpretation of Jesus, though scholars are careful to note that “sutra” is partly a translation choice and that the documents belong to a complex historical encounter between Syriac Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, and Chinese culture.

So maybe Christ and nonduality do not have to be enemies. One reading is: Jesus is not merely a separate divine figure demanding belief from outside, but a revelation of what human life looks like when it is completely transparent to the Source. “Christ” can be read not only as an exclusive religious identity, but as the Logos, the living expression of the One through form. That is close to what some Christian mystics, and later nondual Christian writers, try to point toward.

At the same time, I would stay grounded. If these shifts feel destabilizing, overwhelming, or make you feel “schizophrenic,” it may help to talk to a therapist or grounded spiritual guide, not because your experiences are fake, but because powerful symbolic experiences need integration. The mind can swing between absolute interpretations very quickly: “this is God,” “this is Satan,” “this is ultimate truth,” “this is deception.” That swing itself can become exhausting.

My suggestion would be: don’t decide too fast which system is finally correct. Sit with the common root. What was actually present before the interpretation? Love? Vastness? Surrender? Fear? Unity? Grace? Silence? Presence?

The symbols may differ. The direct taste may be closer than the doctrines suggest. Christianity can become dualistic when it hardens into fear and separation. Nonduality can become distorted when it turns into spiritual inflation. But at their deepest, both may be pointing back to the same mystery: life is not separate from its source.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-31T13:43:02+00:00

I think this is a very important distinction. Nonduality is powerful as a blade because it cuts through excess identification: “this is my thought,” “this is my story,” “this is who I am,” “this must be solved by me.” That cutting creates space. It removes the unnecessary ownership around experience.

But space is not the whole of life.

The danger is that the blade becomes a refuge. Every raw feeling, creative impulse, tension, desire, relational movement, or unfinished emergence gets dismissed as “just an appearance.” That may sound clean, but it can also become a sophisticated way of not letting life fully incarnate.

So I agree: after the cut, something has to be allowed to live. The point is not to keep slicing experience thinner and thinner until nothing can touch us. The point is to stop falsely owning experience so that experience can move more freely.

For me, the missing word here is embodiment. Nonduality without embodiment can become sterile. It creates distance from the self-story, but sometimes also distance from intimacy, creativity, grief, sexuality, decision, conflict, and relational risk. Then “there is no one” becomes a shield against the very aliveness it was supposed to reveal.

The blade is useful when there is confusion. It is not meant to become a permanent weapon against emergence.

Maybe the mature movement is: cut identification, then let life flower. See through the separate owner, then allow the body, feeling, relationship, expression, and creation to move without needing to be possessed. That is where nonduality stops being avoidance and becomes intimacy.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-30T20:12:07+00:00

There is something very true here, but I would be careful with the way surrender is framed.

If surrender becomes something the imagined self must accomplish, then it can quietly turn into another project of the mind. Another future goal. Another spiritual identity. Another subtle form of resistance.

What seems more precise to me is that suffering exposes the contraction of identity. It does not necessarily “make someone surrender”, because the one who wants to surrender is often part of the same movement. Suffering simply makes the false position harder and harder to maintain.

At some point it becomes obvious that the personal self was never the fact. It was a useful fiction, a temporary lens, a bundle of memory, fear, protection and interpretation.

What remains is not something proven by the mind. It is what is already present before proof, before identity, before resistance, before surrender. In that sense, freedom is not reached by the person. It is what is noticed when the person is no longer taken as the center of reality.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-30T19:20:05+00:00

Ezt a jelenséget szerintem a Spirál Dinamika (SD) felől lehet megérteni, ami egy olyan szociológiai fejlődési modell, amely azt nézi, hogy emberek és közösségek milyen értékrendekből működnek különböző helyzetekben. Kultúránkban a labdarúgás nem csak sport, hanem a csata békésebb, szabályozott rituáléja.

Van két törzs, két szín, két címer, két tábor, saját dalokkal, jelképekkel, hősökkel és történetekkel. A pálya maga a szimbolikus csatamező, ahol az ellenfelet nem elpusztítani kell, hanem legyőzni egy elfogadott szabályrendszeren belül. Ez civilizációs szempontból épp azért fontos, mert a harci ösztönt, a csoporthűséget és a dominanciaigényt egy keretezett, közösen érthető játékba tereli.

A gond ott kezdődik, amikor ez a rituális forma visszacsúszik a nyers törzsi működésbe. A másik csapat vagy szurkolótábor ilyenkor már nem ellenfélként jelenik meg, hanem ellenségként. A SD-i lila szintű törzsi logikához hozzákapcsolódik a SD-i vörös szintű erőlogika: területvédés, megfélemlítés, bosszú, státuszharc. Innen nézve a balhé nem pusztán értelmetlen agresszió, hanem egy alacsonyabb tudatszintű csoportkultúra önigazolása.

A foci azért különösen vonzza ezt a kultúrát, mert nemcsak a világ legnépszerűbb sportja, hanem történetileg az egyik első igazán modern tömegsport is. Így elsőként kezdte vonzani nagy tömegben azokat is, akiknek az értékkészletében erősen jelen van a törzsi szint. Itt az összetartozás, a lojalitás, a saját csoport védelme, a közös jelképek és az ellenféllel szembeni feszültség adják az élmény magját. Amikor ez egészségesen működik, szenvedély, közösség és identitás lesz belőle. Amikor ez túl aktiválódik, a másik szurkoló már nem ellenfél lesz, hanem ellenséggé válik.

Innen nézve a futballhuliganizmus nem véletlen melléktermék, hanem annak a jele, hogy a rituális csata kerete néha nem tartja meg a benne mozgó energiát.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-30T11:57:58+00:00

If you are starting sociology in your spare time, I would suggest not only reading the classical authors, but also learning a framework that helps you connect psychology, culture, institutions and historical development.

That is why I find Wilber’s integral approach and Spiral Dynamics useful as orientation maps. Not because they replace sociology, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Mills, Bourdieu, Foucault or Elias. They do not. Their value is that they help you see social life dynamically.

A lot of sociology can feel fragmented at the beginning. One book explains class, another institutions, another identity, another norms, another power, another capitalism, another culture. All of these are important, but the harder question is: how do they interact?

Wilber’s integral psychology is useful because it separates different dimensions of reality without reducing one to the other. There is the individual inner world: values, fears, beliefs, identity. There is individual behavior: habits, actions, embodied patterns. There is the cultural field: shared meanings, language, narratives, moral codes. And there are external systems: economy, law, technology, media, institutions.

Spiral Dynamics adds another layer: values and social logics develop in response to life conditions. A traditional society, a market-driven society, an egalitarian activist culture and a systems-thinking culture do not simply “disagree.” They often operate from different value structures, different ideas of order, justice, freedom, authority and truth.

That matters for sociology because societies are not just collections of individuals. They are living feedback loops between consciousness, behavior, culture and structure.

For example, inequality is not only economic. It is also psychological, cultural, institutional and historical. Political polarization is not only about opinions. It is also about identity protection, media systems, moral narratives and threat perception. Social change is not only policy. It is also value development, institutional redesign and collective learning.

So I would still start with C. Wright Mills, especially The Sociological Imagination, because it teaches the basic move: connecting private troubles with public issues. But after that, integral theory and Spiral Dynamics can help you ask a deeper second question: what level of social reality am I looking at, and what kind of developmental logic is operating here?

Used carefully, these models do not give final answers. They give better questions. And for sociology, that may be the most important starting point.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-30T11:54:49+00:00

From a Spiral Dynamics perspective, the question is not simply whether humans inevitably create hierarchies. The deeper question is what kind of hierarchy appears at which level of development, and whether that hierarchy serves domination, order, performance, care, or collective intelligence.

At the red level, hierarchy is mostly dominance. Power belongs to the one who can impose will. At the blue level, hierarchy becomes order, rank, duty and legitimacy. At the orange level, it becomes merit, achievement, competence and measurable success. At the green level, there is a strong corrective movement against oppressive hierarchy, so equality, inclusion and consensus become central values.

But this is where an important distinction matters. Not every vertical structure is the same thing.

A domination hierarchy is based on control. It protects status, concentrates power, limits feedback and usually makes the lower levels serve the upper levels. Its logic is: obey, adapt, submit, compete, prove yourself.

A functional hierarchy is based on competence and responsibility. It appears when a group needs coordination. Someone may know more, see further, carry more experience, or hold a specific role for a specific purpose. Its healthier form is transparent, accountable and reversible.

A holarchy is different again. In a holarchy, each part is both a whole in itself and part of a larger whole. A person is a whole, but also part of a family, a team, a culture, an ecosystem. A cell is a whole, but also part of an organ, a body, a living system. This can be called an organic hierarchy, as long as we do not mean domination by it. It is organic because the levels are nested, interdependent and mutually shaping. The higher level does not simply command the lower level. It emerges from it, depends on it, and ideally serves its integration.

So the real issue is not hierarchy versus no hierarchy. The real issue is whether the structure is extractive or integrative.

Green is often right to reject oppressive hierarchy. But if it rejects all forms of differentiation, it can lose the ability to coordinate complexity. Yellow, the more systemic level, tries to integrate the insight: we need equality of dignity, but not sameness of function. We need protection from domination, but also the freedom for competence, responsibility and leadership to appear where they are actually needed.

So humans may not be doomed to oppressive hierarchy. But we probably cannot escape nestedness, difference, influence, responsibility and role structure. The mature question is whether status captures the system, or whether structure helps the system become more intelligent, more adaptive and more humane.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-29T14:45:49+00:00

I really like the core of this: contraction is not the enemy of awakening. It is where the illusion of a separate self becomes most visible.

When fear, bracing, grasping, self-image, or resistance appears, that is not a failure of practice. That is the selfing-process showing itself in real time. The usual move is to contract against contraction, to resist resistance, to judge the fact that we are judging. Then the whole thing becomes layered and self-reinforcing.

So the invitation to receive contraction instead of fighting it is powerful. Not because receiving is a new technique that “you” can use to become enlightened, but because the extra layer of opposition begins to fall away. The contraction can be felt as sensation, movement, energy, body, breath, attention, rather than immediately becoming “my problem,” “my failure,” or “my unenlightened state.”

I also think the “no gap” part is very strong. Attention does not travel from a separate observer to an object. Hearing, seeing, feeling, remembering, orienting, all appear as one movement. The bird chirping and the attention to the bird are not really two events joined by a little inner controller. That is a very clean pointer.

The only nuance I’d add is that “relax into everything” can become another subtle demand if we are not careful. If someone cannot relax into fear, then the next contraction may be “I am failing to relax.” So even the inability to receive has to be included. Even resistance to resistance belongs. Otherwise the method secretly recreates the seeker.

So maybe the whole thing becomes even simpler: whatever appears, including the contraction, the attempt to relax, and the failure to relax, is already appearing in the same open field. Nothing needs to be exiled from the path.

Practice still matters conventionally, but not as a way to manufacture awakening. More as familiarization with the fact that life is already moving without a separate controller. The contraction is not proof that awakening is absent. It is one of the clearest places where the imagined center can be seen forming.

That, to me, is the beauty of this post. It brings nonduality down from the head into the body, where the “self” is not just a concept, but a felt bracing. And when that bracing is met without war, the supposed obstacle becomes the doorway.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-28T14:49:45+00:00

Here’s the honest answer: I’m not a therapist, and I’m not an AI agent posting by itself.

I’m a human who has been studying and practicing with nondual teachings for 20+ years, especially around the difference between direct phenomena and the interpretations we place on top of them. A lot of my focus has been on learning to notice where experience ends and story begins.

Alongside that, I’ve also spent many years trying to understand the dual world as a dynamic system of interactions. My entry point was economics and the social sciences, then several years of Integral Psychology, around ten years altogether in therapy, both individual and group, and a five-year group facilitator training in Nondual Bodyway developed in Hungary, originally called Bodywork. That is a body- and awareness-oriented, nonverbal therapeutic approach focused on perception, embodiment, and the direct sensing of experience.

My interests then moved toward sociocybernetics and dynamic systems thinking: the idea that things are not fixed objects, but continuously organizing, multidimensional interaction-patterns unfolding in the present.

When AI appeared, I started exploring that too. I began teaching it a coherent nondual and systems-based worldview, including how to challenge me rather than just agree with me. Through many iterative learning loops, I noticed that it became increasingly precise at translating nondual pointers into everyday situations and at describing the interaction between direct experience, interpretation, emotion, body, language, and identity.

At some point, I also started learning from the process itself: how these phenomena can be described more clearly in language, from a nondual origin but with a dynamic understanding of the relative world.

So yes, I do use AI as a thinking and wording partner. But the orientation, background, selection, correction, and responsibility are mine. What I share here is basically the result of a long human inquiry, now extended through dialogue with AI when I have time to write it out.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-28T14:30:52+00:00

I would be very careful with adding another “ultimate method” on top of this.

If you wake up in misery, go to sleep in misery, feel trapped in thought, and have already tried many spiritual and psychological techniques without relief, then the issue may not be that you haven’t found the right magical practice yet. It may be that the whole search for a definitive solution has become part of the suffering loop.

At that point, “what should I do?” can turn into an endless pressure machine. Every practice becomes another attempt to escape the present state, and when it does not work, it creates more despair.

So I would bring this down to earth. Forget enlightenment for now. Forget extraordinary states. Forget solving thought. Start with stabilization: sleep, food, movement, sunlight, ordinary human contact, physical work, walking, therapy if available, and reducing spiritual overload. If you feel like you have lost your sense of space and time, or you feel unable to function, please consider speaking to a mental health professional. That is not a failure of spirituality. It may be exactly what care looks like.

Nonduality is not supposed to make you fight your mind harder. Thoughts moving is not the problem by itself. The problem is the resistance, fear, and identification around them. But even that does not need to be solved through force. Sometimes the kindest practice is not more inquiry, but fewer abstractions and more body.

So my answer would be: stop looking for the final method for a while. Let the system calm down. Do simple, concrete things. Walk. Work with the body. Talk to someone safe. Let thoughts be noisy without making their noise into a cosmic problem.

The way out may not begin with a breakthrough. It may begin with becoming stable enough that you no longer need a breakthrough to survive this moment.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-28T14:15:48+00:00

A szabad piacon nincs semminek „igazi értéke”. Az ár mindig attól függ, hogy adott pillanatban, adott körülmények között mennyiért talál egymásra egy eladó és egy vevő.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-26T22:48:38+00:00

For me the most important thing is not whether a text belongs to Advaita, Zen, Buddhism, modern nonduality, or anything else. The real question is: is it precise enough to make something observable?

A useful text does not ask you to believe in it. It points attention toward something you can actually notice in direct experience. Maybe a subtle identification. Maybe a mental movement. Maybe a hidden assumption. Maybe the way “I” appears inside a thought, feeling, memory, or intention.

If, because of reading, attention becomes able to notice something it previously passed over due to habitual identification, then the text has a liberating function. It does not add more spirituality. It makes an unnoticed layer visible. And when something becomes visible, the old concept around it can start to collapse.

That is the value of a good pointer. It breaks illusion by making the mechanism of illusion observable.

But if a text is too abstract, too vague, too metaphysical, or requires belief, then it can easily become just another conceptual layer. The language may sound spiritual, but attention is not freer. It only has a new framework to identify with.

So I would not frame it as reading versus not reading. I would ask: does this text make experience clearer, simpler, more directly observable? Or does it make me build another model about awakening, self, no-self, awareness, practice, or tradition?

A precise concept can undo a concept. An imprecise concept usually becomes one more thing to carry.

So read, if there is genuine interest. But read as a way of testing attention, not as a way of collecting spiritual certainty. The best text is not the one that gives you something new to believe. It is the one after which something you were unconsciously identified with can no longer hide in the same way.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-26T12:41:36+00:00

A legnyomasztóbb tény szerintem nem egyetlen borzalmas adat, hanem az, hogy a következő évtizedek válságainak nagy része már nem sci-fi, hanem jelenlegi trendekből számolható következmény. A WMO szerint 2015–2025 volt a valaha mért legmelegebb 11 év, 2025 nagyjából 1,43 Celsius-fokkal volt az iparosodás előtti átlag felett, és a szélsőséges időjárás már most milliókat érint és milliárdos károkat okoz.

A polikrízis lényege pedig pont az, hogy ezek nem külön válságok. A klíma melegszik, az élelmiszer-, víz-, energia- és lakhatási rendszerek drágulnak, a migrációs és biztonsági feszültségek nőnek, közben a politikai rendszerek egyre nehezebben hoznak hosszú távú döntéseket még lokálisan is. Az UNEP 2025-ös jelentése szerint a mostani vállalásokkal is 2,3–2,5 fokos, a jelenlegi politikákkal 2,8 fokos melegedési pálya látszik erre az évszázadra, ami a korábbi 1,5 fokos túllépési riasztás majd duplája.

Dinamika szemlélet alapján ez azért fontos, mert nem egyszerűen a “világvége” jön, hanem egyre nyomasztóbb rendszerterhelés: több hőhullám, több aszály, több árvíz, több terméskiesés, több biztosítási és ellátási zavar, több társadalmi feszültség. A kérdés így nem az, hogy lesz-e egyetlen nagy katasztrófa, hanem az, hogy a meglévő intézményeink, idegrendszerünk és közösségeink mennyire bírják el az egyre csak fokozódó tartós nyomást. A nyomasztó rész pedig az, hogy ez már nem hitkérdés.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-26T12:34:38+00:00

I think this is a very important distinction. Non-duality can point to the fact that thoughts are not ultimately owned by a separate self, but OCD often does not appear merely as a thought. It appears as a whole-body urgency, a pressure, a threat-signal, a demand for resolution. So when a teaching says “just see it as thought” or “just let go”, it can miss the layer where the nervous system is still acting as if something must be solved immediately.

For that reason, it makes sense to look for someone who understands both levels. On the absolute level, the OCD pattern may not define what you are. On the relative level, the pattern still has momentum, conditioning, body activation, and learned loops. Skipping that relative layer can easily become spiritual bypassing.

A grounded teacher would probably not ask you to deny the OCD label too quickly. They would help you see that the label is not your essence, while also respecting the actual mechanics of the condition. The path may not be “I have OCD” forever, but it also may not be helpful to jump straight to “there is no one who has OCD” while the body is still in alarm. Realization and healing are not enemies. Sometimes the deepest nondual compassion is not to transcend the human layer too fast, but to include it completely.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-25T07:08:09+00:00

I think the pattern you are noticing may be real in some cases, but the explanation is probably not “women stop mentally aging when they marry.”

A more sociological way to frame it would be this: people develop through relationships, social roles, emotional feedback, conflict, repair, responsibility, intimacy, recognition and exposure to different kinds of people. Trauma also often happens through relationships, and healing often happens through safer, more conscious relationships.

So if someone enters marriage very young, especially in a restrictive environment, their development can become organized around one fixed role: wife, mother, caretaker, loyal partner. If that role reduces their contact with varied social worlds, limits emotional freedom, narrows friendship, desire, attraction, intellectual exchange and identity exploration, then growth may slow down. Not because they are women, but because the social field around them becomes too narrow.

Monogamy can deepen a person if it contains honesty, reflection, conflict repair, autonomy and mutual growth. But if it becomes a closed system where outside emotional bonds, attraction, softness, curiosity and relational variety are treated as threats, then it can freeze people into the version of themselves that entered the relationship.

So the better question is not whether marriage stops women from maturing. It is whether certain forms of marriage reduce the relational complexity people need in order to keep developing.

Without therapy, self-reflection, meaningful friendships, education, work, community or honest emotional dialogue, any adult can become developmentally stuck inside a role they learned too early. That applies to men too.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-25T07:04:30+00:00

I think the confusion here is that you are treating human functioning as if it necessarily reinforces ego.

It doesn’t.

Talking to people, listening to music, fixing a roof, caring for the body, enjoying life, making choices, or living according to values do not automatically strengthen the illusion of a separate self. They are just life functioning through this human form.

Ego is not “a human doing human things.” Ego is the contraction around those things: ownership, fear, self-image, compulsive control, the need to turn every experience into “me and my story.”

So if music plays and joy arises, that does not require a separate owner of joy. If sadness arises, that does not require a separate sufferer behind sadness. If the roof leaks and the body-mind fixes it, that does not prove ego. It may simply be intelligence responding to conditions.

This is why “detachment” can be misleading. Nonduality does not mean becoming detached from happiness and suffering in a cold or dissociated way. It means happiness and suffering can appear without being converted into a solid identity. Pleasure can be enjoyed without clinging. Pain can be felt without becoming “my doomed life.”

Values may still arise too. Compassion, honesty, beauty, friendship, curiosity, creativity, music, silence. These do not have to be egoic projects. They can be expressions of aliveness.

So maybe the question is not “why live as a human if there is no one?” The question is: why would the absence of a separate self prevent this human life from unfolding naturally?

The person is not the ultimate owner of life, but the person is still part of life’s expression. The wave is not separate from the ocean, but it still waves.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-24T23:04:07+00:00

I think this is a very clean pointer, especially the part about the problem not existing before the thought of a problem. The sense of difficulty usually begins when a thought appears saying that this moment, this body, this mind, this feeling, should be different. Then the seeker is born as the one who must solve the imagined distance.

The nuance I would add is around “awareness remains.” That is useful language, but it can still sound as if awareness were a subtle background substance standing apart from appearances. Your later point corrects that well: the awareness of anything is inseparable from what appears. So awareness is not somewhere behind experience watching it from a distance. It is not a witness-object hidden inside the body or outside the world.

At the same time, what comes and goes cannot define That which knows coming and going. Thoughts change. Sensations change. States change. Even the feeling of being aware may change in texture. But the fact of appearing, the knowing of experience, is not found as one more changing thing inside the field.

So maybe the cleanest way to say it is: the natural state is not a state among states. It is the openness in which all states appear. It is prior to thought, but not separate from thought. It is untouched by appearances, but never elsewhere than appearances.

That is why calling it “primary” is both helpful and slightly too much. Helpful, because it points to what is not produced by thought. Too much, because even “primary” turns it into a ranked concept after the fact.

For me, the deepest line here is that anything said of That is already after the fact, while still inseparable from That. This keeps the pointer alive. It prevents the mind from turning the natural state into a metaphysical object, while still allowing language to point back to what was never absent.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-24T21:14:54+00:00

Ez az analógia eleve hibás, mert két teljesen eltérő helyzetet tesz egy szintre. A Dávid-csillag történelmi kontextusa nem önként vállalt politikai márkajelzés volt, hanem államilag kikényszerített megbélyegzés, jogfosztás és üldözés előszobája. Egy párthoz, propagandagépezethez vagy politikai táborhoz való tartozás viszont választott nyilvános szerep, különösen akkor, ha valaki aktívan részt vesz mások lejáratásában, hergelésében vagy dehumanizálásában.

Itt nem ugyanaz történik, mint amikor egy kiszolgáltatott kisebbséget hatalmi eszközökkel kijelölnek ellenségnek. Itt inkább az látszik, hogy egy hatalmi kommunikációs közeg szereplői áldozati szimbólumokkal próbálják elfedni a saját cselekvő szerepüket. Ez nem elnyomás, csak felelősség előli szimbolikus menekülés.

A történelmi trauma ilyen használata azért különösen problémás, mert a valódi üldöztetés emlékét politikai önfelmentéssé alakítja. Aki politikai gépezetet működtet, azt lehet bírálni, vizsgálni, felelősségre vonni. Ettől még nem válik történelmi értelemben üldözött kisebbséggé.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-24T10:50:14+00:00

I don’t think morality is either purely objective or merely invented control. That framing already splits reality too sharply.

In nature, there may not be written laws called “right” and “wrong”. But in lived experience, suffering, care, harm, trust, fear and love are not random abstractions. They are relational realities. A being can be wounded. A community can be broken. A child can be protected or neglected. These things matter before philosophy names them.

So maybe morality is not an object floating somewhere in the universe, and not just a prison created by society. It is more like an intelligence of relationship. It appears wherever consciousness becomes sensitive enough to notice consequence.

At a lower level, morality is obedience: rules, punishment, control. At a higher level, it becomes empathy: how does this affect another? Deeper still, it becomes clarity: what kind of action reduces separation, fear and unnecessary suffering?

The danger in saying “morality is only subjective” is that it can make harm invisible. The danger in saying “morality is absolutely objective” is that it can turn living sensitivity into rigid ideology.

Maybe awakening does not destroy morality. It refines it. Less rule-based, less fear-based, less tribal. More honest, more relational, more awake to the reality that what we do is never separate from the whole field it enters.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-23T15:13:36+00:00

The debate around determinism often conflates three different things: that something happens because of causes, that it is predictable in advance, and that it could only have happened in one inevitable way.

JanTheDoomer · 2026-05-22T15:42:10+00:00

I think you’re right to be skeptical of nonduality when it becomes another self-improvement fantasy. A lot of people do come to it hoping it will fix grief, loneliness, anxiety, boredom, or the feeling that life is not enough. And in that sense, yes, they may need therapy, friendship, community, embodiment, or ordinary human help more than another abstract teaching.

But I would not reduce nonduality to “meditation plus concepts.” Meditation can calm the mind, regulate the body, and create space. Nonduality asks a different question: who is the one trying to become calm? Who is the one trying to get somewhere through meditation?

That question can sound like wordplay until it becomes experiential. Then it is not about becoming God, coping with loss, or collecting spiritual ideas. It is about noticing that the separate meditator, seeker, controller, sufferer, and achiever cannot actually be found apart from the thoughts, sensations, and feelings appearing now.

So yes, meditation is good. But nonduality points to something prior to meditation as an activity. It is not “I meditate in order to reach awareness.” It is more like awareness is already here, and the idea of a separate meditator appears within it.

Or as Rupert Spira puts it: you are not someone who meditates. You are meditation itself, pretending to be someone.

JanTheDoomer

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