Alle afleveringen
47 afleveringen, van nieuw naar oud
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Is there anyone doing Awareness?
21 oktober 2026 · 2 min
Is there anyone doing Awareness? Is anyone doing the being aware? Is anyone doing Presence or Aliveness? Lees meer
Investigate and see: You already are aware.
Awareness is always already there. It comes first, and it just is, uncaused. There are no conditions for it to appear. Check this in first-person experience.
There is no you separate from Presence. You are the Awareness, the Aliveness, already. Aware Presence is effortless and uncaused.
It’s important to see that this is not a personal awareness. There is no one there to own it! Body minds don’t have private awarenesses. It’s one spontaneous, alive, all-encompassing Awareness. The Aliveness is already there. Body-minds appear within it.
It’s also impossible to be more aware. There’s no you to do Awareness, so there’s no you to be more or less aware. Awareness is You.
What if you completely forgot about the self? If the sense of a me is completely ignored, is the expression of life any different? Forget yourself, lose yourself, lose the doer. Does anything change?
Are you really a somebody if life carries on exactly as before, when there is no thinking about a someone? Just as no one does Awareness, no one does inquiry. No one makes an interest in nonduality or inquiry happen. Inquiry does itself. It’s spontaneous. So if a long time passes without inquiry or progress, it’s not because you’re doing something wrong. That’s just how it’s naturally unfolding.
— one of the 33 inquiries from my book Seeing No-Self: Essential Questions to Reveal Our Nondual Nature. More about this book: katoudheusden.com/seeingnoself
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Meeting excerpt: Holes in the selfing
20 oktober 2026 · 3 min
It is not this body and mind combination that gets anything, or understands anything, or realizes anything, or expands into something, or loses itself, or whatever. Lees meer
This, as all of This, recognizes itself. For whatever reason, which I don’t know why or how, that belief in separation and contraction loosens. It’s seen not to be the case.
So even while the mind tries to understand, and this mind tries to put it into words and all this stuff, it’s already the case. And the analyzing and the trying to change and all of that is appearing as This. The searching, the inquiring, the questioning, the frustration, the getting it, the not getting it — all of that is appearing as This.
And it’s just at a certain point it becomes more obvious than not — it’s not proven but it just becomes more obvious — that there is no actual separation. There is no actual separate entity in this.
In these appearances that we call human, that’s how it seems to appear, that these bodyminds have this selfing mechanism primed for selfing, and then culture selfs the selfing even more, until we’re such a knot of selfing that we can no longer even consider the idea that we’re not.
And then the bodymind reads things, hears things, watches YouTube videos, hears other bodyminds saying that there’s maybe not a separate self. And for whatever reason, which again, I don’t know why, the only thing I know is that it is possible to look at this right now — even under the very strong conviction that I am a separate self — and to see the gaping holes in that hypothesis.
Just to see from the direct looking, that the idea, the belief that I am a separate someone with control and agency housed inside this bodymind, does not hold up to investigation.
And that doesn’t prove that it’s not true. If it were true, it’s a huge problem that I can poke all these holes in that so easily, don’t you think?
We keep pretending the separate self is a given and anyone talking about nonduality has to prove that it’s not. …
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Seeing no-self is seeing the Self
16 oktober 2026 · 3 min
I titled my book Seeing No-Self, but I could just as well have titled it Seeing the Self. Lees meer
When it’s seen that identification as a limited, separate self is an innocent, learned misunderstanding, it’s also clear that there is only Self.
And when it’s seen that what I am is unlimited, unconditioned Self, then it’s also clear that there is no possibility of a separate self apart from that.
It’s like the Yin and the Yang of the same realization.
But none of this means removing, deleting, denying, or getting rid of the personal self experience.
When you realize there’s no actual oasis in the desert, that what you’re seeing is only a convincing illusion created by certain conditions, the experience of an oasis continues.
It doesn’t disappear or change but now you know the truth of it.
When you see that the experience of being a separate person with agency and control is a convincing illusion created by certain conditions, the separate self experience continues.
Only now it’s clear that it’s not my identity.
The belief that this life is owned by a “me” who needs to manage it, who is at stake here and must constantly strive to get it right, and suffers because of it — this is the equivalent of believing that illusory oasis in the desert is really there.
Seeing an illusion for what it is, is enough.
The natural, effortless consequence of that is the end of belief in the illusion. It can no longer convince although it is still experienced.
But who sees all this? Not the illusion, not the apparent separate self.
This realization is not for the person, just as no one can drink from a well in an illusory oasis.
The supposed personal self can’t see no-self and never does.
But this aware presence, aware as this experience right now, can be seen to be not-a-self. It can be seen to be YOU: the Self.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Looking without the personal self
15 oktober 2026 · 3 min
Look out at the world as though you were newly born into it. Imagine you just arrived here and everything is completely new to you. Lees meer
Not only is everything new, you do not know any language yet. You are pre-verbal. You have no name for anything that you see, hear, touch, or smell. There are no words for what you experience.
Notice how, without language, everything goes quiet.
You are freshly here, newly born, so you also have no memories, nor the capacity to imagine anything beyond current experience.
Notice this gigantic, wordless display of sights, sounds, and smells; the raw, nameless perceptions and sensations.
Thoughts will still come up, of course. Ignore them as best you can. Let all the talk and narration in your head be without listening to it. There’s no need to try to lessen thought or quiet the mind. Just go back to our experiment here, where you have no language yet, there are no words.
Continue to come back to the shiny newness and inexplicable, unnamable reality of your experience.
Where, in all of this, is there a “you?”
Is there an “I” doing the seeing?
Is it the “me” that is hearing, smelling, touching?
Isn’t everything just appearing?
Without language, without any thinking, is there a you here?
Try to look again but not as a person looking — simply sights, sounds, sensations appearing. Listening happening, seeing happening, for no one.
Where are you, the person with your name?
— Adapted from my book Selfless Leadership: A Complete Guide to Awakening the Servant Leader Within, 2022. The book explores how nondual recognition translates into effortless, selfless service.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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What does inquiry prove?
14 oktober 2026 · 3 min
If you expect inquiry to prove something, you’re going to be disappointed. Lees meer
Let me show you with the example of inquiry into the belief that I am in a body.
Have a look right now. Slowly scan up and down what you believe to be your body. Take your time for this. Look all over.
All you notice is a variety of sensations and perceptions. Pressure, warmth, tension, coolness, tingling, vibration, and the visual impressions of whatever you’re seeing: colors and shapes. Auditory impressions too, like the sound of air in the nostrils.
But you don’t ever find a thing called “body.” We find perceptions. We mentally add the thought “body” to these impressions. In direct inquiry, no body is found.
Of course, “body” continues to exist as a concept — a super useful word to communicate, but not a thing in itself. It’s a useful mental representation, a handy mental map.
If you don’t inquire directly but only think about it, you don’t notice direct experience, but only look to your learned, internalized map OF experience.
You never explore the actual territory. You may think about what the body really is. You may think about whether there is ever a direct experience of the body. You may think about possible sensations, the idea of exploring the territory, but you never leave the map.
And if you expect inquiry to prove that there is no body, you expect proof to show up on that mental map!
That’s like a hiker saying there’s no proof of a river here because it’s not drawn on the map they’re holding, while they’re standing in the middle of it!
If you’re open to noticing what’s actually present beyond the map of conditioned concepts you’ve internalized, then the insight can occur that there is no body in direct experience. There’s a body on the map but not in the actual territory.
And then the insight may naturally occur: How can I be living inside something that only exists as a thought?
(And this is never denying that there are very real sensations! It’s not denying experie…
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Meeting excerpt: a mystical experience
13 oktober 2026 · 3 min
If I would have a mystical experience, mystical experience of dissolution of I, after it’s ended, the I comes in and says, it happened to me. It’s like a failure. It’s like, okay, I had this mystical opening. The I says, oh, look, it was my experience. And then the next assessment is, I failed, the separate self is alive. Lees meer
Maybe there is a lot of thinking now. The separate self is alive and kicking. So what is aware of that right now?
The awareness is always aware. Now that you put my attention to it.
Okay. But did you need to put your attention on it for it to be there? Or is it just there?
It is just there, but somehow your pointing made me notice it.
Okay, sure. But whenever you notice it’s there, yeah? Yes. Yes.
So during the mystical, great, fantastic experiences, what is aware?
The same awareness that is aware now of this conversation.
Yeah. That’s the essence. Whether there’s a mystical experience, or there’s an I experience, separate self experience, all of those are known in the same aware. No matter what is going on. So what happens is, we confuse the experience, the state, what we feel and sense and perceive, to be what we’re looking for.
So even if it’s a beautiful mystical experience, those states come and go. So that’s not what this is about. This is about recognizing what always knows, no matter which experience. And then the more that is recognized, the more it becomes obvious that it doesn’t matter what the experience is.
The freedom and peace that we’re looking for is not found in a mystical experience, and always available is to notice what is aware, and to know directly the liberation that we’re looking for in the future. Because what knows this experience, or what is aware, or what is present to this experience, is liberated already.
What we’re looking for, really, truly looking for, the essence of freedom, if we stand as what is aware, stand as our true being. And that is always the case. You can always check that. Until it becomes m…
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What if inquiry feels robotic?
9 oktober 2026 · 3 min
What if I’m doing the inquiries and they make sense but it feels robotic and dry instead of opening something up? Lees meer
Well, then why do them? The way I share it, inquiry is not a prescription. It’s not a spiritual practice to do for x minutes every day, not a to-do to put on your list.
So actually, this kind of experience with inquiry can be a great reminder to see something.
Apparently, I get the idea that I must do something. I must inquire and it must have some meaningful effect. I get these ideas, maybe from all the spiritual things I’ve heard over the years.
However, inquiry is only an offer. It’s a set of options to look into and clear up some things if there’s a natural interest to do so. You believe you’re a separate self but are starting to doubt that? Here, if the intent arises, consider these questions and find out. You haven’t recognized your true nature? If the desire to do so arises, notice this, and this, and discover it directly, now.
But who is going to make all this looking and noticing happen?
Intention arises or doesn’t. Questions make sense in the moment or not. Something opens up or does not. Inquiry feels robotic or alive. Is there any control?
Right now, what is aware of these questions about inquiry?
What is aware, always already just is. Notice that.
Where is the one who is going to make intention arise? Who is going to make inquiry happen? How would that work?
In this aware presence, doesn’t everything just spontaneously show up, all at once, without anyone in control?
Breathing, the heart beating, thoughts, sensations, perceptions, ideas, feelings, urges, intentions, action or lack of action — all of it just appears out of nowhere.
So why worry about inquiry? It happens or it doesn’t. It feels alive or it feels robotic.
If it happens to feel robotic, great! Who or what knows that experience?
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.…
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Noticing the Force
8 oktober 2026 · 3 min
What is aware of this experience you’re having right now? Lees meer
Notice without trying to find, label, or think. Just notice: What is aware?
If you try to figure it out, you lose the direct experience of it. You’re back in the menu and not tasting the meal.
Noticing is just like when I hold up a pen and ask you to notice it. There’s a direct recognition without having to label it “pen” or think about it. There’s a direct experience of what we call a pen.
In the same way, notice what is aware.
Without labelling or thinking. Just noticing. Right now, what is aware?
Whenever there’s this noticing without thinking … nothing seems to happen. No understanding, no insight, no thoughts, no feelings, nothing.
So of course we assume we’re not doing it right. I’m not getting it. It makes no sense. Forget it, I’m going to have some ice cream.
What’s so difficult to get across is that noticing is all that’s required. We don’t need to understand what is noticing what, or whose awareness is aware, or how it all works.
What is aware? Notice. Simple. Right now, I am, aware.
Noticing does the work, not anything you understand. And why not be playful? We can have some fun with this.
So imagine you’re in Star Wars, and you’re a Jedi and can sense the Force, because you can. Right now, notice the Force, notice what is aware.
Or, more seriously but still playful, think of it as having a little bite of the most delicious food. Have a little taste just now of what is aware.
Or, on a different note, if it resonates for you, think of it as knowing the divine. Touching the presence of God. What is aware?
It’s just noticing what already is, all the time. Just keep noticing. Even if nothing seems to be happening and you’re sure you’re not getting it.
So have another look: What is aware?
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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It’s the me that comes and goes
7 oktober 2026 · 3 min
You don’t actually have glimpses of awareness. It’s the other way around. In this aware being, there are frequent glimpses of a separate “me.” Lees meer
The unlimited aware being that you really are, contracts down into frequently believed illusory limitation to a separate someone.
These are so frequent and so convincingly coherent, that they create the illusion of a continuous separate individual person.
But even this very convincing illusion is not that good. It’s not as robust as we’re led to believe. It’s actually full of gaping holes.
And so sometimes you notice there’s a gap in that belief in separate identity, and all there is is your true, unconditioned, unlimited being.
For example, when you wake up in a strange location, maybe in a hotel somewhere, perhaps after an eventful few days different from your routine, have you ever noticed that it takes the “me” longer to come back “online”?
Before all of who you supposedly are, your past, that you’re an individual inside this body, before all that rushes in … isn’t there a moment of just being, of being no one?
It’s pure being but not limited to a someone. It’s being aware but not being shrunk down into a supposed limited, personal awareness.
Actually, this is always the case and many many times during an ordinary day the apparent contraction into a “me” is what is absent.
Many times, when in flow, when doing simple activities and not thinking much, in moments of wonder and awe, there is no “me.” We know expansion, freedom, peace.
If in those moments that expansiveness is explored, it’s seen to be impersonal: It’s free from my story, my past, my troubles, my issues, my concerns, my imaginations.
And that can happen right now by noticing the very same expansiveness while hearing these words.
Is that which is aware right now, contracted or limited?
It’s the limitation to a personal identity that comes and goes. It’s the sense of being a separate “me” that comes and goes!
It comes and goes many times during th…
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Unthinkable simplicity
6 oktober 2026 · 3 min
When there is just being, just this without thinking, everything is simple. The mind that makes it complicated is silent — or at least the volume is turned down and it’s easy to ignore. Lees meer
But the ego, the self, the character doesn’t want this simplicity. It needs to feel in charge and in control.
It creates the illusion of control by trying to understand, discuss, argue, compare, contrast, make distinctions, question. And that’s all fine. It’s what the character is conditioned to do.
But this apparent separate character, this selfing mechanism that believes it owns and lives this life, lives only in thought, in the added complexity of thought.
If right now, all capacity for language disappears, then there is just this, as it is.
We can play a little game and pretend we never learned a single word of language. Try it. All capacity for words has just been erased from your brain. You are wordless.
Without words, there are no thoughts.
There are perceptions and sensations, supposedly external or internal, but no thoughts.
Look again, pretending you’ve never learned a single word in your life.
Just whatever this is. Pure being.
Without the capacity for language, there is no narrator, no thought, no thinking about what this is.
Only the direct experience of it.
Without language, without thought, there is no story of you, the character mentally added into this. Without thought, there is no someone to own this life.
You have to think yourself into this picture. You need to mentally add yourself onto this with the thought “me” to know yourself as a separate person.
It only works if you really try it: Right now, imagine you have somehow lost all capacity for language. And as soon as I stop speaking, look around.
Look also at what you name my body. But now you have no name for it because you never learned language.
So where is the “me”, the person with your name?
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to…
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Meeting excerpt: Seamless
5 oktober 2026 · 4 min
So start from everything. Start from the totality of this. It’s all here now, right? There’s no chopped off little piece of this that you’re inhabiting. Lees meer
If we just look at this direct experience now, it’s everything all at once.
And so all that’s ever going on is that beliefs arise, thoughts arise that are believed, that there is a center, a contracted identity in this, and that that is the limit of what I am.
If we just look at this experience now, not naming anything, not chopping it up into pieces, all of it, and we don’t use concepts, we don’t use words, we don’t separate: It’s all here, all at once. You can’t say something ends here and then something else begins.
The experience being had right now. It is always here, in whatever form, with and without content. With forms changing, shifting. The experience itself, this, is. And unless a thought comes in and chops it up, it’s seamless.
So imagine there is no body. Imagine there’s no perception, no sensation whatsoever. You’re in a complete sensory deprivation chamber. No content. Still you know you’re alive. So all of this content here now is appearing. All of these shapes and forms and sensations and perceptions. But if we look at the pure presence aspect of it, just from the experience of the presence of it, not from looking at the content, just the knowing I am alive:
This is seamless. Presence is not chopped up into pieces. There’s no my presence and your presence. It’s just presence. There’s no beginning to presence or an end to presence. It’s always presence. So you can’t travel to the edge of it and then fall off into non-presence.
Being, awareness, it’s the same thing. It’s all trying to say this. This, as the experience itself, without the overlay of human thought and interpretation, is seamless, eternal, infinite, no edges, no separation, none of it is personal, belongs to anyone. It’s not owned, it’s not controlled. There’s no island in it that’s mine and the rest is not mine.
— Excerpt from …
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More than an understanding
2 oktober 2026 · 2 min
For about ten years, all I had was a “conceptual understanding” of nonduality. And that’s being generous because I didn’t really understand it on any level, no matter how much I read. But I was obsessed. I wanted to know what this was because I was convinced it could end my psychological pain. Lees meer
All the reading and thinking may have done little but that was apparently my path. I wasn’t the type to go on a retreat because what I heard from those teachers was just more concepts, endless descriptions, not anything to help me realize it myself.
But I had this insane drive to find out. I didn’t find nonduality entertaining. I was reading all those books looking for the information that would show me how to be free. I read more than 900 of them!
And somehow, over time, the bits and pieces of direct inquiry I managed to find started “doing me”. Looking started to happen and I didn’t even know. There would be a clear insight into lack of volition and personal control without thinking much of it. There would be recognitions of a spaciousness I didn’t have words for and barely even knew were happening. Now I know how crucial those moments were.
The best books I read contained at least some instruction for inquiry: How to see that I’m not a separate self, and how to recognize what I always already am beyond that. And that’s how I wrote my book Seeing No-Self: straight to the inquiries that are essential, and only enough context to get you to do them.
One of the only books I ever found with nothing but clear inquiry was Liberation Is by Salvadore Poe. That was in 2016 and for me it was final confirmation and the end of seeking. Now I know it’s a written version of what he shows you on the spot in his intensives. Now I know that is so much more powerful and direct that it would have spared me many years of reading. And that’s okay. I have no regrets. But it is why I now recommend those intensives.
November weekend intensive: https://www.liberationis.com/a-new-paradigm-of-be…
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It has its hooks in you
1 oktober 2026 · 3 min
There is always the naked fact of being. Your presence is the one “thing” you can’t deny. You’d have to be present in order to deny it. Lees meer
This simple fact of existence — knowing that you’re here, present, alive — is what everyone is trying to point to, using all these different words.
The words used depend on the body sharing. Many will follow the tradition they’re from or what helped them, so they’ll speak of Awareness, Being, or Consciousness, for example.
I can’t tell you how long I was confused about these words. Is it A, B, or C? What do these words really point to? How do I get there, let alone abide there? How do I know I’m doing it right?
But this is about what already is, before any thinking about it whatsoever. What is not dependent on what is going on? What already is before any thought occurs?
Or turn it around: What can’t be removed, subtracted, or turned off?
It’s impossible to turn off the pure fact of being, the simple fact of presence. There is presence even in the absence of all experience. Being can’t be removed. Just try to not be.
It doesn’t have to be found, practiced, understood, achieved, abided in, or realized because it already is — noticed or not.
So: What always is? What can’t be turned off?
You may notice this requires no understanding, no thinking or “getting it” whatsoever. It’s totally mindless and totally obvious. Because it is You.
This may seem like nothing special now. It didn’t do anything for me either, at first. But in an inexplicable, often unnoticeable way, it grows on you. In fact, it illuminates the real You in the apparent darkness of a separate, ordinary you.
You may forget about it after hearing this. But it will come back, you’ll see. It has its hooks in you now.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Meeting excerpt: Porridge
29 september 2026 · 2 min
This is what the ego, the self, is made of. It’s self-consciousness. It’s self-reflective. And it becomes self, thinking about the other thought called the self. This is our daily bread. This is what we love. But if for a moment we would stop being interested in that, the whole thing collapses. Lees meer
And if it’s really seen, to be non-essential, literally non-essential, it has no effect on anything, the whole thing collapses and it is seen that it’s just beside the point. And that is freedom. I mean, when that really hits, it is the end of giving a s**t about any of that stuff, even while it continues.
So for the past two or three days, there was all this thinking about how to have this in the life more, how to have this express more in the life. And there was a lot of stuff going on about these really deep thoughts about that. It was like, oh, this is so fascinating to think about. How could this be expressed more in the life?
And at the same time, as that is going on, it’s like there’s this huge porridge of super interesting s**t. And at the same time, it’s like, I do not want to eat this porridge. I’m not interested, you know, while it’s there and it’s cooking and it’s smelling nice and this porridge of deep philosophical thought about expressing nonduality in this life.
And at the same time, it’s just like, who gives a s**t? Who is going to express what? That to me is the freedom. That is how it’s experienced.
— an excerpt from Monday’s open meeting.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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A working hypothesis
28 september 2026 · 3 min
All these things you believe need to happen first, let them go. All the concepts you don’t yet understand, forget them. All the insights you haven’t had yet, ignore all that. Lees meer
Here you are. Right here, right now. Don’t follow the thoughts and just be here, as you already are. You’re no different than before. You still don’t understand. You still haven’t realized anything. Fine.
Here you are though. You’re already fully present to whatever this is without lifting a finger. You don’t do presence; it already is. You don’t do anything to be; you already are. Already the case. Already given.
What if everything you’re looking for — all those insights, attainments, or realizations — are already here as this simple presence? What if you just take that on as a working hypothesis? You can always go back to looking for that other stuff later.
The thoughts of you as a person who must attain something are added onto this presence because you learned them somewhere. They now feel like the truth only because they keep repeating and reinforcing themselves. The more attention goes to them, the stronger they get.
But maybe something different can happen. Maybe the strength of all that attention can leave the thoughts and go to the simple fact of being here, of being present.
As this simple, obvious presence, and ignoring the many thoughts, where is this person who needs to attain something? What could possibly need to happen first? What is there to understand?
It is hiding in the unbelievable simplicity of it, so obvious and transparent that you constantly look right through it.
See if you can notice the obviousness: I am here. See if you can become curious about that and explore it a little — mindlessly. See if this ordinary presence is not completely free from all limitation, from stress, even from the need to be someone.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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How do you know you’re alive?
25 september 2026 · 2 min
How do you know that you’re alive? How do you know that you’re not dead? Lees meer
It’s obvious and certain. You are here, you’re alive, you’re not dead. And of course, you’re always here. Always there is this simple fact of aliveness, any time you care to check.
When you “check” that you’re alive, you don’t see or find anything new in your experience to confirm it. There’s no pop-up window that needs to declare you’re alive. There’s no new information coming in. There’s no content to the confirmation. It’s just obvious.
The fact of aliveness confirms itself. No new understanding, feeling, or thought is needed to confirm. The aliveness, beingness, or I-amness of life confirms itself in the noticing.
To experience anything at all, there has to already be this aliveness. But we never pay it serious attention. We’re always looking out into our world of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. We’re obsessed with the content of life and not interested in the aliveness powering it. Even if we think about this aliveness, like you’re maybe doing right now, that’s looking out at a thought about it, not directly noticing it.
But the content of life is always changing and completely out of control. It’s just doing its thing and we’re always at least a nanosecond behind, trying to make sense of it, trying to manage and control what’s already gone before we even catch up.
Meanwhile, aliveness itself is always directly and immediately available. It has none of the drama of the content. There seems to be nothing to it really. But we can find out that it also has none of the stress or suffering.
One of the biggest shifts comes when we realize that this aliveness itself may be worth our attention.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Already, naturally, effortlessly
23 september 2026 · 2 min
Language is actually quite useful to communicate why language doesn’t work in communicating nondual realization. Lees meer
Thought is useful to consider the many arguments as to why thinking can’t argue its way into this recognition.
Mind can be a precision tool to help understand why understanding is not possible and the wrong tool for this “job” that involves no understanding.
The illusory separate self is a conditioned mental construct that can recognize — as another concept — the possibility of its own constructed nature.
All of this is potentially useful in noticing the doorway that is always already open.
Because what is always the case is obviously already the case. What is our true nature must necessarily already be present. What knows itself must already be knowing itself. What is never absent must obviously be present right now.
All the recognition of our true nature “takes” is attention no longer going off into language, thought, mind, or the concept of a separate self, and attention thereby naturally resting in what remains: what already is, knowing itself, present to this experience right now.
This resting is not something someone makes happen but what attention already effortlessly rests in when it’s not distracted by some apparent arising.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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No obstacle to inquiry
22 september 2026 · 3 min
There really is no obstacle to inquiry because there is no one making it happen. So however it is happening for the apparent you right now is exactly the way it’s supposed to be happening because that’s how it’s happening. There is no one in control of that. Lees meer
So even though we can say on the relative level things like, yes, you have to fall in love with this and want this more and more and … Who? I mean, it’s lovely if that happens. But really, there’s no control over that either. But the very fact that we are here and that we are interested in this means that all these obstacles are mind stuff.
I want to really talk about this sense that something may be blocking me. I’m not doing something correctly, or I am creating obstacles, or there are obstacles in my life that I’m not overcoming, and so I’m not doing the inquiry that I want to be doing or not enough of it, or not frequently enough, or not deeply enough, or doubting it too much, or comparing too many different versions, or all of these things we may be doing and feeling bad about.
What I’m talking about is the awareness inquiries where it’s about this recognition of who I am, who I truly am. And they come in different versions, different flavors, but they’re all pointing to trying to get these glimpses or recognitions of what is the source, the ground of everything.
And we cannot help thinking of that as something I do. And one of the most difficult things to see, and it obviously doesn’t matter if you see it or not, but you are not doing the inquiry.
And so the idea of obstacles comes from the idea of a someone who needs to do certain things to achieve a glimpse or a state or a recognition or an abiding. But really that is not what is going on.
And the reason I want to stress this so much is because it can sometimes release a bit of that tension of trying so hard to see something. This goes back to there is no doer. If there is no doer, if we’ve seen that very clearly, that there is no one making anyth…
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The speaker isn’t making speaking happen
21 september 2026 · 2 min
As the body speaks, there can be the belief that there is an individual making the speaking happen. Or, that belief can be absent. Lees meer
Without the belief that this human is run by a separate personal self, it’s quite obvious that words emerge out of nowhere and the impulses to speak or not speak just arise.
Thoughts arise and dissolve without control. The thoughts “I am going to say this” and “I am the one saying this” are thoughts.
Without the imagined doer, it’s obvious that all of it comes out of nowhere. The intention to record something appears, ideas about what to say and how to say it appear, writing and revising the words happens, opening the recording app happens, the mouth moves, words emerge, editing happens, the publishing button is clicked.
Speaking is a spontaneous movement without owner, without anyone making any aspect of it happen.
If a thought about a speaker making speaking happen pops up, that’s more thought. It has no power and doesn’t control anything either. The thought that there is someone controlling the speaking doesn’t make it so, no matter how often it appears.
Not being the one in control of speaking is complete intimacy with it. There’s no one at any distance from it. It’s speaking without a someone who succeeds or fails at the speaking. It is free.
It’s exactly the same for the listening by an apparent listener. Listening to these words happens and no one caused that listening to happen, just as no one can stop it from happening.
All of life is like this. It is enough to notice that it is like this.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Isn’t ego essential?
18 september 2026 · 2 min
Don’t I need an ego to interact in this world and live a good life? Lees meer
From the perspective of the “me” of course I do! As a self in a world populated with others, developing and nurturing a healthy ego is fundamental.
But if I recognize my essential nature, then ego is seen to be a conditioned psychological expression of a particular bodymind. It’s neither essential nor non-essential. It is part of this incredible appearance we call reality.
Then ego or self is seen to be a patterning, continually changing and updating, narrating itself to itself, thereby creating the convincing illusion that it’s real.
But in fact, it’s mentally inferred. Like a rainbow, which isn't an actual object floating in the sky but a pattern my perception constructs.
No one owns the pattern. All that self-referential thinking never creates an actual person: an individual supposedly inside the body, supposedly in control of much of it.
To the conditioned thoughts that narrate themselves into an individual, any talk of no-self produces more thoughts framing that as an existential attack. What do you mean I don’t need an ego? Of course I do!
The more what I am beyond that self-identification is noticed, the more difficult it becomes to maintain the narrow identification as a someone. And this is just noticing what has always been the case, not achieving anything new.
What we call ego doesn’t disappear but is no longer clung to as the exclusive identity. It no longer needs to be developed, nor gotten rid of.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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What is the right path?
17 september 2026 · 2 min
So who’s right? The more Buddhist-influenced “all is emptiness and there’s no one here” or the more Advaita-influenced “all is Awareness and you are that”? Lees meer
Which path is correct? A traditional, progressive path, or the rebellious, reject everything there-is-no-path?
What practice will get you there? Meditation, retreats, surrender, selfless service, chanting, bodywork, inquiry, or no practice at all?
Which teacher is legit? The one with the high-priced retreat, the one offering everything for free, or the one saying they’re not a teacher?
I’ve found these things to be utter distractions and besides the point.
We’re so convinced we need to find the right teaching or path, the perfect practice, and we’re scared to death of being duped or deluded. With all the options now available, we have no idea how to assess them, so we look to appearances, words, money, and other irrelevant things instead.
But all the while, what you’re looking for is already the case, it’s “your original face” as they say. All the time you’re debating approaches and considering options, you already have all you need and know all you need to know.
It may take years of tasting the different chocolates in the box before you realize that, and so be it. But maybe this message right now, can trigger something.
Ultimately only one thing matters, and it doesn’t matter what form or flavor it comes in: finding out for yourself, without needing anyone’s confirmation, wordlessly, and beyond all doubt, who or what you really are.
If you want help with that — and I think most of us need some help at some point — go for something that resonates, yes, but also puts all its focus on you seeing for yourself.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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The only thing that does any good
15 september 2026 · 2 min
What I talk about on here is the most democratic, non-hierarchical, and free-for-all knowing imaginable. Which is why we can’t imagine it. Lees meer
Human identity is the product of cultural conditioning. From within that conditioning, we can’t even conceive of something as one hundred percent equally accessible to all.
Surely there are differences between us. Surely some are farther along. Surely we understand different things and have different amounts of experience. Surely that one knows more than this one.
See how strongly you assume these things. It all seems quite true from within the belief in billions of separate selves occupying those billions of bodies.
But the catch is that it is precisely this identification as an individual that makes us see it that way.
What if you’re not limited to an individual? What if you’re not inside that body? What if there is no personal mind?
What if all of it, all appearances, arise in YOU? Consider it for a moment.
Then how could one appearance have more access than another?
That’s why no amount of work at the level of the supposed individual identity does any good at all towards this. It may produce an improved individual, maybe not, who knows.
But the only thing that can “do any good”, is a noticing of what YOU really are, as directly as possible, beyond that identification with a personal self.
That “doing” is inquiry: a simple noticing that undoes (spontaneously and all by itself) the constricting and painful identification as an individual.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Earning your peace
14 september 2026 · 2 min
Is there anything other than peace here? Lees meer
That question immediately prompts conditioned thinking, which hears the word “peace” and opens a metaphorical drawer of ideas about what peace means and should look like in your life.
But put all of that aside for a moment. It’s okay, you’re allowed to ignore thought.
And look again: Without thinking, is there anything but peace here?
In that second before thought rushes in, peace is known. It is already there, noticed or not.
Peace is another word trying to describe the true nature of what is, and the essence of what you are too because you are not separate from what is.
So have another look: Isn’t this peace … until the next thought rushes in?
You’re probably sure that what you just recognized can’t be it. Because what you’re looking for is not so easily available. If it were, everyone would have realized it, right?
In the pursuit of awakening, or the big e-word, we’ve learned to believe that there’s no easy anything. It must all be earned and you have not earned it. Not even close. If you think you can just look and have this you’re hopelessly deluded.
So, you simply don’t believe what anyone can notice if they have a look instead of believing what they were told:
There is only peace. There is nothing but peace. YOU are that peace.
What if it’s not true that it must be earned? What if that belief is exactly what’s stopping the noticing of it? What if you just occasionally have a little look and find out if this is not already the peace you are seeking?
You might be surprised.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Seeking without a seeker
8 september 2026 · 2 min
Even your seeking: it just happens. It is also entirely without manager or controller. Lees meer
The thoughts “I must get this understanding” or “I must awaken” appear spontaneously.
What we’re convinced is “my search” is nothing more than a set of recurring thoughts about an apparent someone seeking something. Nothing changes, whether those thoughts are there or not.
Desire to get something appears. A video plays. A sentence read seems to open something up. The urge to meditate returns, then disappears once more.
Who is making any of it happen? Life is apparently moving in the form of seeking, whether there are thoughts of approval or not.
You are already the openness all of it moves within and as — not a small, separate someone trying to make something happen or stop it from happening.
We are being lived, and our search for awakening too is being lived. It begins, intensifies, rests, and then resumes — all without a doer.
It’s not my search, it’s just the movement of seeking. This moment apparently includes the impulse to search.
There can be total freedom right in the middle of that search: See that seeking is also happening without a seeker. Both seeker and seeking are movements of life.
Life itself is already completely awake, moving as an imaginary separate someone, seeking an awakening.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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The other freedom
7 september 2026 · 2 min
The freedom sold to us in Western culture is individual: liberty, free choice, the power to shape and improve our lives, to live according to our values. Lees meer
This is a life-long performance requiring constant effort. Step up and take responsibility because it’s up to you. Know and defend your freedom against constant threats — including your own shadow, temptations, and weaknesses.
If we have the will and the guts, happiness is the promised result. See any epic Hollywood movie for examples.
But there’s another kind of freedom: not for a person, but from the personal.
It’s the simple recognition that the apparent individual who must win and defend their freedom is not real. It’s a made up story added onto the self-less nature of life.
Our culture promises a better self with more options, while this other freedom points to no one to need those options.
It sounds like a huge loss no one in their “right mind” would want. And of course they wouldn’t — this isn’t available to the individual mind.
The cultural promise of happiness through freedom constantly blocks us from noticing that this moment, as it is, is already free: free from a self that needs it to be different. It already offers the happiness and joy we seek through personal struggle.
We don’t have to fight for it or defend it. No one controls it.It’s already there before the thought arises that it isn’t.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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How is this moment a gift?
4 september 2026 · 2 min
By needing something from this moment, I block the noticing of what it already offers. Lees meer
The gift of this moment is here, I’m sitting in it, like a cat in its favorite box. But I can’t see that as long as I believe my ideas about what this moment supposedly owes me.
And boy, do I have ideas! It should give me awakening, or at least feeling less unhappy all the time. It should give me what some spiritual text says is possible. It should fix me and my life. Actually, I don’t know but I’ll recognize it when I see it!
My ideas about what the moment should be giving me block the noticing of what it already is.
When the one wanting something from life is seen to be just another added idea, all these needs and expectations about what life owes that illusory me can collapse.
Without beliefs about what it should be, or belief in a someone who can own it, the gift of existence is obvious, even while ideas of needing something different can continue.
So what is the gift? An ease that doesn’t require a special state. Freedom from needing anything to be different. Peace that doesn’t require circumstances. Not needing any of this to “do” anything for a me that is not.
The fact that there is anything to experience at all is already the gift.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Expectations when inquiring into “What is aware?”
3 september 2026 · 3 min
It feels like I need to make myself do this inquiry so that I can get to a point where it’s no longer flat and boring and it says something to me — something is revealed. That’s not really how it is. This is happening by itself. Lees meer
So the fact that you’re here again, you’re asking this question, means that there is the intention, and the micro moments of recognition are already happening.
But to our personal experience it feels like, nothing is happening, I don’t know what this is. It’s boring. I don’t see a difference. My life is not suddenly full of rainbows. No.
So the more we can be aware and speak in these meetings about all these things we expect, and the fact that it feels like all these things — that it’s not — that’s the only help we have.
So, completely different attempt: In a more religious context, there can be very poetic and mystical descriptions of this experience of pure being. It’s like it’s fullness, love, grace, bliss, depending on which context you’re from. In Christianity, the presence of God, deep peace.
All of that makes it even “worse” because now we’re expecting whatever associations we have with those things as well. And that’s why I try … There you’re on your own. The more we discuss that, the more complicated it gets.
And that’s why I’m always very annoying, I think, in the sense of that it stops at, “What is aware?” And then it is looking, and the looking does it, and the more descriptions I give, the further away we get from it.
Even peace is too much, even being is too much. All these words have connotations and bring expectations with them. And that’s why in inquiry you are your own teacher, you are on your own.
You have to find out what it is, beyond that flat, boring, empty “I don’t understand it.” You, only you.
— excerpt from the Monday open meeting, details to join on katoudheusden.com
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.…
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The question of purpose
2 september 2026 · 2 min
If there’s a purpose to this apparent life of the bodymind, we might say it’s this limited form waking up to its true nature as unlimited formlessness; this relative expression recognizing itself (and everything else) as the absolute. Lees meer
But even that assumes there’s a goal for this experience. And how would we know that? What is, simply is.
But I expect what is to give me something. If you’re listening to this, that’s probably something like peace, freedom, joy, or even enlightenment — whatever that is.
Sorry, there is absolutely nothing in this for the me. It is the me that is insubstantial, a thought-created mirage trying in vain to make This about itself.
The me-ing tries to own (a tiny, tiny) island in be-ing. That’s its job. Me-ing or selfing is what the bodymind does until it ends.
The real peace, freedom, and joy is just the seeing of that, nothing more complicated, definitely nothing involving more thinking.
The very fact that it is seen, is the freedom from it. Because when there is awareness of something, there’s no longer an exclusive identification with it.
All this is formlessness spontaneously appearing as all these forms.
That this is so, can be seen, realized, known directly to be true. That knowing itself is the freedom. And if there’s a purpose to any of this, we might say it is this knowing itself.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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You are not needed for inquiry
1 september 2026 · 2 min
Right now, what is aware? What is this experience of pure being like? What is the taste of naked presence, when all mental commentary is ignored? Lees meer
Sometimes there’s a direct recognition of what is, without referencing any of the labels, stories, judgments, or memories added to what is.
There may be a taste right now.
This can happen no matter what I believe inquiry is or how it’s supposed to happen. It doesn’t matter if it’s happening in the correct way because there is no correct way.
Thoughts arise trying to explain how I’m doing the inquiring. Let them. Thoughts arise that I’m not doing it properly. Fine. Thoughts arise that inquiry is boring, pointless. Also fine.
Meanwhile, direct experiencing is always already going on, there’s just usually no recognition of it. What is, is already freely knowing itself all the time, only there’s mostly a constriction into the imagined selfing, into recurring thought patterns that seem to create an identity of someone having the experience.
When a wordless noticing occurs, just for a moment, that what is aware, always already is, it can be seen that it’s actually the thoughts of “me” that come and go.
A wordless recognition occurs that existence is impersonal: there’s no one who owns it. A direct seeing happens that there’s no one separate from naked presence with control over any aspect of it.
Really, you are not needed for inquiry. Inquiry happens without you.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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You are fully awake
31 augustus 2026 · 2 min
This is what it’s like to be awake. This reality, this experience, exactly as it is right now. Lees meer
The problem is that we can’t believe it, whether we’re told in evocative spiritual language by a revered master, in the form of cryptic koans by a wandering mystic, or in the most matter-of-fact fashion on the internet.
All of reality is fully alive, aware, and awake. What you call yourself is complete awakeness. There would be no experience if there were no awakeness to it.
The confusion is in the language and the meaning we attach to these concepts. Awakeness is aliveness is awareness. But we hear these from the position of a separate self as new or future states that are not here yet, at least not for me.
There’s no future event where an imaginary someone with your name will finally be more alive, aware, or awake. Awakening is the simple realization that there is no one separate from this to be more awake to it.
It is this. Exactly like this, right now. This ordinary, already present experience — MINUS belief in the endless thoughts and ideas about why this can’t possibly be it.
The belief that awakening is a future personal achievement “hides” the nature of experience as fully awake. And so, your awakening is hopeless.
But if it’s something that doesn’t need to happen, what does it matter that it’s hopeless? Inquire, look, and see directly that it’s all already given.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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The deepest addiction
28 augustus 2026 · 2 min
We’re addicted to entertainment, social media, substances, sex, relationships, beliefs, and a long list of other things. But our core addiction is to the illusion of a personal life controlled through personal will. The deepest addiction of all is to “me” and my struggle. Lees meer
We may move from material to spiritual, and seek something larger than the egoic self. But this will be a more awake, conscious, spiritual, and so happier personal me.
All this is innocent. (We’re also addicted to blaming and shaming — the result of believing in a doer with free will.) You don’t choose your addictions. You don’t choose the spiritual path.
But what we’re looking for is beyond all selfing, even spiritual selfing. It’s found beyond all egoic drama, including all spiritual drama.
At some point, for whatever reason, the drama briefly loses its ability to seduce. The entire mechanism is seen to be a highly convincing and addictive but fake distraction.
The illusion of “me” living a personal life, collapses. We’ve all known these moments, even if we can’t put them into words or use different language to describe them.
Once collapsed, it never comes together quite as convincingly as before. What was seen can’t be unseen.
Inquiry is the invitation to look again and again at what has already been seen, and can be seen again anytime looking happens.
Until we realize no one is separate from or doing the looking. That realization and the unbound peace it uncovers, is what we’re looking for.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Being aware can’t be done
27 augustus 2026 · 2 min
Recognize your true nature. Be aware of what is aware. Just notice that right now, there is awareness, and be that, consciously, knowingly. Take attention off what comes and goes, off the body and mind, and rest as aware being. Lees meer
Right, says thought. I’m on it. I’ll be doing this as often as possible. Let’s check the instructions again. Ignore appearances, recognize pure being, be that. But wait, how do I be that? Where did it go? I lost it again! I swear I just had a glimpse but now I can’t find it. Okay, relax. What, right now, is aware? Ah … yes. Just being. But wait …!
Round and round it goes. Conditioned thoughts continue to narrate an illusory doer. This imaginary someone must achieve its own ending by seeing through itself to what really is and abiding there!
Thoughts then narrate the frustration of this impossible attempt: to end thought using thought. All this only cements the core thought that there’s a someone who must do being aware.
But you don’t have to be aware. You can’t. Aware already is without your help.
Without a so-called you doing or not doing anything at all, there is always already ordinary aware being. It was never not.
Not some special awareness that was missing and must be achieved. This awareness, aware of the illusion of a you supposedly separate from it, trying hard to be aware of it.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Life without control is freedom
26 augustus 2026 · 2 min
Without control over life, are we powerless, helpless, incapable? Lees meer
Or does the sense of powerlessness really come from constantly trying to manage what can’t be managed?
Do ambition, intention, and desire disappear when we realize we’re not in control? Or do these continue to appear unauthored, as before?
What part of this life is being driven by a separate you? Is control ever a real event, or is it a belief we add? Do we ever control sensations, thoughts, or behavior of the body? Can we ever make those appear, disappear, or change to our liking?
No. True relief is in that “no.” Realizing there’s no control, we stop seeking it.
Things keep happening. Things like ambition, the desire to act, or the pursuit of spiritual goals continue to arise (or not) spontaneously. Responsibility, relationship, and care also arise, or not, just as before.
But knowing there’s no control removes the need for any attempt at control. Then there’s the total ease of things simply unfolding as they do — for everyone, all of the time.
Life flows without the judgment, resistance, and frustration of the one who was trying in vain to direct its flow.
That is real freedom. It’s the lightness of being lived. The opposite of the dream of control is a life of effortless freedom.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Just life
25 augustus 2026 · 2 min
Just experience. Not my experience, not the experience I observe, not the experience I am aware of. Just experience. Lees meer
Just a thought, a mental vibration. Not my thought, not the thought I created or made to appear, not a thought based on or caused by previous thoughts. Just a thought.
Just a sensation. Not my sensation, not a sensation caused by me, not a sensation with inherent meaning or purpose or messages to understand. Just a sensation.
Just an action of the body. Not my action, not an action premeditated or caused by me, not an action caused by my thinking, not an action a me is responsible for causing. Just a body moving, an action.
Just words. Not my words, not words a me came up with, not words a me made happen, not words that are a thing in themselves. Just words that can communicate something because they’re mental shorthand for experience. Just words that are pointers to a direct seeing, noticing, or knowing of what is.
Just life. Not my life, not a life I control, not the life I was destined to live, not the life that I am responsible for living and getting right, not a life that must have some meaning or spiritual development.
Just life, living itself. Including the convincing but mistaken belief in a separate someone owning that life.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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What do you know for sure?
20 augustus 2026 · 2 min
Hear something often enough and it starts to feel like you know it. Repeat “no self” sincerely enough and it starts to feel like truth. Meditate on “all is awareness” deeply enough and it can feel like direct insight. Lees meer
But without all that:What do you know for sure?What is not hearsay or second-hand?
That is all that counts.The rest of it is useless.
When everything ever heard goes silent, what still is?Don’t name it or try to understand it.
What remains is not something we’ve heard somewhere.It already was before we ever heard anything.
It seems like nothing because it has no substance. But the direct, preverbal, mindless knowing of it, is what can free you from the belief that you were ever separate from it.
This ordinary aliveness is doubtlessly present.
What is not doubtless is the story of self or no-self in that aliveness. What is not doubtless are the endless explanations, meanings, and consequences concerning it.
If it’s not clear, pretending won’t help.You don’t wake up on borrowed truth.
What needs nothing from you to be the case?You can look (know) directly and wordlessly.
This feels strange and frustrating but you might persist.
Realize it as all that ever is, and the need for any explanation of it ends.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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We know too much
19 augustus 2026 · 2 min
We have access to everything on the internet, and AI to digest it for us. Plus, we have all those books and videos we’ve been consuming for years. Lees meer
We’ve heard it all before: completely jaded but still unsatisfied.
So even the most direct pointing is heard as something already understood.
Yes, I get it, this is not-two, undivided.Yes, yes, I know, there is no separate self.But why is that not changing anything?
The biggest obstacle is believing we already know what this is. It completely blocks the direct, unmediated noticing of it.
But maybe we can trust that it really is that stupidly simple: noticing what already is without concluding anything.
* Without listening to any interpretation of what this is.
* Ignoring anything the mind provides as an answer.
* Just noticing, mind-lessly.
Any understanding of what this is only obscures it.
It really is about less, not more.Less understanding, less getting it, not more.
That only feels impossible because our entire identity is built on what we think we know — including what we think we know about what is being said here right now.
I think, therefore I feel like I know things, giving me the false sense of control and security that I’m a tangible, separate self.
But noticing what already is before thinking is possible.It is already going on all the time.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Follow the breadcrumbs
18 augustus 2026 · 2 min
Any appearance, any experience can point us back to recognizing our true nature. Lees meer
Take any experience of separation, constriction, limitation, stress, or suffering. It’s always due to the interpretation by the mind, the selfing mechanism. Always.
So any inquiry, any clear noticing of what is really going on, can take us home.
Noticing the raw thoughts and sensations, and the mind’s interpretation relating them to a supposed separate me … if that is simply noticed, there’s a natural falling back into what is aware.
The trick is not to get stuck in more judgment, more thought about what is only happening spontaneously, without anyone’s control. Let the inquiry point all the way back to what knows, to the freedom and peace of pure being, before any mind.
Inquiries tend to work better with things we find stressful but really any experience at all points back to what experiences.
It seems difficult at first, to pull back from the mind, to fall back from selfing and into the freedom of being.
Inquiry, the way I share it, uses what the mind throws up as the way home. It uses the mind’s own b******t to go beyond it, like following the breadcrumbs out of the forest you were lost in.
Then any situation, any experience, is the pointer to the peace and freedom of your true nature.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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To be free, right now
17 augustus 2026 · 2 min
To be free and know peace, right now, as you are, is going against every thought you were ever taught. It’s contrary to the entire cultural conditioning of wherever you grew up. Lees meer
To know your true nature, no longer exclusively identified as a body or mind, means no longer buying into the supposed ego / free agent / self that humanity claims is who you are.
It’s the end of belief in the consensus, along with all its norms and expectations.
The human is a social animal, where being outcast means death. Even the idea of breaking from consensus can bring up existential fear.
The fear is that very same conditioning, doing its job, keeping you trapped.
And yes, stories of those who break free are shared. But they’re shared as though they’re highly exceptional. Poor you will never achieve it, not in this lifetime. You’re not advanced enough, too flawed, not cut out for it.
All of it ensures you remain identified as a personal self, who must own and live their life.
But you are already free, right now. Peace and ease are truly, completely available, exactly as things are right now.
The conditioning is stopping you from noticing, from even looking in this direction.
Because what YOU already are knows the entire, conditioned drama. And that knowing is unconditionally free. All it takes is noticing that.
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Only YOU
14 augustus 2026 · 2 min
Before the explanations, before the information, before the concepts, before the words, before the thoughts, before the ideas, before the intuitions … YOU already are. Lees meer
YOU are without border or edges, without limits or constrictions, without separation or duality, without characteristics or traits, without story or identity, without body or mind.
YOU can effortlessly rediscover YOU in any moment.
YOU are already right here, it’s just that attention is narrowed down into a tiny fractal of YOU.
Notice that there is always YOU, aware of whatever is going on: all of the perceptions, sensations, thoughts. And just notice how expansive, spacious, and unencumbered YOU really are.
YOU are always this unencumbered expansiveness, no matter what is going on. YOU always already are. It all appears and happens in YOU.
Innocently, unavoidably YOU lose awareness of this expansiveness that you are, and become exclusively identified with the appearance of a body-and-story.
Effortlessly, spontaneously YOU rediscover this spaciousness and notice that limitation to a body and identification with a story never actually happens — only seems to happen.
It’s only a misunderstanding that never actually occurs except as the belief that it does.
There never is a separate self who needs to see they don’t exist. There never is a someone who needs to find their way back to truth.
Always, always there is only YOU and everything appearing as YOU.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Drama, baby!
13 augustus 2026 · 2 min
After years of seeking and more years of trying to communicate this, what is most essential seems to be the direct, experiential discovery that there is no personal self. Lees meer
Talking about the consequences of that doesn’t seem so helpful. It only creates more ideas about it instead of encouraging the direct recognition.
What I can say is that the compulsion to project, protect, and promote a “me” disappears.
There’s all the drama of living, but it’s no longer personal. The bodymind is more or less involved in that drama, like being more or less immersed in a movie. But it’s not about me — not my drama. If it sometimes feels that way, it never lasts long.
All of it is known, and that knowing is utterly without problems — untouched, free.
Is that Awareness? Source? The Self? Who cares?
The freedom is in knowing what I am not, and the resultant knowing of what I am — much too simple a proposition for the sophisticated mind.
No one is separate from what is or needed to do anything about it, although many things are done. None of it ever involves an imaginary character called “me.”
Until this ordinary fact of no-self is seen, it’s all very complicated and “I” desperately need to figure it out!
Relief is the discovery that there is no one.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Inquiry is not thinking or feeling
12 augustus 2026 · 2 min
You can think about being alive. You can have sensations that tell you you’re alive. Or you can just know the fact of aliveness. Lees meer
You can think about awareness. You can have sensations that indicate you’re aware. Or there can simply be the knowing of awareness.
There can be attention going to thoughts. There can be attention going to various sensations. Or there can be the direct knowing of being, without resorting to thoughts or sensations about being.
For many years, I knew inquiry was the key to this realization. But all I did was think about inquiry. I pondered all the pointers to what I was not and all the pointers to what I was, from dry and technical to poetic and mystical.
In meditation, I felt what I believed were the correct sensations of inquiry: calmness, peace, expansion.
But inquiry, which is simply seeing what I am not and rediscovering what I truly am, doesn’t involve thinking or feeling at all.
It’s a “falling back” from thoughts and sensations and knowing what is aware.
Trying to think or feel inquiry isn’t even noticing what already is before, during, and after those thoughts and sensations about inquiry.
What already is knows all thought and sensation as objects.
It’s not a thought, not a feeling, but a transparent, undeniably aware presence.
It is what you are.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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The end of the need to fix
11 augustus 2026 · 2 min
This is not about a better bodymind experience. It’s just not on offer. Lees meer
What’s on offer is knowing your true nature, which is not limited to the bodymind you’ve innocently identified with and shrunk your world down to.
Your true nature is unlimited, unconditional, total peace and freedom — and those are just words.
You have to recognize it. Whenever the mind shuts up, there can be the recognition of the naked fact of being. The mind doesn’t recognize it because “mind” is a thought happening in it.
There’s no problem at all there. It’s the problem aspect of life that disappears.
You need thought, the self, the ego to construct problems. I mean problem in the sense of an issue to solve, not in the sense of it’s all beautiful and fantastic.
No separate self, no problem, no limitation, no constriction, no suffering — we can know this in any moment if we just look without using the mind.
It’s freedom from this entire compulsion to do or fix or improve — completely gone. It’s the end of the need to fix the personal life, because it’s clear that I am what the entire apparent identity or dream of a separate person appears in.
Most people want to fix themselves and have a better life. And that’s fine. But that’s not on offer here.
(Adapted from an open meeting — details to join on katoudheusden.com)
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Prove it to me
10 augustus 2026 · 2 min
We demand proof that there is no self. Lees meer
Good. This isn’t about trying to make ourselves believe there is no self. But scepticism requires that we equally inquire into what we already assume to be true.
Instead of only demanding proof of no-self, we can turn it around and demand proof of the existence of a self.
Because maybe the assumption that there is a separate self, is what lacks evidence.
If we’re looking for a separate self as our identity, then we would need to find something that:
* is continuously present and never not present,
* exists independently of impermanent thoughts and perceptions or sensations — or else it would be nothing more than those,
* is directly findable and not just assumed or inferred.
Our concept of a self doesn’t meet any of these criteria!
If we really look instead of just assuming we already know, then no self is ever found.
All we find are recurring sensations and thoughts (or mental sensations) from which we infer the existence of a self — but none of which constitute an actual separate self.
This doesn’t prove anything. We can’t prove the absence of something. But it can be an invitation to further testing.
If the separate self can’t be found despite repeated looking, that absence can start to speak louder than the belief in one.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Just do your best
7 augustus 2026 · 2 min
I will do my best. Lees meer
Such harmless, well-meant words. Said to yourself thousands of times. Learned from parents and teachers who said it to you thousands of times.
A fantastic example of how we innocently create our suffering.
With the tiny word “I” you create the concept of a “me” who supposedly controls and is responsible for the thoughts and actions of the bodymind.
This main character is given the impossible responsibility of living its life well while having no control over it whatsoever. It’s a disastrous set-up.
It’s the ultimate recipe for life-long frustration and disappointment, mixed in with just enough wins to keep you addicted to the idea that someday you’ll get it to work.
With the words “will do” you create the entire fallacy of free will. But life is the painful discovery that you don’t control what you will. And if you do happen to will the right thing, there’s no saying whether it will get done.
And with that tiny word “best,” you create an entire world of pain in the form of self-judgment. Who gets to determine what best is, or when it’s not enough?
You’re stuck in a self-made trap.
Until you discover that YOU are what has always been aware of the trap, and aware of the illusion of a someone stuck inside it.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Of dogs and humans
6 augustus 2026 · 2 min
I grew up in Thailand in the eighties, and a familiar sight was the dogs roaming the streets. Lees meer
A dog may hang around a dump, or a slum, and look for scraps. It’s a hard life but in a Buddhist country animals are usually treated with compassion.
A dog may get lucky, and find a temple complex. Here they are actively fed. They can stick around, live by the temples, and enjoy a relatively comfortable life among monks.
Humans too, can spend their lives looking for scraps. Some find them in a successful career, others in family and relationships, or in the beauty of the arts.
Or, the human can get lucky, and discover the spiritual complex. Here, the human is actively fed. It’s relatively comfortable, with beautiful teachings and community. There’s hope for vast improvement through dedication and purification.
Nonduality is not about the scraps in a dog’s life. But it also isn’t about human life.
It’s about “turning around” and knowing what knows the entire play of life.
So, turning away from the obsession with scraps is essential. To the human, that’s threatening. Bad things will happen if I ignore my life, material or spiritual, because it absolutely needs “me” to manage it.
But this isn’t about you or your life.
This is about discovering what knows life.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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A little bit of noticing
5 augustus 2026 · 2 min
Every moment of every day, life is already demonstrating its nondual nature. Lees meer
It is on full-volume, ultra-high-definition display.
All it takes is a little bit of attention to what is actually going on.
Every day, trying and failing to control the body causes frustration.
Every day, trying and failing to control thought causes stress.
Every day, trying and failing to make better choices causes anxiety.
Every day, trying and failing to uphold a coherent identity causes suffering: in relationships, at work, and in an utterly insane way, from the futile efforts of a constructed identity trying to uphold a coherent self towards itself.
All it takes is a little awareness of what is happening.
In any moment, seeing how the body lives itself and moves to meet its authentic needs, produces relief.
In any moment, noticing how thoughts are not mine or about a me, and so losing all interest in them, produces instant peace.
In any moment, noticing how choices simply happen spontaneously without needing anyone to make them happen, brings instant freedom.
In any moment, not needing to be a someone or construct any identity at all, is immediate liberation from any limitation.
All it takes is a little bit of noticing what is already going on and how things already are.
It doesn’t take anything at all …
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com
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Trusting direct experience
4 augustus 2026 · 1 min
You must answer your own questions.You can’t lean on what it says in a book, or ask anyone else. Lees meer
For example, find out for yourself whether you can find an inside and outside, whether you can find any actual separation anywhere between what you call yourself and not-yourself.
Talking about it sounds conceptual because it is. A concept is not the direct knowing. It’s a mental representation of what may have been direct knowing. Concepts are useless.
The only thing that helps is the direct experience of not finding a border, for example, of looking and looking and not finding one anywhere.
We don’t trust our direct experience because we’ve been taught not to trust it.
As children, we saw the world as it was. But it was made very clear to us that we were naive, and what to see instead.
We were told our direct experience was not how things really are, and told exactly what to believe instead.
So now, when we actually look, we can’t find those things they told us, and we doubt our own seeing! The doubts are due to deep and successful conditioning, it’s normal.
And the only solution is to look again, like a child would.
Then you will know, and it won’t matter what anyone says.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailynonduality.substack.com