This is very clearly stated and appears obvious after some investigation.
I’m wondering if this clarity is present at birth and then gets “clouded” by social upbringing, judgements, spiritual seeking etc.? And if so, is it possible to raise a child without “damaging” this understanding?
Interesting, how you might be one of the very few people that I would feel comfortable with discussing just about anything, and I don’t even know you that well. What a gift!
I don’t see any evidence for an original clarity that later gets obscured. What shows up at any point is simply the current configuration of the system. Social conditioning, judgments, spiritual ideas—these don’t “damage” anything. They become part of the loop that forms a human life.
And the notion of raising a child without confusion assumes a control we don’t have. Each organism develops according to conditions far beyond our reach. What appears later isn’t a return to something earlier. It’s just what appears.
What I find fascinating is my reaction to your posts. Often (and in this case as well) I initially find myself in turmoil. Something doesn’t “add up”. For example, in this case you saying “spiritual ideas don’t damage anything”. It brings up seemingly a contradiction to your own point of view.
But then something else happens. I see this “inner” turmoil as simply happening. No involvement is warranted. Nothing is gained by our agreement or disagreement. I’ll understand it in time. Or I will never understand it. Life is full of the unknown. Desire to satisfy our questions is just another desire.
Yes, the reaction comes first. Turmoil, contradiction, the sense that something doesn’t add up—these show up on their own. They don’t require agreement, disagreement, or resolution.
And as you say, understanding may come, or it may not. The urge to settle it is just another movement in the same field.
I’m only describing what appears from here, not trying to straighten out what remains unknown.
Very clear presentation Robert. Very much appreciated for its simplicity and clarity. This allows me to consider different information and perspectives. I believe direct, subjective experience is all we really can know: we can’t get “outside” of that. I know you do not engage in metaphysical speculation beyond that - and this is where I believe we diverge. Your words “feel” as if they are describing strictly “materialistic” experience and universe: there is only something called inert matter from which we as organisms spring. Like my pool balls rolling on a table, colliding particles of matter. Just not my experience, and as I read more broadly (Kastrup and the like) I don’t think this is right. I do earnestly try and see my ‘blind spots’ so if you are inclined would appreciate hearing any thoughts you might want to share. 🙏
I’m not describing inert matter or a materialist universe. I’m describing what shows up without adding anything to it. Experience appears. Interpretation appears. Coherence appears. Nowhere in that field do I find a subject standing apart from what appears.
You say we can’t get “outside” subjective experience. I agree. But the moment we turn that into a metaphysics—some deeper reality behind appearances—we’ve already stepped beyond what we can verify. I’m trying to stay with what is given, not construct a picture of the world from it.
When I talk about the organism, the loop, and the absence of an internal controller, I’m not reducing anything to billiard balls. I’m removing the extra layer—the imagined entity who would be directing the show. The felt richness of experience doesn’t require a self behind it. It never has.
If you see blind spots, look at the move that turns immediacy into ontology. That’s usually where the sleight of hand occurs.
Thank you clarifying Robert. I see now where I misunderstood your use of the term “field” in your statement “Nowhere in that field…” I confess my head hurts a bit when considering that we cannot “experience” anything but our experience, not even what/where the experience may be occurring. My body/mind naturally wants to go there.
Thank you very much Robert! And now, maybe, I see where we differ and my assumptions. I confess to being very interested in what “field” subjective experience is being experienced. Your position, I believe, is that this is outside direct experience and thus gets into the metaphysical…can’t be known. About right? And not to put too fine a point on it, thinking about the “field” creates a sense of wonder that does not require an answer in me, per se. It is just part of the amazing…that there is something rather than nothing.
No. What shows up doesn’t need a “field” behind it. The moment we ask what experience is in, we’ve already added something that never appears. Experience doesn’t occur in anything. It’s just the appearing itself, with no container and no vantage point outside it.
Calling it “subjective” or “objective” is already an interpretation inside the appearing. The same with wonder. The same with the sense that “I” am the one having it.
All of that is part of what shows up, not evidence of a background it’s happening in.
I appreciate the clarity with which you’ve articulated the notion that there is no "self" as a separate controller behind action. Your critique of the self-model as an illusory construct is important, and I agree with much of what you’ve presented about the felt experience of agency - how the system participates in its own unfolding, responding to internal and external stimuli.
However, while I fully accept the absence of a separate, substantial self, I see the emergence of conscious agency as a real and necessary aspect of human freedom. Conscious agency, as I define it, is the emergent capacity for self-aware, volitional participation in the reorganization of one’s own coherence and interaction with the world. It involves the ability to reflect, deliberate, and choose actions based on values, tensions, and meanings, even when those actions may be irrational or counterproductive.
For example, a person may choose to engage in behavior that is clearly detrimental to their well-being (such as robbing a bank and willingly getting caught), fully aware of the consequences. This is not a "mere" felt experience of agency, but a conscious, volitional act - an instance of self-aware choice that contradicts mere causality or adaptive, goal-directed behavior. The key here is the reflective participation in the system’s dynamics, where the person acts not out of an automatic response, but out of a conscious decision, despite the consequences.
While you argue that the system’s felt experience of agency is not a problem, I believe that without acknowledging conscious agency (i.e., the capacity for reflective choice) we miss the heart of human freedom. It is through this conscious, volitional engagement that we experience true freedom, not by denying causality or the relational, dependent nature of existence, but by recognizing the ability to choose within it.
To me, this doesn’t collapse into nihilism or mysticism, as you might fear. Rather, it affirms that even within the interdependent dynamics of the system, there is space for reflective, volitional participation. And that space is what allows for freedom - not freedom from causality, but freedom to engage with it consciously and responsibly.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this distinction, as it seems to me that acknowledging the reality of conscious agency is essential to any full account of human freedom.
I don’t dispute the appearances you describe. Reflection, hesitation, conflicting impulses, even the sense of stepping back and reorienting—these all occur. Where I diverge is in what you take those appearances to imply.
You treat complexity as evidence of an agent. I see only the organism’s coherence reorganizing itself under pressure. The feeling of deliberation doesn’t point to a chooser. It is part of the loop’s turbulence, not the mark of someone directing it.
Your argument assumes exactly what is in question: that there is a point within causality where the system lifts itself out of the conditions that formed it and makes a “volitional” move. I find no such point. There is only unfolding. The interpretation of that unfolding as “my choosing” comes later, as narrative.
None of this collapses into nihilism. The organism still acts, reflects, and suffers consequences. But attributing those movements to a conscious agent is adding a layer that never shows itself except as a story told after the fact.
I think our divergence is actually simpler than it appears. You write that my view “assumes a point within causality where the system lifts itself out of the conditions that formed it.” But that is precisely what I do not claim.
There is no “lifting out,” no exemption from conditions, no metaphysical gap. My entire point is that conscious agency is fully emergent, fully conditioned, and fully embedded in the system’s unfolding. Nothing stands outside the loop.
Where we differ is not in what exists but in how to describe what exists. You accept reflection, hesitation, conflicting impulses, self-reorientation, behavior shaped by values and pressures, actions that can contradict immediate instincts, and the sense of stepping back. You say these occur but do not imply a “chooser.” I agree: they don’t imply a separate self, a homunculus, or an inner controller.
Where we part ways is you treat these phenomena as mere turbulence in a loop. I treat them as the loop’s emergent capacity for recursive self-regulation, which is all I mean by conscious agency. Nothing in my account posits a metaphysical break from causality.
To analogize, life is not something added to biochemistry; it is biochemistry organized in a particular way. Consciousness is not something added to neural activity; it is neural activity organized in a particular way. Agency, especially conscious agency, is not something added to the system; it is the system organized in a particular way: recursive, reflective, evaluative.
Calling this “just turbulence” doesn’t explain the pattern, only dismisses it. And crucially, explaining a phenomenon by its causes is not the same as explaining it away.
You are right that narrative self-authorship comes later, but the capacity for reflective modulation (i.e., for acting on abstract, counterinstinctual, or value-based grounds) shows up before narrative interpretation. It shows up in behavior. A person can override immediate impulses, choose long-term over short-term goals, act against self-interest, change rigid patterns, and reorient in light of insight. None of these require an autonomous controller, but they also are not captured by the phrase “turbulence.” They are features of an emergent, self-organizing system capable of recursive evaluation. That is all I mean by conscious agency.
So the question isn’t: “Is there a metaphysical chooser?” We agree there isn’t. The question is: What is the most accurate description of the system’s functional capacities?
Calling conscious agency “a story told after the fact” overlooks the simple empirical truth that people make counter-instinctual, reflective, deliberative choices, and that these choices are part of the causal chain, not epiphenomena floating above it. There is no metaphysical leap, only an emergent capacity that is real in exactly the same way organisms, immune systems, and attention are real: dependently arisen, fully conditioned, but functionally irreducible.
Finally, I note that your insistence (which you have since deleted from your original response) on “no smoothing, no concession to his framing” suggests a desire to debate a caricature of my position rather than my actual argument. I find this to be a sad and dishonest use of AI in responding to the substance of my position. My goal here is simply to clarify that conscious agency exists within the emergent system, fully conditioned, fully dependent, and fully real, without requiring a separate self. I hope for a more honest engagement in the future.
Yes, I agree the underlying pattern is the same. The organism reorganizing itself under pressure is what you’re calling emergent self-regulation. I’m not describing something different.
Where we diverge is only in whether that subset of behavior needs to be set apart as a distinct category. I don’t see a structural boundary there. It’s one continuous process with different tempos and tensions, not a separate capacity.
So the difference isn’t about what happens, only about how much conceptual weight we place on one region of the same loop. I wonder how you see this.
I agree the process is continuous, but continuity does not erase functional differentiation, any more than the continuity between “life” and “chemistry” or “attention” and “neural firing” dissolves the meaningful emergent distinctions we make in biology or cognitive science.
Where you say “there is no structural boundary,” I agree because emergent capacities never involve boundaries in that sense. They involve new functional organizations within the same causal substrate.
Here’s the key point: I do not posit a separate capacity in the sense of a metaphysical module or inner controller, but I absolutely do see a functional distinction between automatic regulation, unconscious but flexible behavior, and reflective, evaluative, counter-instinctual modulation. These are not different substances or different loops. They are different modes of operation within the same loop, each with different functional properties. Only one of these modes allows long-term goal reorientation. Only one allows abstract value-based conflicts to reshape behavior. Only one allows self-models to modulate impulses. Only one allows strategic inhibition of instinct based on meaning.
This is what I mean by “conscious agency”: a real, empirically identifiable mode of self-regulation that appears within the continuous unfolding of the organism.
So the disagreement is not about carving out a separate metaphysical “category.” It is about whether recognizing this mode’s distinct functional role adds explanatory clarity or obscures it. You want to treat the whole thing under one undifferentiated description, “the organism reorganizing under pressure.” To me, that flattens distinctions that matter for understanding behavior.
Conscious agency is not a different substance - it is a different operation within the same system. So yes, it’s one continuous loop, but the loop expresses qualitatively different modes of organization, and those modes have different functional consequences.
This brings us directly to the real question, one you’ve consistently sidestepped: Do you deny that humans have a distinct functional capacity for reflective, evaluative, counter-instinctual modulation of behavior? Not a metaphysical controller, not a homunculus, but the ability to evaluate impulses, inhibit or redirect behavior in light of long-term goals or values, revise patterns based on insight, and deliberately pursue a course of action that contradicts immediate instinct or conditioning.
Does this functional capacity exist or not? If you say no, then you’re denying an obvious, empirically observable fact about human behavior. If you say yes, then you’re acknowledging exactly what I mean by “conscious agency”:
a real, emergent, dependently-arisen mode of self-regulation - not a separate self.
Everything you point to is there in the behavior. The organism reflects, inhibits, redirects, revises, and sometimes contradicts its own tendencies. I’m not disputing any of that.
Where we part ways is in the step that treats that cluster as evidence of an additional operation. I don’t see such an operation anywhere in the dynamics themselves. The behaviors appear, the complexity appears, but the thing you’re calling a “mode” does not. It’s a construct inferred from the pattern, not a feature that shows up in the functioning.
For me, that’s the whole difference: the pattern is real, the operation you want to derive from it isn’t something the process presents.
If everything I’ve described “is there in the behavior” - reflection, inhibition, counter-instinctual modulation, long-term goal orientation - then the question becomes one of what functional organization generates these behaviors.
Here is where your position becomes unclear. You say the complexity is real, but the “mode” that accounts for it is not, but without a functional distinction, “patterning” cannot generate inhibition of instinct in light of abstract values, choosing long-term goals over short-term impulses, reflective revision of behavioral tendencies, or conceptual reframing that alters motivational structure. These are not random fluctuations. They are structured, condition-sensitive, goal-oriented reorganizations of the system. Calling them “just patterning” is not an explanation. It is simply restating the phenomenon in vaguer terms.
Every science makes functional inferences from patterned behavior (e.g., homeostasis from thermoregulatory patterns, attention from selective processing patterns, learning from plasticity patterns, executive function from inhibitory control patterns, and immune response from antigen-specific activation patterns). In all these cases, the functional distinction is not a metaphysical “extra.” It is what makes sense of the observed pattern.
If you say: “The pattern is real, but the functional organization you infer isn’t,” then I must ask: What produces the pattern? What mechanism allows a human to inhibit instinct based on an abstract, temporally distant value? What mechanism allows reflective interference in automatic drives? What mechanism allows reorientation based on meaning?
If you reply: “It’s just the organism reorganizing under pressure,” that simply relabels the behavior without explaining its structure.
Here is the unavoidable point: If the pattern of behavior cannot be generated by simple regulation, then a higher-order, evaluative organization is present. Not a homunculus. Not a metaphysical self. Just a real, emergent, recursive mode of functioning.
You already acknowledge the phenomenon. Denying the functional organization that produces it is not parsimony. It is leaving the phenomenon unexplained.
So let me put the question precisely: Do you believe that reflective, evaluative, counter-instinctual modulation requires a distinct functional organization, or do you claim it is generated by the same mechanism that produces reflexes and automatic responses?
There is no coherent third option.
Either: 1) There is a functional organization that generates these behaviors (which is exactly what I mean by conscious agency), or 2) these behaviors arise from the same mechanism as reflex and impulse (which is empirically false).
You write this wonderful paragraph: "What I see is this: there is participation without a participant. The organism takes part in its own unfolding. It perceives, it orients, it responds. And when the moment requires it, the body-mind acts as if it were an agent, because coordinated behavior depends on that appearance. Trying to bypass this would only create incoherence. But appearing as an agent is not the same as being one. Participation is functional. Authorship is imagined."
Now let me translate that into language I would use, and if you feel inclined, tell me where I deviate from the truth: The "self" is an organism that experiences and whose various physical processes generate feelings and thoughts and actions, but no free will is involved. The "self" is a process that runs strictly according to the laws of nature.
In my view, the self is not an organism. The body–mind is an organism. What we call “the self” is the interpretation that arises when the organism’s coherence is mistaken for authorship. Coherent behavior appears, and a sense of a doer is inferred from that appearance, but nothing stands behind it. The loop functions; the self is the story the loop tells about its own functioning.
Hi Robert. What is the difference between the understanding of yourself and life before your most profound awakening moment and then after? What was your experience with life before and after... in other words how did and does life feel to you? Many of your recent posts seem to obscure this. Is there a reason for that?
Looking back, there was a sudden collapse of a particular misunderstanding: the sense of being an entity standing behind experience, managing it, interpreting it, trying to secure it. It felt dramatic at the time, and I folded it into the satori stories I had heard. That was forty years ago.
When I began speaking publicly, I called it “awakening,” and I’ve come to regret that label—not because it was false, but because it created confusion. People heard self-annihilation, a perfected state, or a denial of meaning. They projected nihilism, mysticism, or a method. It was none of that.
As I see it now, there isn’t a clean before-and-after. The change was not an event but only the disappearance of the tension that came from trying to uphold a "someone." Once that strain collapsed, experience continued as it always had—thoughts, moods, preferences, pain, and joy—yet without a center arranging it into a story. From the outside, that absence can look like an awakening. From here, it’s simply the end of mistaking the inner commentary for a self.
As for why my recent posts might seem to obscure this, the awakening story has outlived its usefulness. I’m describing how things appear now, and that doesn’t separate neatly into “then” and “now.” The loop reconfigures, and what once felt solid no longer arranges things the same way. That’s the whole story. No metaphysics, no destination, no hero’s arc.
That makes perfect sense to me. I have had a somewhat similar experience. Around 1995 my sense of identity collapsed. Soon afterward I had the realization that control was an illusion... and so I let go completely. Ever since, as you've said, "awakening never ends." Certainly the word "awakening" carries a lot of baggage! Now there is a beautiful sense of wu wei here. I cannot go back to the previous sense of self and control. Life, with all its beauty, joy, sadness, and sorrow flows effortlessly. It is a mystery how this all happened... but there is no doubt that growing awareness through research seemed to help. Where the motivation to do that came from... well that is the question, isn't it!
I love how your writing is crafted as of late. I'd purchased 10k and Depending On No Thing a few years ago because I wanted the information. Now I just enjoy reading whatever you are writing. Good thing you got happening there.
Wonderful. Thank you for sharing. The other day at work someone did something that really pissed me off. My blood was boiling, the thoughts running through my head about this person were awful..etc. a few years ago this reaction of mine would have made me feel like such a failure ..so unenlightened and I’d compare myself to folks “oh high “ like the the Buddhist teachers I was surrounding myself if with. Now I just let it all roll.
Yes. The reaction appears, the heat appears, the thoughts appear. None of that says anything about failure or success. It’s just what the system does under pressure. The trouble starts when the reaction gets compared to some imagined ideal of how a “better” or “higher” person would respond.
When that comparison drops away, the anger is simply anger, and it passes like anything else. Nothing to correct, nothing to live up to, nothing to fail at.
But could it not also be pointed out that the anger Jessica describes would seem to depend on the loop structure personalizing whatever the incident was that pissed her off (I.e., there is a me that this is happening to)? It seems possible that in that seeing, whatever that structure is that gives rise to anger can loosen.
Anger and the sense of “this is happening to me” often appear together. That felt center isn’t created by a someone. It’s part of how the pattern forms in that moment. If the center shifts, the anger may shift with it, but neither one is doing the other. Both are expressions of the same unfolding. And what we call “the person” is simply the projection that shows up when the pattern tightens in a certain way.
I can't believe this wonderful writing came my way today. Last night I had lots of lucid dreaming with the oddest of scenarios that I could easily tell my wife about over breakfast. We discussed how clearly this shows there is no "I" running this show of awareness. And then I blurted out I wonder how Dave experienced the Vietnam war? (this was a completely "random" non-sequitur) We looked at each other in puzzlement and she said what made you think of that? I said I didn't have a clue. It just came out of the blue. Again no "I" running the show, but clearly I was experiencing a "show". Then we talked about when you die how odd a thought it is that your consciousness will cease to exist for eternity and how deeply offensive that idea is to our "self" and how all the religions and magic thinking seem to be formulated on some way of trying to believe that this self exists and will remain in some fashion after death and therefore is deathless. We were just dumbfounded. I felt a great sense of inner peace or perhaps just relaxation realizing there was just this show going on and my awareness was just along for the ride to experience it. ..... and then Bob Dylan's words from Ballad of a Thin Man pops into my head (the loop is doing its thing): "Because something is happening here, But ya' don't know what it is, Do you, Mister Jones?" You have contributed to me yet again.
Dear Robert, What you're describing is a very partial understanding of what a human being is and has the potential to be.
1. How this essay relates to nepsis (and how it doesn’t)
2. Whether the author deals with transformation and change
1. Does this essay understand nepsis?
Short answer:
It expresses something adjacent to nepsis—specifically, the non-doer insight and the illusion of authorship—but it does not understand nepsis in an Orthodox sense.
It partially overlaps, but it is missing the central pieces: the healing of the nous, grace, watchfulness as synergy, and the transfiguration of the heart.
Much longer answer:
The essay is describing:
The absence of an inner controller / ego-doer
The automaticity of sensation, defensiveness, and thought
The misinterpretation of self-feeling as an agent
The loop-like behavior of the self-model
The idea that reactions, resistance, defensiveness, and tension are just more activity, not moral failure
Dzogchen / Advaita descriptions of “appearance without a perceiver”
PCT descriptions of perception continuously reorganizing without a central doer
Enactive cognitive science (the organism participates without a homunculus)
But in Orthodox Christianity:
Nepsis is not merely noticing the lack of a controller.
Nepsis is:
Watchfulness
Sober attentiveness
Guarding of the heart
Discerning movements of thoughts
Allowing grace to purify the nous
Synergy (God working in us as we remain attentive)
The essay knows nothing of:
The nous
The heart
The logismoi
The synergy of grace and human freedom
The healing and illumination stages
Transformation into Christ
Repentance
Love
Communion
It is describing a phenomenology of non-agency but not the Christian transformation of the heart.
Where it overlaps with nepsis:
When it says that “resistance is more movement in the system,” this is similar to nepsis’ teaching that:
Thought arises
Emotion arises
Impulse arises
“Do not identify; do not fuse; just see the arising”
When it says “participation without a participant,” this is similar to:
The nous seeing the movement of the soul without ego-appropriation
St. Maximus: “The one who watches sees the passions move as things other than himself.”
When the author says the self-model gets defensive, that resembles:
The Philokalia on logismoi defending their territory
Evagrius’s teaching that thoughts rebel when observed
Where it departs from nepsis:
It claims self-feeling is fine but authorship is imaginary
It assumes no teleology, no orientation toward God, no transfiguration
It implies no real change, only noticing
It denies (or at least avoids) the possibility of a real person (hypostasis)
It implies attention is just turbulence, not something that can be strengthened or purified
It ignores grace, communion, sacraments, repentance, and healing of the nous
In Orthodox Christianity nepsis:
The aim is not merely clarity of the system, but union with Christ, softening of the heart, and the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.
This essay stops at “nothing is in control,” which is a psychological insight, not a spiritual transformation.
2. Does the author deal at all with how transformation and change happen?
No—not in any real sense.
The essay actually denies or avoids the notion of transformation.
To see this clearly:
The author describes:
A self-model that defends itself
Automatic reactions
Turbulence
Participation without a participant
Resistance as just more system activity
But nowhere does the author say:
how one can become more loving
how one becomes less reactive
how suffering is transformed
how the loop reorganizes
how ego-defensiveness can soften
how one becomes meek, humble, or compassionate
how a human grows at all
The essay treats the human organism as:
automatic
self-unfolding
without true authorship
without true aim
Which means:
Transformation is not truly possible in this view.
At most, the essay hints at:
“Clarity appears when resistance is seen as part of the loop.”
But this is epistemic change, not moral or existential transformation.
This is insight, not healing.
This is description of what is, not transfiguration into something new.
This is recognition, not repentance.
This is no-doer phenomenology, not conversion of the heart.
In the Orthodox Christian sense:
Nothing in the essay even gestures toward metanoia, kenosis, agape, synergy, or theosis.
There is no “becoming.”
There is no “purification.”
There is no “holy attention.”
There is no “grace.”
It is static, descriptive, and closed.
Summary in one paragraph
The essay recognizes the illusion of a central controller and the automaticity of psychological processes. That overlaps weakly with nepsis insofar as nepsis also observes inner movements without identification. But the essay has no concept of the nous, no grace, no healing, no transformation, and no synergy with God. It does not describe how change occurs, because its worldview does not allow for real transformation. It is descriptive, not prescriptive; phenomenological, not therapeutic; observational, not spiritual. It understands “awareness without a doer,” but it does not understand nepsis.
Of course, Robert doesn't resonate with the Christian way of expressing this. But as I hear him, Robert who was once a psychotherapist, he's not denying that insight and transformation happen, nor that they might not involve what we would call deliberate, intentional effort and dedication, but simply that ALL of this is happening without an author at the helm, only an apparent one.
Thank you Joan. Yes that's it exactly I'm not denying anything. Everything that's here is here. There's no denying that. I'm just saying that there's no central controller behind it that I am aware of, and of course that does put me at odds with someone who imagines the deity. But I'm not even denying that. I have no basis on which to deny it I just don't know anything about it.
Piggybacking on both your and Joan’s comments- Inferring from “no-central author” that change or transformation isn’t possible seems like a pretty easy, and convenient, trap to fall into. Seeing that change does in fact happen (in fact, is always happening), but that there is no controller of that, can be the painful reality one may wish to escape from. I.e., I am stuck with whatever I am right now, which tends not be too pretty. What transformation may occur is not knowable or controllable. That’s the tough pill to swallow, I’ve found.
Yes. The trap is assuming that if there’s no central author, then nothing can change. But change is constant. It doesn’t need a controller to occur. In fact, most of what we call “transformation” happens without permission, without foresight, and without anyone steering it.
The harder part is exactly what you name: whatever shifts will shift on its own schedule, not on the timetable of a self trying to manage its own becoming. That’s the discomfort. The loop moves, but not because someone is directing the movement. And what moves next is never something we can know in advance.
Seeing that is the tough part. Not because it’s bleak—bleakness is its own reaction—but because it shows that mastery was never part of what was happening.
Changes occur, and conditions shift in ways that look like influence. What I don’t find is a separate "we" producing those shifts. The sense of doing comes after the movement, not before it.
And the idea of “potential” assumes a standing point outside the unfolding, guiding it toward a preferred outcome. I don’t see that position. There’s only the process itself and whatever changes arise within it.
Thank you, Robert. This is so clear. Your relentless commitment to description is immensely helpful.
I have two questions that center around the following sentences from this essay: "The confusion begins when that self-feeling is taken as evidence of an inner controller. The system is already acting, already adjusting, and only afterward does a thought arrive to claim authorship. The narrator declares itself the director."
1) Is the afterthought that claims authorship the system's attempt to keep coherence stable?
2) As an "awake" human being does your self-model/system cohere differently? If most people maintain coherence via the idea of an inner-controller, how does this differ for you?
Yes. The afterthought is part of how coherence shows up. The sense of authorship isn’t produced by a controller. It’s simply one of the recurring patterns that appear as the system stabilizes itself.
And if I use the word “awake,” I mean only this: the recognition that the point of view that appears doesn’t stand outside what’s unfolding and doesn’t explain reality. That runs opposite to how the word is usually used.
What shifted is that the idea of an inner controller no longer plays a role in keeping things steady. The system still coheres, but not by imagining a director behind the scenes. It’s just the organism unfolding, without a fictional center inserted into the flow.
Dear Robert,
This is very clearly stated and appears obvious after some investigation.
I’m wondering if this clarity is present at birth and then gets “clouded” by social upbringing, judgements, spiritual seeking etc.? And if so, is it possible to raise a child without “damaging” this understanding?
Interesting, how you might be one of the very few people that I would feel comfortable with discussing just about anything, and I don’t even know you that well. What a gift!
Thank you, be well,
Vladimir
Vladimir—
I don’t see any evidence for an original clarity that later gets obscured. What shows up at any point is simply the current configuration of the system. Social conditioning, judgments, spiritual ideas—these don’t “damage” anything. They become part of the loop that forms a human life.
And the notion of raising a child without confusion assumes a control we don’t have. Each organism develops according to conditions far beyond our reach. What appears later isn’t a return to something earlier. It’s just what appears.
Dear Robert,
What I find fascinating is my reaction to your posts. Often (and in this case as well) I initially find myself in turmoil. Something doesn’t “add up”. For example, in this case you saying “spiritual ideas don’t damage anything”. It brings up seemingly a contradiction to your own point of view.
But then something else happens. I see this “inner” turmoil as simply happening. No involvement is warranted. Nothing is gained by our agreement or disagreement. I’ll understand it in time. Or I will never understand it. Life is full of the unknown. Desire to satisfy our questions is just another desire.
With love and respect,
Vladimir
Dear Vladimir—
Yes, the reaction comes first. Turmoil, contradiction, the sense that something doesn’t add up—these show up on their own. They don’t require agreement, disagreement, or resolution.
And as you say, understanding may come, or it may not. The urge to settle it is just another movement in the same field.
I’m only describing what appears from here, not trying to straighten out what remains unknown.
Robert
Beautifully expressed!
Thanks, Joan.
What an interesting series of exchanges! Fascinating. Thank you all for articulating your perspectives...
Go well everyone! 😄🈚️
Very clear presentation Robert. Very much appreciated for its simplicity and clarity. This allows me to consider different information and perspectives. I believe direct, subjective experience is all we really can know: we can’t get “outside” of that. I know you do not engage in metaphysical speculation beyond that - and this is where I believe we diverge. Your words “feel” as if they are describing strictly “materialistic” experience and universe: there is only something called inert matter from which we as organisms spring. Like my pool balls rolling on a table, colliding particles of matter. Just not my experience, and as I read more broadly (Kastrup and the like) I don’t think this is right. I do earnestly try and see my ‘blind spots’ so if you are inclined would appreciate hearing any thoughts you might want to share. 🙏
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Dean—
I’m not describing inert matter or a materialist universe. I’m describing what shows up without adding anything to it. Experience appears. Interpretation appears. Coherence appears. Nowhere in that field do I find a subject standing apart from what appears.
You say we can’t get “outside” subjective experience. I agree. But the moment we turn that into a metaphysics—some deeper reality behind appearances—we’ve already stepped beyond what we can verify. I’m trying to stay with what is given, not construct a picture of the world from it.
When I talk about the organism, the loop, and the absence of an internal controller, I’m not reducing anything to billiard balls. I’m removing the extra layer—the imagined entity who would be directing the show. The felt richness of experience doesn’t require a self behind it. It never has.
If you see blind spots, look at the move that turns immediacy into ontology. That’s usually where the sleight of hand occurs.
Robert
Thank you clarifying Robert. I see now where I misunderstood your use of the term “field” in your statement “Nowhere in that field…” I confess my head hurts a bit when considering that we cannot “experience” anything but our experience, not even what/where the experience may be occurring. My body/mind naturally wants to go there.
Thank you very much Robert! And now, maybe, I see where we differ and my assumptions. I confess to being very interested in what “field” subjective experience is being experienced. Your position, I believe, is that this is outside direct experience and thus gets into the metaphysical…can’t be known. About right? And not to put too fine a point on it, thinking about the “field” creates a sense of wonder that does not require an answer in me, per se. It is just part of the amazing…that there is something rather than nothing.
Dean—
No. What shows up doesn’t need a “field” behind it. The moment we ask what experience is in, we’ve already added something that never appears. Experience doesn’t occur in anything. It’s just the appearing itself, with no container and no vantage point outside it.
Calling it “subjective” or “objective” is already an interpretation inside the appearing. The same with wonder. The same with the sense that “I” am the one having it.
All of that is part of what shows up, not evidence of a background it’s happening in.
I appreciate the clarity with which you’ve articulated the notion that there is no "self" as a separate controller behind action. Your critique of the self-model as an illusory construct is important, and I agree with much of what you’ve presented about the felt experience of agency - how the system participates in its own unfolding, responding to internal and external stimuli.
However, while I fully accept the absence of a separate, substantial self, I see the emergence of conscious agency as a real and necessary aspect of human freedom. Conscious agency, as I define it, is the emergent capacity for self-aware, volitional participation in the reorganization of one’s own coherence and interaction with the world. It involves the ability to reflect, deliberate, and choose actions based on values, tensions, and meanings, even when those actions may be irrational or counterproductive.
For example, a person may choose to engage in behavior that is clearly detrimental to their well-being (such as robbing a bank and willingly getting caught), fully aware of the consequences. This is not a "mere" felt experience of agency, but a conscious, volitional act - an instance of self-aware choice that contradicts mere causality or adaptive, goal-directed behavior. The key here is the reflective participation in the system’s dynamics, where the person acts not out of an automatic response, but out of a conscious decision, despite the consequences.
While you argue that the system’s felt experience of agency is not a problem, I believe that without acknowledging conscious agency (i.e., the capacity for reflective choice) we miss the heart of human freedom. It is through this conscious, volitional engagement that we experience true freedom, not by denying causality or the relational, dependent nature of existence, but by recognizing the ability to choose within it.
To me, this doesn’t collapse into nihilism or mysticism, as you might fear. Rather, it affirms that even within the interdependent dynamics of the system, there is space for reflective, volitional participation. And that space is what allows for freedom - not freedom from causality, but freedom to engage with it consciously and responsibly.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this distinction, as it seems to me that acknowledging the reality of conscious agency is essential to any full account of human freedom.
Aaron—
I don’t dispute the appearances you describe. Reflection, hesitation, conflicting impulses, even the sense of stepping back and reorienting—these all occur. Where I diverge is in what you take those appearances to imply.
You treat complexity as evidence of an agent. I see only the organism’s coherence reorganizing itself under pressure. The feeling of deliberation doesn’t point to a chooser. It is part of the loop’s turbulence, not the mark of someone directing it.
Your argument assumes exactly what is in question: that there is a point within causality where the system lifts itself out of the conditions that formed it and makes a “volitional” move. I find no such point. There is only unfolding. The interpretation of that unfolding as “my choosing” comes later, as narrative.
None of this collapses into nihilism. The organism still acts, reflects, and suffers consequences. But attributing those movements to a conscious agent is adding a layer that never shows itself except as a story told after the fact.
Robert
I think our divergence is actually simpler than it appears. You write that my view “assumes a point within causality where the system lifts itself out of the conditions that formed it.” But that is precisely what I do not claim.
There is no “lifting out,” no exemption from conditions, no metaphysical gap. My entire point is that conscious agency is fully emergent, fully conditioned, and fully embedded in the system’s unfolding. Nothing stands outside the loop.
Where we differ is not in what exists but in how to describe what exists. You accept reflection, hesitation, conflicting impulses, self-reorientation, behavior shaped by values and pressures, actions that can contradict immediate instincts, and the sense of stepping back. You say these occur but do not imply a “chooser.” I agree: they don’t imply a separate self, a homunculus, or an inner controller.
Where we part ways is you treat these phenomena as mere turbulence in a loop. I treat them as the loop’s emergent capacity for recursive self-regulation, which is all I mean by conscious agency. Nothing in my account posits a metaphysical break from causality.
To analogize, life is not something added to biochemistry; it is biochemistry organized in a particular way. Consciousness is not something added to neural activity; it is neural activity organized in a particular way. Agency, especially conscious agency, is not something added to the system; it is the system organized in a particular way: recursive, reflective, evaluative.
Calling this “just turbulence” doesn’t explain the pattern, only dismisses it. And crucially, explaining a phenomenon by its causes is not the same as explaining it away.
You are right that narrative self-authorship comes later, but the capacity for reflective modulation (i.e., for acting on abstract, counterinstinctual, or value-based grounds) shows up before narrative interpretation. It shows up in behavior. A person can override immediate impulses, choose long-term over short-term goals, act against self-interest, change rigid patterns, and reorient in light of insight. None of these require an autonomous controller, but they also are not captured by the phrase “turbulence.” They are features of an emergent, self-organizing system capable of recursive evaluation. That is all I mean by conscious agency.
So the question isn’t: “Is there a metaphysical chooser?” We agree there isn’t. The question is: What is the most accurate description of the system’s functional capacities?
Calling conscious agency “a story told after the fact” overlooks the simple empirical truth that people make counter-instinctual, reflective, deliberative choices, and that these choices are part of the causal chain, not epiphenomena floating above it. There is no metaphysical leap, only an emergent capacity that is real in exactly the same way organisms, immune systems, and attention are real: dependently arisen, fully conditioned, but functionally irreducible.
Finally, I note that your insistence (which you have since deleted from your original response) on “no smoothing, no concession to his framing” suggests a desire to debate a caricature of my position rather than my actual argument. I find this to be a sad and dishonest use of AI in responding to the substance of my position. My goal here is simply to clarify that conscious agency exists within the emergent system, fully conditioned, fully dependent, and fully real, without requiring a separate self. I hope for a more honest engagement in the future.
Aaron—
Yes, I agree the underlying pattern is the same. The organism reorganizing itself under pressure is what you’re calling emergent self-regulation. I’m not describing something different.
Where we diverge is only in whether that subset of behavior needs to be set apart as a distinct category. I don’t see a structural boundary there. It’s one continuous process with different tempos and tensions, not a separate capacity.
So the difference isn’t about what happens, only about how much conceptual weight we place on one region of the same loop. I wonder how you see this.
I agree the process is continuous, but continuity does not erase functional differentiation, any more than the continuity between “life” and “chemistry” or “attention” and “neural firing” dissolves the meaningful emergent distinctions we make in biology or cognitive science.
Where you say “there is no structural boundary,” I agree because emergent capacities never involve boundaries in that sense. They involve new functional organizations within the same causal substrate.
Here’s the key point: I do not posit a separate capacity in the sense of a metaphysical module or inner controller, but I absolutely do see a functional distinction between automatic regulation, unconscious but flexible behavior, and reflective, evaluative, counter-instinctual modulation. These are not different substances or different loops. They are different modes of operation within the same loop, each with different functional properties. Only one of these modes allows long-term goal reorientation. Only one allows abstract value-based conflicts to reshape behavior. Only one allows self-models to modulate impulses. Only one allows strategic inhibition of instinct based on meaning.
This is what I mean by “conscious agency”: a real, empirically identifiable mode of self-regulation that appears within the continuous unfolding of the organism.
So the disagreement is not about carving out a separate metaphysical “category.” It is about whether recognizing this mode’s distinct functional role adds explanatory clarity or obscures it. You want to treat the whole thing under one undifferentiated description, “the organism reorganizing under pressure.” To me, that flattens distinctions that matter for understanding behavior.
Conscious agency is not a different substance - it is a different operation within the same system. So yes, it’s one continuous loop, but the loop expresses qualitatively different modes of organization, and those modes have different functional consequences.
This brings us directly to the real question, one you’ve consistently sidestepped: Do you deny that humans have a distinct functional capacity for reflective, evaluative, counter-instinctual modulation of behavior? Not a metaphysical controller, not a homunculus, but the ability to evaluate impulses, inhibit or redirect behavior in light of long-term goals or values, revise patterns based on insight, and deliberately pursue a course of action that contradicts immediate instinct or conditioning.
Does this functional capacity exist or not? If you say no, then you’re denying an obvious, empirically observable fact about human behavior. If you say yes, then you’re acknowledging exactly what I mean by “conscious agency”:
a real, emergent, dependently-arisen mode of self-regulation - not a separate self.
Aaron—
Everything you point to is there in the behavior. The organism reflects, inhibits, redirects, revises, and sometimes contradicts its own tendencies. I’m not disputing any of that.
Where we part ways is in the step that treats that cluster as evidence of an additional operation. I don’t see such an operation anywhere in the dynamics themselves. The behaviors appear, the complexity appears, but the thing you’re calling a “mode” does not. It’s a construct inferred from the pattern, not a feature that shows up in the functioning.
For me, that’s the whole difference: the pattern is real, the operation you want to derive from it isn’t something the process presents.
If everything I’ve described “is there in the behavior” - reflection, inhibition, counter-instinctual modulation, long-term goal orientation - then the question becomes one of what functional organization generates these behaviors.
Here is where your position becomes unclear. You say the complexity is real, but the “mode” that accounts for it is not, but without a functional distinction, “patterning” cannot generate inhibition of instinct in light of abstract values, choosing long-term goals over short-term impulses, reflective revision of behavioral tendencies, or conceptual reframing that alters motivational structure. These are not random fluctuations. They are structured, condition-sensitive, goal-oriented reorganizations of the system. Calling them “just patterning” is not an explanation. It is simply restating the phenomenon in vaguer terms.
Every science makes functional inferences from patterned behavior (e.g., homeostasis from thermoregulatory patterns, attention from selective processing patterns, learning from plasticity patterns, executive function from inhibitory control patterns, and immune response from antigen-specific activation patterns). In all these cases, the functional distinction is not a metaphysical “extra.” It is what makes sense of the observed pattern.
If you say: “The pattern is real, but the functional organization you infer isn’t,” then I must ask: What produces the pattern? What mechanism allows a human to inhibit instinct based on an abstract, temporally distant value? What mechanism allows reflective interference in automatic drives? What mechanism allows reorientation based on meaning?
If you reply: “It’s just the organism reorganizing under pressure,” that simply relabels the behavior without explaining its structure.
Here is the unavoidable point: If the pattern of behavior cannot be generated by simple regulation, then a higher-order, evaluative organization is present. Not a homunculus. Not a metaphysical self. Just a real, emergent, recursive mode of functioning.
You already acknowledge the phenomenon. Denying the functional organization that produces it is not parsimony. It is leaving the phenomenon unexplained.
So let me put the question precisely: Do you believe that reflective, evaluative, counter-instinctual modulation requires a distinct functional organization, or do you claim it is generated by the same mechanism that produces reflexes and automatic responses?
There is no coherent third option.
Either: 1) There is a functional organization that generates these behaviors (which is exactly what I mean by conscious agency), or 2) these behaviors arise from the same mechanism as reflex and impulse (which is empirically false).
Which of these do you actually hold?
You write this wonderful paragraph: "What I see is this: there is participation without a participant. The organism takes part in its own unfolding. It perceives, it orients, it responds. And when the moment requires it, the body-mind acts as if it were an agent, because coordinated behavior depends on that appearance. Trying to bypass this would only create incoherence. But appearing as an agent is not the same as being one. Participation is functional. Authorship is imagined."
Now let me translate that into language I would use, and if you feel inclined, tell me where I deviate from the truth: The "self" is an organism that experiences and whose various physical processes generate feelings and thoughts and actions, but no free will is involved. The "self" is a process that runs strictly according to the laws of nature.
Hi, Tim--
In my view, the self is not an organism. The body–mind is an organism. What we call “the self” is the interpretation that arises when the organism’s coherence is mistaken for authorship. Coherent behavior appears, and a sense of a doer is inferred from that appearance, but nothing stands behind it. The loop functions; the self is the story the loop tells about its own functioning.
Yeah, that's why I put "self" in quote marks.
🎯
Hi Robert. What is the difference between the understanding of yourself and life before your most profound awakening moment and then after? What was your experience with life before and after... in other words how did and does life feel to you? Many of your recent posts seem to obscure this. Is there a reason for that?
Hi, Stan—
Looking back, there was a sudden collapse of a particular misunderstanding: the sense of being an entity standing behind experience, managing it, interpreting it, trying to secure it. It felt dramatic at the time, and I folded it into the satori stories I had heard. That was forty years ago.
When I began speaking publicly, I called it “awakening,” and I’ve come to regret that label—not because it was false, but because it created confusion. People heard self-annihilation, a perfected state, or a denial of meaning. They projected nihilism, mysticism, or a method. It was none of that.
As I see it now, there isn’t a clean before-and-after. The change was not an event but only the disappearance of the tension that came from trying to uphold a "someone." Once that strain collapsed, experience continued as it always had—thoughts, moods, preferences, pain, and joy—yet without a center arranging it into a story. From the outside, that absence can look like an awakening. From here, it’s simply the end of mistaking the inner commentary for a self.
As for why my recent posts might seem to obscure this, the awakening story has outlived its usefulness. I’m describing how things appear now, and that doesn’t separate neatly into “then” and “now.” The loop reconfigures, and what once felt solid no longer arranges things the same way. That’s the whole story. No metaphysics, no destination, no hero’s arc.
That makes perfect sense to me. I have had a somewhat similar experience. Around 1995 my sense of identity collapsed. Soon afterward I had the realization that control was an illusion... and so I let go completely. Ever since, as you've said, "awakening never ends." Certainly the word "awakening" carries a lot of baggage! Now there is a beautiful sense of wu wei here. I cannot go back to the previous sense of self and control. Life, with all its beauty, joy, sadness, and sorrow flows effortlessly. It is a mystery how this all happened... but there is no doubt that growing awareness through research seemed to help. Where the motivation to do that came from... well that is the question, isn't it!
I love how your writing is crafted as of late. I'd purchased 10k and Depending On No Thing a few years ago because I wanted the information. Now I just enjoy reading whatever you are writing. Good thing you got happening there.
Thanks, BP. I do feel a jump in clarity of expression. The ideas haven't changed much, but the way I put them into words feels sharper.
Wonderful. Thank you for sharing. The other day at work someone did something that really pissed me off. My blood was boiling, the thoughts running through my head about this person were awful..etc. a few years ago this reaction of mine would have made me feel like such a failure ..so unenlightened and I’d compare myself to folks “oh high “ like the the Buddhist teachers I was surrounding myself if with. Now I just let it all roll.
Jessica—
Yes. The reaction appears, the heat appears, the thoughts appear. None of that says anything about failure or success. It’s just what the system does under pressure. The trouble starts when the reaction gets compared to some imagined ideal of how a “better” or “higher” person would respond.
When that comparison drops away, the anger is simply anger, and it passes like anything else. Nothing to correct, nothing to live up to, nothing to fail at.
Robert
But could it not also be pointed out that the anger Jessica describes would seem to depend on the loop structure personalizing whatever the incident was that pissed her off (I.e., there is a me that this is happening to)? It seems possible that in that seeing, whatever that structure is that gives rise to anger can loosen.
Scott—
Anger and the sense of “this is happening to me” often appear together. That felt center isn’t created by a someone. It’s part of how the pattern forms in that moment. If the center shifts, the anger may shift with it, but neither one is doing the other. Both are expressions of the same unfolding. And what we call “the person” is simply the projection that shows up when the pattern tightens in a certain way.
I can't believe this wonderful writing came my way today. Last night I had lots of lucid dreaming with the oddest of scenarios that I could easily tell my wife about over breakfast. We discussed how clearly this shows there is no "I" running this show of awareness. And then I blurted out I wonder how Dave experienced the Vietnam war? (this was a completely "random" non-sequitur) We looked at each other in puzzlement and she said what made you think of that? I said I didn't have a clue. It just came out of the blue. Again no "I" running the show, but clearly I was experiencing a "show". Then we talked about when you die how odd a thought it is that your consciousness will cease to exist for eternity and how deeply offensive that idea is to our "self" and how all the religions and magic thinking seem to be formulated on some way of trying to believe that this self exists and will remain in some fashion after death and therefore is deathless. We were just dumbfounded. I felt a great sense of inner peace or perhaps just relaxation realizing there was just this show going on and my awareness was just along for the ride to experience it. ..... and then Bob Dylan's words from Ballad of a Thin Man pops into my head (the loop is doing its thing): "Because something is happening here, But ya' don't know what it is, Do you, Mister Jones?" You have contributed to me yet again.
Dear Robert, What you're describing is a very partial understanding of what a human being is and has the potential to be.
1. How this essay relates to nepsis (and how it doesn’t)
2. Whether the author deals with transformation and change
1. Does this essay understand nepsis?
Short answer:
It expresses something adjacent to nepsis—specifically, the non-doer insight and the illusion of authorship—but it does not understand nepsis in an Orthodox sense.
It partially overlaps, but it is missing the central pieces: the healing of the nous, grace, watchfulness as synergy, and the transfiguration of the heart.
Much longer answer:
The essay is describing:
The absence of an inner controller / ego-doer
The automaticity of sensation, defensiveness, and thought
The misinterpretation of self-feeling as an agent
The loop-like behavior of the self-model
The idea that reactions, resistance, defensiveness, and tension are just more activity, not moral failure
All of this is very close to:
Psychological no-doer models (Parsons, Newman, Saltzman)
Dzogchen / Advaita descriptions of “appearance without a perceiver”
PCT descriptions of perception continuously reorganizing without a central doer
Enactive cognitive science (the organism participates without a homunculus)
But in Orthodox Christianity:
Nepsis is not merely noticing the lack of a controller.
Nepsis is:
Watchfulness
Sober attentiveness
Guarding of the heart
Discerning movements of thoughts
Allowing grace to purify the nous
Synergy (God working in us as we remain attentive)
The essay knows nothing of:
The nous
The heart
The logismoi
The synergy of grace and human freedom
The healing and illumination stages
Transformation into Christ
Repentance
Love
Communion
It is describing a phenomenology of non-agency but not the Christian transformation of the heart.
Where it overlaps with nepsis:
When it says that “resistance is more movement in the system,” this is similar to nepsis’ teaching that:
Thought arises
Emotion arises
Impulse arises
“Do not identify; do not fuse; just see the arising”
When it says “participation without a participant,” this is similar to:
The nous seeing the movement of the soul without ego-appropriation
St. Maximus: “The one who watches sees the passions move as things other than himself.”
When the author says the self-model gets defensive, that resembles:
The Philokalia on logismoi defending their territory
Evagrius’s teaching that thoughts rebel when observed
Where it departs from nepsis:
It claims self-feeling is fine but authorship is imaginary
It assumes no teleology, no orientation toward God, no transfiguration
It implies no real change, only noticing
It denies (or at least avoids) the possibility of a real person (hypostasis)
It implies attention is just turbulence, not something that can be strengthened or purified
It ignores grace, communion, sacraments, repentance, and healing of the nous
In Orthodox Christianity nepsis:
The aim is not merely clarity of the system, but union with Christ, softening of the heart, and the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.
This essay stops at “nothing is in control,” which is a psychological insight, not a spiritual transformation.
2. Does the author deal at all with how transformation and change happen?
No—not in any real sense.
The essay actually denies or avoids the notion of transformation.
To see this clearly:
The author describes:
A self-model that defends itself
Automatic reactions
Turbulence
Participation without a participant
Resistance as just more system activity
But nowhere does the author say:
how one can become more loving
how one becomes less reactive
how suffering is transformed
how the loop reorganizes
how ego-defensiveness can soften
how one becomes meek, humble, or compassionate
how a human grows at all
The essay treats the human organism as:
automatic
self-unfolding
without true authorship
without true aim
Which means:
Transformation is not truly possible in this view.
At most, the essay hints at:
“Clarity appears when resistance is seen as part of the loop.”
But this is epistemic change, not moral or existential transformation.
This is insight, not healing.
This is description of what is, not transfiguration into something new.
This is recognition, not repentance.
This is no-doer phenomenology, not conversion of the heart.
In the Orthodox Christian sense:
Nothing in the essay even gestures toward metanoia, kenosis, agape, synergy, or theosis.
There is no “becoming.”
There is no “purification.”
There is no “holy attention.”
There is no “grace.”
It is static, descriptive, and closed.
Summary in one paragraph
The essay recognizes the illusion of a central controller and the automaticity of psychological processes. That overlaps weakly with nepsis insofar as nepsis also observes inner movements without identification. But the essay has no concept of the nous, no grace, no healing, no transformation, and no synergy with God. It does not describe how change occurs, because its worldview does not allow for real transformation. It is descriptive, not prescriptive; phenomenological, not therapeutic; observational, not spiritual. It understands “awareness without a doer,” but it does not understand nepsis.
Of course, Robert doesn't resonate with the Christian way of expressing this. But as I hear him, Robert who was once a psychotherapist, he's not denying that insight and transformation happen, nor that they might not involve what we would call deliberate, intentional effort and dedication, but simply that ALL of this is happening without an author at the helm, only an apparent one.
Thank you Joan. Yes that's it exactly I'm not denying anything. Everything that's here is here. There's no denying that. I'm just saying that there's no central controller behind it that I am aware of, and of course that does put me at odds with someone who imagines the deity. But I'm not even denying that. I have no basis on which to deny it I just don't know anything about it.
Piggybacking on both your and Joan’s comments- Inferring from “no-central author” that change or transformation isn’t possible seems like a pretty easy, and convenient, trap to fall into. Seeing that change does in fact happen (in fact, is always happening), but that there is no controller of that, can be the painful reality one may wish to escape from. I.e., I am stuck with whatever I am right now, which tends not be too pretty. What transformation may occur is not knowable or controllable. That’s the tough pill to swallow, I’ve found.
Hi, Scott--
Yes. The trap is assuming that if there’s no central author, then nothing can change. But change is constant. It doesn’t need a controller to occur. In fact, most of what we call “transformation” happens without permission, without foresight, and without anyone steering it.
The harder part is exactly what you name: whatever shifts will shift on its own schedule, not on the timetable of a self trying to manage its own becoming. That’s the discomfort. The loop moves, but not because someone is directing the movement. And what moves next is never something we can know in advance.
Seeing that is the tough part. Not because it’s bleak—bleakness is its own reaction—but because it shows that mastery was never part of what was happening.
Robert
Oh, we can influence change and transformation, but we can't say exactly how that will turn out. We make a thousand changes a day.
But it won't happen from our present level of confusion about what a person is and what our potential is.
Andrew—
Changes occur, and conditions shift in ways that look like influence. What I don’t find is a separate "we" producing those shifts. The sense of doing comes after the movement, not before it.
And the idea of “potential” assumes a standing point outside the unfolding, guiding it toward a preferred outcome. I don’t see that position. There’s only the process itself and whatever changes arise within it.
Robert
Too much Christian bias for my liking
Thank you, Robert. This is so clear. Your relentless commitment to description is immensely helpful.
I have two questions that center around the following sentences from this essay: "The confusion begins when that self-feeling is taken as evidence of an inner controller. The system is already acting, already adjusting, and only afterward does a thought arrive to claim authorship. The narrator declares itself the director."
1) Is the afterthought that claims authorship the system's attempt to keep coherence stable?
2) As an "awake" human being does your self-model/system cohere differently? If most people maintain coherence via the idea of an inner-controller, how does this differ for you?
You are most welcome, Kate.
Yes. The afterthought is part of how coherence shows up. The sense of authorship isn’t produced by a controller. It’s simply one of the recurring patterns that appear as the system stabilizes itself.
And if I use the word “awake,” I mean only this: the recognition that the point of view that appears doesn’t stand outside what’s unfolding and doesn’t explain reality. That runs opposite to how the word is usually used.
What shifted is that the idea of an inner controller no longer plays a role in keeping things steady. The system still coheres, but not by imagining a director behind the scenes. It’s just the organism unfolding, without a fictional center inserted into the flow.