If I have a "spiritual practice" (blechhh), it's that every once in a while I stop, open my eyes, behold whatever is appearing, and ask one simple question: "What is seeing this?"
I ask it in earnest every time, and start from scratch, not relying on any previous answers. "Clean slate," you know.
And so far, every time, I've come up empty. So as far as I can tell, anyone or thing who could make that transition from clarity to confusion or back, to or from pure awareness, or any of that, is in the realm of storytelling. Fairytales.
Or to put it another way, it's too late for any such transition to occur, this has already appeared exactly the way it is.
I see why Robert loves the metaphor of “the loop”. Like all metaphor, it is not the thing…only a way for our subject/object mind to consider something. Your question, “what is seeing this” is a vital question…that the mind cannot answer. And yes, I see why Robert has “rage against the dying of the light” - how certain people “package” non-duality into a certainty. One line in this article rings quite true for me, and I interpret it as quite consistent with non-duality: “Nothing stands behind seeing. Seeing is already the entire event.” There is not two. I struggle with this, but your question about what is doing the seeing has a way of gently pointing…that’s all that can be done I think. Wonder and mystery.
Beautifully articulated. Thank you. A question arises. Could we say that there are loops within loops? A while back, if memory serves (which it may not), I think you described compassion as what happens in recognizing that everyone else is in the same boat we each are, namely being a recursive looping that cannot step outside of itself. As I remember, it sounded like we are all isolated fields (or loops) of experiencing. Separate minds. But I sense that it's all much more permeable and interwoven (holographic, fractal, interdependent, seamless, whole), like waves in the ocean or whirlpools in the river. No solid boundaries. No 'things' that can be pulled out of the whole. So we're not just talking about an individual human, but the whole universe (or whatever this whole 'thing' is). Without needing to make 'something' (like Consciousness, or God, or Unicity, or Presence) out of the wholeness. ???
Yes, loops within loops is how I see it. But I don’t mean isolated units sealed off from each other. The human loop isn’t a closed chamber. It’s porous to everything—language, culture, other bodies, memory, weather, hormones, tone of voice, proximity, history. The boundaries are functional, not absolute.
When I say “we’re each in the same boat,” I’m pointing to the fact that no loop has a vantage point outside itself. Each appears as a local organization of conditions. That doesn’t imply separation in any metaphysical sense. It only marks the fact that experience arises here, not from everywhere at once.
As for interdependence, I see that plainly. The body-mind is cross-wired with everything around it. Whirlpools are a good metaphor: distinct enough to be noticed, but nothing that can be extracted from the river. But I don’t take that as evidence of a larger One behind the scenes. For me, the interwoven quality is simply how appearances arrive—entangled, overlapping, influencing, dissolving.
Your wave-and-ocean language points to the permeability, which I appreciate, but I don’t extend it into an overarching whole with an identity. When I look, I see no “thing” that unites the flux. I see the flux itself. I see patterns forming and dissolving, loops triggering loops, conditions shaping conditions. No need to posit a unifying substance or presence beneath that.
So yes—permeable, interdependent, inseparable in practice.
But not as a statement about what the universe is.
Just a description of how experience shows up, without giving it an underlying name.
When I read this, and feel total agreement with what is stated here, it is hard to not make a leap and declare it “truth” :) Does it matter? Not really. This too shall pass. The only danger is in making a statue out of “Robert” and putting it on a pedestal. It is tempting though. :)))
As far as children go, I guess what I was attempting to convey is that there isn’t yet that secondary layer of thought. Everything is dealt with in the moment without attaching imaginary meaning that isn’t there.
Similar to Buddhist concept of looking with “a fresh eye”, “always remaining a student”, and so on. Just seeing things as they are.
Thank you Robert, for this continuous play, flow, engagement, compassion… you certainly take this language to the limit of where it can reach.
Agreement isn’t truth. It’s just the system aligning for a moment and reading that alignment as final. The shape changes, and the conviction falls away with it.
Children aren’t closer to anything original. The secondary layer you mention isn’t an obstruction; it’s simply the next configuration. Experience shows up however it shows up, with no pristine version beneath it and no fall from clarity.
The Buddhist phrases work only as descriptions of what sometimes occurs, not as capacities anyone possesses. No one keeps a fresh eye. No one loses one. The appearance shifts and the language follows it.
As for pedestals, there’s no figure to elevate. What reads as insight is only the current coherence of the language meeting your present configuration. That will change, as configurations do.
Such beautiful writing about the nothing that everything is. With ordinary words, you daily weave a delicate new basket to capture the unknowable. And we watch breathlessly as it floats, empty, down the stream. Many thanks.
"But the organism never yields anything like a timeless witness. It shows only configurations—stillness here, agitation there, narrative thinning, narrative thickening." - This indeed is something that the Buddhist "version" of non-duality realised 2000 years ago, where they went beyond the theistic roots of indian non-duality, of an absolute observing self, that can stand back and observe a world of suffering, recognising that could never be found, into the atheistic dependent origination of all phenomena and the middle way, where the relative appearance is already the absolute appearing.
There’s overlap for sure. Early Buddhism also refused the idea of a timeless witness standing apart from what appears. Where my view departs is in the framing. I’m not treating the flux as the “absolute” in disguise, and I’m not working within the metaphysics that dependent origination brings with it—rebirth, karma, ethical causality, the whole moral architecture.
I’m staying with what shows up here, nothing more. Configurations shifting, tightening, loosening, but no observer outside the flux. If that resonates with parts of dependent origination, it’s at the point where both see that no witnessing entity ever appears. But for me, this is not because the relative is the absolute appearing, but because nothing outside the appearance ever shows up at all.
Enjoyed the article Robert, and the give and take. As I mentioned in a reply to one of your commenters, the line “Nothing stands behind seeing. Seeing is already the entire event.” This feels quite a bit like non-duality (the unpackaged kind) in that it feels “whole”. What do I mean by that? I just don’t know, at least not in words…feels “non verbal”. I realize that may be venturing into the metaphysical, which you refrain from doing. No worries. And I will add that I always enjoy the conversations you and Joan have. My loop resonates quite a bit with her writings, likely because of her allowing a degree of spirituality, which again I realize you refrain from. She mentioned in a comment in this article that Rupert Spira does engage in metaphysics, creating a model of reality, which again…you find unwarranted and unacceptable, and yet that resonates with my loop as well. Gospel? Hardly. Yet I stay open to possibilities…including your metaphor and model of seeking coherence.
I don’t hear anything metaphysical in what you describe. When I say “seeing is already the entire event,” I’m not pointing to a hidden wholeness or a deeper layer. I’m pointing to the fact that nothing stands behind what appears. There’s no seer apart from the seeing. That can feel whole, yes, but the feeling isn’t evidence of an underlying unity. It’s simply the system in a quieter configuration.
You mention Joan, and I get why her language resonates. She speaks from experience without turning it into doctrine. Rupert takes a different step—he treats the experiential shift as confirmation of a metaphysical model. That’s the inflection point where I step off. Not because the shift is invalid, but because the interpretation adds a layer that can’t be verified.
Your openness to possibilities doesn’t conflict with anything I’m saying. I’m not closing anything down. I’m only refusing to build a picture of reality out of transient states. If a sense of “nonverbal wholeness” shows up, that’s what shows up. If a more fragmented configuration replaces it, that shows up too. Neither is truer, and neither reveals what the world is.
My metaphor of the loop is just a way of describing how experience organizes itself. It doesn’t compete with spirituality, and it doesn’t require rejecting anything you find meaningful. It only declines the move from feeling to ontology.
If something resonates, it resonates. If something else resonates, that too. No hierarchy needed. No final picture required.
As always - thank you very much for your thoughtful response! The more I read your articles, and thoughtful responses to my questions, I see less and less ‘conflict’, nor do I feel (like some here I guess) angry or that you are trying to destroy a sacred belief. Funny, I really do try to allow things to gestate and percolate, and right now I can honestly say that continues to serve me well. Much less agitation, or generating in my mind a kind of desperation. My watch words lately? Wonder and mystery. Cheers!
“Movement” is just a word I use for the fact that nothing holds still long enough to be called fixed. It doesn’t describe a thing that exists, any more than “weather” names an entity in the sky.
There is no movement as such.
There is no stillness as such.
There is only this, shifting in ways that resist a stable outline. When I use “movement,” I’m pointing to that lack of fixity—the way configurations change without a controller, an origin, or an endpoint. It’s a descriptive convenience, not a metaphysical claim.
So the answer is:
No, there is no “movement” as an underlying fact.
There is no “thing” that moves.
There are only changing configurations, and the word movement is one way of speaking about that change without reifying a mover or a something that moved.
Why do you think most of want so badly for there to be a "knower who stands apart from the movement"? Why aren't more of us content to just go with the flow?
The idea of a knower arises for the same reason any other pattern does: conditions produce it. There’s no deeper motive. A sense of a knower arises only when the configuration supports it. When the configuration shifts, that sense drops out. Neither state is chosen.
The notion that we could “go with the flow” assumes an agent who stands apart from what is happening and could decide to yield to it. But that separation never shows up. The movement is the whole event. What you call resistance and what you call yielding are both movements within it, not actions of someone who stands apart.
So the answer is simple:
The sense of a knower appears when it appears.
The absence of it appears when it doesn’t.
Neither requires a reason, and neither is done by anyone.
Robert, is there room here to elaborate on "conditions produce it" as you wrote above?
I understand that upbringing, culture, and language reinforces the separate knower or self, it also seems evolution "discovered" an observer as a strategy. But if there's room to unpack the conditions that produce it, from your experience it seems it might be helpful.
You also wrote above "the movement is the whole event". Is, then, a separate observer of the movement just a conceptual overlay that, with enough time, becomes "how it feels/appears"? What is it to slice up the whole into parts that don't really exist? As always, thank you.
When I say “conditions produce it,” I’m speaking literally. The sense of a knower isn’t a discovery or an achievement. It’s a pattern that arises when enough factors converge—neurology, memory, affect, language, social feedback, narrative habit. None of these are separate, and none of them aim at producing a self. They simply interact, and when the interaction tightens in a certain way, what shows up is a felt center.
Evolution didn’t “discover an observer.” That’s retrospective language. What evolution produced is a nervous system capable of modeling its own activity. When that modeling becomes complex enough, it generates the feeling of being a someone who is doing the modeling. But that feeling is not an entity—it’s a byproduct of the modeling process itself.
As for the “separate observer,” yes: it’s a conceptual overlay that eventually becomes a felt one. A child doesn’t begin with a seer behind seeing. That arrives slowly, through a mixture of brain growth, linguistic training, social mirroring, and the simple fact that the system begins tracking its own states. Over time, the tracking becomes personal. The loop thickens around the fiction that something inside is doing the experiencing.
But none of this means that the feeling is false. It just isn’t what it claims to be. It’s not an observer outside the movement. It’s one more part of the movement, arising and dissolving on the same terms as everything else.
“Slicing the whole into parts that don’t really exist” is exactly what language does. It’s also what nervous systems do in order to survive. The slice isn’t an error. It’s a function. The trouble comes only when the slice is mistaken for bedrock—when the organization is treated as an owner.
From here, the point is simple:
Experience organizes itself, and sometimes that organization includes a sense of someone who stands apart from it. When that sense appears, it feels real. When it drops out, it feels unnecessary. Neither version is a truth about the world. Each is just the current shape of the loop.
When I say the tracking “becomes personal,” I don’t mean there’s a moment when an impersonal process flips into a self. Nothing like that shows up.
What happens is simpler.
A nervous system models its own states—tension, relief, threat, preference, memory. At first, this modeling is just functional: orienting in the environment, learning patterns, and anticipating outcomes. But because humans learn language, the modeling gets narrated. And once narration enters, the system begins referring to its own activity as mine. Not because a self appears, but because language assigns ownership to whatever is happening.
So “personal” is not a metaphysical shift. It’s the point at which self-referential language, social mirroring, memory of prior states, emotional conditioning, and the body’s need for coherence fold tightly enough together that the activity feels centered.
In that sense, yes—it’s an inevitable by-product of a system that models itself. And yes, it’s also a conceptual overlay. But the overlay is not arbitrary. It’s driven by the same pressures that shape all behavior: survival, prediction, and the need to regulate a complex organism in a complex environment.
None of this produces a self behind experience. It produces a sense of a self inside experience—a felt center, not an actual one.
And that sense shows up only when the conditions support it. When they don’t, it thins or disappears. Nothing chooses either version.
It’s not that we want it. It’s simply that we can’t deny our lived, experiential reality. The fact is, to Robert’s adamant denial, I could consciously choose to shower myself in 5 gallons of gasoline, light myself of fire, and jump off the deck for no reason other than simply to do it (demonstrating that I do in fact have the emergent, dependently arising capacity of conscious agency).
But what do I know? That’s just the natural movement of the looping mechanism in the field of experience, with no one actually choosing or deciding to do or not do any of it.
Before we go anywhere else, look at the basic point: flinching or not flinching aren’t voluntary. The system reacts. The system fails to react. Neither requires a chooser. The rubber-hand experiment you cited shows automaticity, not intention.
The same logic applies to your gasoline example. Imagining an extreme act doesn’t demonstrate agency. It demonstrates that the mind can picture itself doing something the organism would never carry out unless overwhelming conditions forced it. The fantasy and the act, if it ever occurred, would arise for the same reason everything else arises: pressures converging into a moment. None of it establishes a decider behind the movement.
Saying “I could choose to do it” doesn’t prove choice. It’s simply another thought the system produces while trying to steady itself. If the act happened, it would happen; if it didn’t, it wouldn’t. In neither case is there an independent agent selecting among options.
To be clear, yet again, I have never posited an “independent agent.”
I understand your position, but you’re now making a universal claim that is insulated against any possible evidence.
You’re saying: If a behavior appears automatic → no agency. If a behavior involves reflection → no agency. If an imagined choice appears → no agency. If an action contradicts instinct → no agency. If a person reports choosing → no agency.
In other words, no observation could ever count as evidence of agency, because your model pre-defines all events as automatic expressions of “pressures converging.” That’s not phenomenology. It’s determinism universalized and then retrofitted to every case.
So let me ask you the one question that decides the issue:
Is there any possible observation, internal or external, simple or complex, that could count, for you, as evidence that consciousness plays a causal role in behavior? Or is your position that such evidence is impossible in principle?
Interpretation arises after the event and is taken for a chooser. Nothing in what appears includes a position outside its own movement.
The chooser doesn’t cause events or fail to cause them, because no chooser appears except as interpretation after the fact.
Any description that relies on an act being one among possible alternatives already presupposes a vantage point outside the movement. No such vantage point appears. When that framing drops out, the idea of an agent drops out with it.
The question of falsification depends on the same assumption: that a chooser could show up as something distinct within experience. Nothing in experience includes such a thing. What appears is the movement alone.
Again, I am in no way claiming the existence of a separately existing, independent chooser.
You already accept seeing without a seer, hearing without a hearer, thinking without a thinker, and acting without an actor. You accept the function without positing a separate entity behind it.
I’m applying the same structure to conscious agency: the function appears, no independent “agent” exists behind it. Yet for this one functional appearance alone (i.e., agency) you deny the function itself.
That’s an asymmetry: Why should seeing, hearing, and thinking be allowed as functional realities, while conscious intending is declared “interpretation after the fact”? Nothing in experience makes that distinction; it’s added by your framework.
I’m not positing a metaphysical chooser - only recognizing a mode of appearing, just as you already do for other modes. If you accept ‘seeing without a seer,’ there’s no principled basis to reject ‘choosing without a chooser.’
Seeing appears as seeing. Hearing appears as hearing. Thinking appears as thinking. Each shows itself immediately, with nothing added.
“Choosing” never appears in that way. What shows is an impulse, an action, and afterward the thought that this sequence was chosen. The intending is not part of the event; it arrives as an interpretation of the event.
The chooser doesn’t cause events or fail to cause them, because no chooser appears except as an interpretation after the fact. The same is true of choosing. Nothing in experience includes an act set apart from the movement. The story of choosing is the story told after the movement, not another phenomenon within it.
What a beautifully rich article and thread of comments.
"MUSING ON ROBERTS THEME OF FOLKS "SNEAKING A METAPHYSICAL BELIEF THROUGH THE BACKDOOR."
This is an impersonal observation I've had of people that think they've got it.
One of the strongest themes I've been picking up from Roberts recent work is where he talks about folks "sneaking a metaphysical belief in through the back door."
They may be tacking a metaphysical belief onto a feeling, or believing they are radical or rebels, mistakenly believe that what Robert is observing with the metaphor of Loops is equivalent to something reminiscent from the non-duality scene, but which is perhaps something they are still holding onto themselves. And so they argue with the theme.
There are people I have noticed this theme with for some years, yet couldn't articulate what it was until Robert talked about it.
And although they are steeped in wisdom, and have excellent articulation with their years of experience in and then away from the bubbles of spirituality, they cannot seem to touch this subtle and profound theme of them "sneaking a metaphysical belief through the back door."
I myself experienced this theme in my life on numerous occasions and began noticing this theme play itself out. Noticing this theme softened my identification with beliefs I was holding onto even whilst smuggling in some more subtle modification.
Even on occasion testing wether to see what was being smuggled in (even some form of novel spirituality I'd previously dabbled in) had any hold over me or I had any investment in still. An interesting experiment in itself.
With radical honesty as a main intention with myself, I know that being fooled by keeping my fingers crossed behind my back was making me more of a fool.
Perhaps some folks feel much is on the line from having set up shop with books and talks and any status that comes from that and cannot conceive that they are smuggling in a metaphysical belief.
And depending on the person holding onto a subtle belief, they may be feeling an attack when presented with Roberts theme showing them what belief, metaphysical or otherwise is being smuggled through the back door.
But why, with all that wisdom accumulated can't they see this theme with fresh eyes? Perhaps in a way they do see what this theme is presenting, but can't admit it, like a priest seeing what's happening with themselves, and caught in an imposed frame. Or thinking their indoctrinated spirituality has been dropped from their system only to re-label or reinvent it. Or to claim that the metaphor of loops is merely or exactly equivalent to something in the spirituality field scene.
What you’re calling “smuggling a metaphysical belief through the back door” is exactly the dynamic I’ve been trying to expose. It shows up whenever someone tries to preserve a hidden exemption—some imagined standpoint outside the movement, some leftover purity, some witness that supposedly floats above the flux. The content of the belief doesn’t matter. The structure does. The pressure of existence produces a moment of relief, and the mind elevates that relief into metaphysics. That’s the sleight of hand.
But I don’t see this as a moral failure or an intellectual lapse. It’s simply what a human system does under strain. When things feel groundless, the system generates a ground. When things feel uncertain, it imagines a vantage point. When a shift happens—a thinning of narrative, a sense of ease—it’s immediately promoted from a passing configuration to a supposed insight into the nature of reality. That promotion is the smuggling.
And as you say, it can happen even after someone thinks they’ve dropped all their spiritual baggage. The old structure reappears under a new label. A new vocabulary masks an old reflex. The person believes they’re radical or beyond doctrine, but the form is unchanged: there is still a hidden “something” that supposedly stands apart from conditions.
None of this requires judgment. It’s just the loop trying to stabilize itself. When the pressure changes, the pattern can loosen, and what had looked like conviction reveals itself as a temporary arrangement.
Your experiment—checking whether a lingering belief still has a hold—is the honest version of this. Not trying to achieve purity. Just watching the system reconstitute, then destabilize, then reconstitute again. No shame in being fooled; the loop is always producing images of ground. Seeing that mechanism is enough. The rest happens on its own.
No one stands outside the pattern. No one masterminds the smuggling. It’s movement, not intention.
And when the movement shifts, the belief dissolves—not because anyone defeated it, but because the pressure changed.
Yes, what you have said here is clear to me. Thankyou. And yes, I agree that there is no shame in being fooled (or pride) from any understanding arising. It's what has/is occuring.
A question I have just asked of Chatgpt has given up some excellent observations regarding this article you have written here and I feel may add much to the thread of comments. Unfortunately the reply was too lengthy for my phone to copy and paste here.
I will try and do it from a library computer at some point as my phone is my computer, but for now the question was as follows ...
"Please read the following article entitled NOTHING HIDDEN by Robert Saltzman I have copied here in full, and explain how guru's like Mooji don't get what Robert is saying here, or if they did, how they can still remain in such a psychologically static position."
Robert, as I was reading, I found myself thinking about where “love” fits into all this. I wonder if there is love when the loop is stabilizing into coherence, or is it something different altogether?
The word “love” in English stretches across too many territories at once. Other languages are more honest about this. Ancient Greek had several terms, each marking a different configuration. Modern Spanish—my second language—separates te amo from te quiero. Love of country isn’t the same as love for a partner, which isn’t the same as love for a child, and none of those is identical to the warmth you might feel for a friend or for a moment of beauty.
So when we ask where “love” fits, the first step is to recognize that we’re using one word to cover many states.
From my perspective, each of those states is a particular organization of the system—shifts in tension, attention, affect, memory, and meaning. When contraction eases and defensiveness softens, something we call love can appear. When the pressures tighten, something else appears. There’s no essence behind the variations, only differing conditions shaping what is felt.
This doesn’t diminish love. It locates it.
Love isn’t evidence of coherence, and it isn’t a metaphysical glue. It’s a configuration—one that often feels better than fear or resentment, but still part of the same movement. When the conditions line up, love arises. When they don’t, it doesn’t. Nothing inside this needs an owner, and nothing inside it points to a deeper truth behind experience.
You said “When contraction eases and defensiveness softens, something we call love can appear.” This is what I was pointing to with that word. So in that sense, I would question whether it’s part of the same movement, if that makes sense.
Experientially, in my experience, there can be a still point or a holistic perspective, as a function of the looping, yes? On the home page of my website, among other things, I say this: "There is a stillness, a spaciousness, an openness at the heart of our being that beholds everything from wholeness and unconditional love. In this open aware presence, there is both infinite potential and compassion for everything being just as it is. There is no separation, no division, no inside, no outside, no other." I'm describing a palpable (non-permanent) experience, not a metaphysical position, which is the difference I feel between Toni Packer and Rupert Spira—Toni stays with experiencing, while Rupert turns it into metaphysics. But what I write there also expresses a sense (based on experience) of how reality is: "no division, no inside, no outside, etc." And that love or open awareness does FEEL deeper and truer than, e.g., the kind of defensive anger that arises from feeling separate, small, limited and threatened. Any comment, Robert?
We’ve touched before on this sense that openness or love can feel deeper or more fundamental than the contracted states that come with fear or defensiveness. I recognize the feeling. But for me, the feeling of depth doesn’t give an experience a different status. It only tells me how that moment feels from within it. Experience appears in many shapes, and I don’t see any of them as more true or less true. They’re simply what shows itself.
The stillness you describe—the spaciousness, the lack of division—does arise. I’ve known it as well. I just don’t take it as a window onto something behind experience. For me, it’s a configuration, not a revelation. When the system quiets, the whole field can seem open and unbounded. When it tightens, division appears. Both are movements. Neither reports on an underlying reality outside the movement.
And yes, the open states often feel kinder, more coherent, more whole. But that felt sense doesn’t turn them into a deeper truth. It only reflects the tone of the moment. The anger, the contraction, the ache of being threatened are just as much the field as the clarity that sometimes replaces them.
That’s where my emphasis lies. Not in denying the beauty or value of the quiet states, but in not granting them metaphysical privilege. What appears is what appears, and no part of it stands behind the rest as the one that tells us what reality is.
When I said it feels deeper and truer, I didn't mean it is something "behind" experience, nor that it is some permanent substratum or ground or "underlying reality." What I mean is simply that the defensive anger or the guilt or blame and hate, all of that comes from delusion. It comes from the thought-sense-belief in separation, self, free will, all of that. Whereas open awareness is free of all that. All of that is gone (not forever after, in my experience, but often). Delusion is absent. There is no center to experiencing, no inside or outside, no me. Thus, it feels truer. More accurate. "Deeper" is probably not the best word for it. What I wrote on my website was poetic in nature, not scientific. And I didn't mean that anger, guilt, hate and so on are not real experiences—they obviously are.
The example I often use is that if we think of Buddha and Hitler as two different waves in the ocean, they are both equally movements of the ocean, both equally water, not really separate from one another. The difference is that Buddha realizes all that, while Hitler is lost in the delusion of separation, self and others, superiority, etc. And as a result, their internal experiences and their outward behavior will be different. But it's all the ocean, or in your terminology, the looping.
As I see it, it's a leap to go from that experience of open awareness to the conclusion or belief that open awareness is therefore the ever-present ground of being. I can feel into that maybe being true, and I've undoubtedly written sometimes that it is true, but I've never been comfortable with describing it as unchanging. I've sometimes said that it is ever-present or immovable (always here-now), but I've continued to question if that is really true. What feels truest to me is a sense of ungraspable groundlessness.
I understand what you mean by “deeper and truer,” and I don’t hear you pointing to an underlying substance. You’re describing a configuration in which the usual contractions—defensive anger, blame, guilt, the whole repertoire—are simply not present. When those fall away, what remains does feel more accurate. The tension isn’t there to distort the moment. I don’t dispute that. I’ve lived it.
Where I hesitate is only in calling the contracted states “delusion” in a way that suggests they’re mistakes. They arise from the same conditions as everything else: biology, history, temperament, and pressure. They’re not errors to be corrected; they’re movements of the same system under different strain. When the strain changes, the configuration changes. Nothing is wrong in either case.
Your wave analogy works well enough, so long as we don’t smuggle in a metaphysical ocean behind the waves. I see Buddha and Hitler as different configurations—one with less contraction, one with massive contraction—but both entirely made of conditions. The difference in behavior and in inner life is real, but the “ocean” is just a way of speaking, not a thing underneath.
You’ve said you sometimes use language like “ever-present” or “immovable” to describe open awareness, but that you immediately question whether those words hold up. That ongoing questioning is why your writing never hardens into doctrine. You describe what occurs without turning it into a philosophy of what is.
For me, awareness isn’t a container, a capacity, or a ground in which experience unfolds. Awareness and experience are the same event—two words for one happening. Nothing underneath. Nothing behind. Nothing that needs to be uncovered or protected.
Open awareness isn’t a revelation of a deeper truth. It’s simply the moment when the turbulence drops out. When the turbulence returns, that’s what appears. Neither state says anything final about reality.
And that, I think, is where our two styles meet: the refusal to turn a shift in the weather into metaphysics, and the willingness to describe what is happening without needing it to be more than that.
I think you'd agree that our human impulse and ability (at times anyway) to expose and see through what I'm calling delusion is an activity of the loop, and maybe where we differ is that I do put a certain value on this human capacity to "wake up" from delusion and to live (at least sometimes) in a more wholesome way, and I do see many activities that can help to bring that kind of transformation about, from meditation and psychotherapy to social justice work, not through free will, but as movements of the whole (or the loop). I can have compassion for Hitler, and I can recognize that the light and the dark go together (as in the old Chinese farmer story), but I still consider Buddha "awake" and Hitler "extremely deluded," and from our human perspective, it matters greatly which one is emergent at any given time. So, from my viewpoint, I'd say delusion is a kind of mistake, a flaw in the system that can potentially be undone.
Yes, I agree that the capacity to see through a contraction—what you’re calling delusion—is itself a movement of the loop. Nothing stands outside the system doing the seeing. When a clearer configuration appears, it appears. When it doesn’t, it doesn’t. And I agree that from the human point of view, one configuration is obviously less destructive than another. No argument there.
Where our views diverge is in the use of “mistake” and “flaw.”
Those words imply a standard that the system has failed to meet. When I look, I don’t see a standard. I see conditions. I see pressures converging in different ways. When the pressures tighten, what emerges is what you’re calling delusion. When they loosen, what emerges is what you’re calling awakening. But both are lawful expressions of the same process, not deviations from an intended path.
Hitler wasn’t a flaw in the system. He was the system under a certain set of pressures—psychological, historical, cultural, biological—none of which he authored. The consequences were catastrophic, but the configuration didn’t violate anything. It followed from what fed it. Likewise, the Buddha wasn’t the fulfillment of a purpose. He was a different convergence of conditions, one that allowed for less contraction and less harm.
You can call one “awake” and the other “deluded” from the human standpoint, and that has real moral weight. I’m not flattening that distinction. But I don’t see delusion as a correctable error in the architecture. I see it as what arises when certain pressures dominate. If those pressures shift, the configuration changes. If they don’t, it doesn’t. Nothing has gone wrong. Nothing needs to be undone. There is no original state that has been obscured.
That’s the core difference:
You see delusion as a distortion that can be unwound.
I see it as a shape the system takes when it can’t take another one.
Where we meet is in compassion—not as a virtue, but as the understanding that every pattern has its causes, and no one stands outside their own conditions generating alternatives.µ
Maybe we're saying the same thing in different words, I'm not sure. I agree that both Buddha and Hitler are each the result of psychological, historical, cultural, biological conditions, none of which they individually authored. And in using the words "delusion" or "mistake," I'm not suggesting some abstract "standard" that "the system has failed to meet." At least, I don't think I am.
But it does seem to me that evolution is a kind of experimental (trial and error) process of nature in which some of the experiments fail and some succeed, and some of the things that get created by evolution are less than optimal (e.g. check out Jon Stewart's recent humorous riff on the design of the scrotum as an example of why he doesn't believe in God).
It seems to me that the complexity of the human brain allows for both astonishing possibilities (everything from modern medicine and artistic creations to space travel) and also horrific suffering of a kind no other animal has enough brains to create for itself.
And it seems to me that some humans are engaged in a process (driven not by individual free will but by infinite causes and conditions) of learning how to better work with this level of complexity. Various forms of psychotherapy, psychiatric medications, meditation, spiritual work of various kinds (such as Buddhism), and different ways of organizing society are all examples of this evolutionary process. (Eckhart Tolle describes it quite clearly, I think).
I suppose this seems very real to me because of my own life experiences. I nearly died from alcohol addiction. My sobering up was facilitated by an excellent therapist, without whom I doubt that it would have succeeded. (Both the drinking and the sobering up were the result of infinite causes and conditions, but that doesn't negate the value of the therapy). And as a gender nonconforming woman, a lesbian, and a person with a disability, my life was made infinitely easier by the women's movement, the LGBT movement and the disability rights movement all happening as I was coming into adulthood (all of them again the result of infinite causes and conditions). So I have a personal experience with the power of transformative activities, and that doesn't mean I see them as arising from source outside the system of causes and conditions. (I'm not absolutely convinced that there isn't anything outside the conditioned looping, but I don't assume there is).
In one sense, I don't regard my near fatal life as a drunk as a mistake. It feels like it was an essential part of my life journey that informed me in many ways. The same is true with the cancer I had 8 years ago or the prenatal amputation of my right hand. They've all been essential parts of my life. But at the same time, I do see cancer and amniotic band amputations in utero as mistakes in the system. Something goes wrong. And I see alcohol and drug addiction as a very destructive way of dealing with certain painful circumstances, something that is rooted in many delusional ideas that therapy or meditation can help bring to light and see beyond. Again, all of this is the result of infinite causes and conditions, or pressures on the system, as you put it, not individual free will or the intervention of some outside force, so maybe we are saying the same thing in different words.
But I feel that part of why both of us are moved to write has to do with an urge (created by infinite causes and conditions, not by us personally) to undo ideas and beliefs that we see as causing suffering and to offer alternative ways of seeing or being with life. No?
I really enjoyed this back and forth. Thank you Robert and Joan! I had already been thinking about early attachment and how important it is for healthy functioning. Being an early childhood classroom teacher I see firsthand the consequences early trauma has on children. I’ve had students with behavior that’s really challenging and I see how it’s completely beyond their control. In fact, the behavior serves a purpose. It’s hard not to see the early trauma/lack of attachment as not being a failure . At the same time though, I understand what you’re saying. If you saw my classroom you would spot the trauma in less than 5 min..
Thank you, Jessica. Yours is an important but often undervalued job.
Yes, I would spot attachment disorder within minutes, and an intervention--something as simple as a touch, a smile, or a kind word--can mean more at that age than hours of therapy much later down the line.
Some children are lucky, and some aren't. No failure, just circumstances that no one creates.
Thanks, Jessica. And thank you for doing one of the most important (and underpaid) jobs in this world. In case of interest, this is "My Story of Trauma, Rage and Healing": https://www.joantollifson.com/writing56.html
Someone mentioned something to the effect of"why do we desperately want to see a self, a controller?"
Because we realize as we are right now we're getting massive "error signals" that we're actually off course.
I know we all are sick of what passes as Christianity. But in the Eastern Orthodox Christian church there is a method for realizing our actual potential.
Nepsis (watchfulness) is the gateway to transformation, but not the whole path.
Nepsis reveals what needs to change; grace, humility, repentance, and cooperation with the sacraments do the changing.
Below is the full, deep explanation.
Is Nepsis Alone Enough for Transformation?
1. What Nepsis Actually Does
Nepsis opens the eyes of the heart.
It lets you see what is happening inside you—your impulses, fears, reactions, desires, ego-moves, scripts, diversions, fantasies, irritations.
Nepsis reveals:
“Oh… I’m trying to control this person right now.”
“I’m becoming defensive.”
“I’m drifting into resentment.”
“I’m planning how to look good.”
“I’m escaping again.”
“I’m inflating my ego.”
“I’m tightening inside.”
This clarity alone is already grace.
But by itself, awareness doesn’t automatically heal the underlying wounds.
It’s like turning on the light in a sickroom:
you can now see the illness, but you still need medicine.
2. Why Nepsis Alone Doesn’t Transform the Heart
If awareness by itself was enough, monks wouldn’t need:
the sacraments
confession
obedience
spiritual fathers
ascetical disciplines
fasting and prayer
community
Scripture
repentance
humility
Christ Himself
We would just sit in a cave, watch our thoughts, and become saints.
But the Fathers are unanimous on this:
watchfulness shows the passions—it does not cure them.
Nepsis exposes the disordered “control systems,” to use PCT language.
But exposure ≠ reorganization.
Reorganization happens when:
awareness
surrender
humility
truth-telling
grace
and obedience
all meet.
3. What Actually Transforms a Person?
In Orthodox terms:
Transformation happens when nepsis meets:
Grace (God acting)
Synergy (your cooperation)
Repentance (turning of the heart)
Sacraments (where God acts directly)
Confession (where the heart opens the deepest)
Humility (which lets grace flow)
Prayer (which reshapes desire)
Nepsis is the awareness of the process.
Grace is the power of the process.
Repentance is the movement of the process.
Nepsis without these becomes sterile self-observation.
4. What Happens When Someone Tries to Use Nepsis Alone?
If someone practices awareness without Christ, without confession, without humility, without repentance, they usually fall into:
self-monitoring
self-tightness
scrupulosity
a subtle ego project (“I’m becoming more aware”)
self-judgment
detached numbness
pride
Or worse:
prelest—the illusion that "I am spiritually advanced."
Awareness by itself can expose your passions so sharply that you feel worse, not better—which is why some people stop practicing nepsis.
5. What Nepsis Makes Possible
This is the key insight:
Nepsis creates the inner space where Grace can act without resistance.
You notice:
the tightening
the defensive reaction
the desire to hide
the shame impulse
the ego-effort
the judging
the narrative
And in that exact moment, if you turn slightly toward Christ—
even a tiny interior move—
grace does the real work.
The Fathers say:
> “Awareness opens the door; repentance lets Christ enter.”
6. In PCT Terms (to keep the bridge clear)
Nepsis does this:
It brings lower-level control systems into awareness.
It reveals conflicts, distortions, and hidden references.
It creates the conditions for reorganization (grace).
But awareness alone does not force reorganization.
The reorganization process is driven by:
painful contradictions
truthfulness
humility
surrender
exposure
request for help
grace
Awareness is the spotlight, not the surgeon.
7. So Is Nepsis Enough?
Nepsis is necessary.
Nepsis is not sufficient.
Nepsis is the foundation of the spiritual life, the bedrock.
Without it, nothing else happens.
But by itself, it is like eyesight without movement—you can see the path but never walk it.
Real transformation happens when nepsis is united with:
repentance
humility
Christ’s presence
confession
obedience
prayer
community
These are the “medicine."
Nepsis is the “diagnosis.”
Grace is the “healing.”
8. The Beautiful Secret
When a person practices simple, honest watchfulness—not forcing anything, not performing—it naturally leads them somewhere:
Andrew—This page is not a venue for preaching. If you have a comment or question about my work here and can state it in your own words, I will reply. Otherwise, I do not welcome this kind of extended quotation, nor the pious sermonizing you want to inflict upon us.
Pointing out what appears and what doesn’t isn’t preaching. It’s description. No doctrine, no authority, no promises, no path. You’re offering a system of belief and its required practices. I’m describing experience as it shows up, with nothing added.
If you want to discuss that, I’m here. If you want to promote a religious program, this isn’t the place.
She deleted her comment, but I believe she was talking to Andrew and pointing out it is Robert's Substack and platform, not Andrew's. And as a Substack writer, I agree with her. Sometimes people are not just engaging in a good faith discussion, dialog and questioning; they're hijacking the platform to put forward their own message. And that seems to be what Andrew is repeatedly doing. He's pushing Orthodox Christianity as THE solution to human suffering, and it seems to me he should do that on his own Substack, not Robert's.
I do have a question Robert. If nothing is hidden, is description necessary? While I see you might say: it is what it is, but isn't the "there is nothing hidden yet I will describe it anyway" also a 'loop' as you might call it?
For me, the moment I describe anything, I am obscuring what is and I simultaneously see the obscurity itself as what is. What I am pointing to is a loop of description, rather than allowing to be. For me, a single moment of nothing hidden is so infinitesimal, it defies all description.
If I have a "spiritual practice" (blechhh), it's that every once in a while I stop, open my eyes, behold whatever is appearing, and ask one simple question: "What is seeing this?"
I ask it in earnest every time, and start from scratch, not relying on any previous answers. "Clean slate," you know.
And so far, every time, I've come up empty. So as far as I can tell, anyone or thing who could make that transition from clarity to confusion or back, to or from pure awareness, or any of that, is in the realm of storytelling. Fairytales.
Or to put it another way, it's too late for any such transition to occur, this has already appeared exactly the way it is.
I see why Robert loves the metaphor of “the loop”. Like all metaphor, it is not the thing…only a way for our subject/object mind to consider something. Your question, “what is seeing this” is a vital question…that the mind cannot answer. And yes, I see why Robert has “rage against the dying of the light” - how certain people “package” non-duality into a certainty. One line in this article rings quite true for me, and I interpret it as quite consistent with non-duality: “Nothing stands behind seeing. Seeing is already the entire event.” There is not two. I struggle with this, but your question about what is doing the seeing has a way of gently pointing…that’s all that can be done I think. Wonder and mystery.
Frustrating, stunning, freeing. Great to read your posts, Robert. Thank you much.
Thank you, Albert.
Beautifully articulated. Thank you. A question arises. Could we say that there are loops within loops? A while back, if memory serves (which it may not), I think you described compassion as what happens in recognizing that everyone else is in the same boat we each are, namely being a recursive looping that cannot step outside of itself. As I remember, it sounded like we are all isolated fields (or loops) of experiencing. Separate minds. But I sense that it's all much more permeable and interwoven (holographic, fractal, interdependent, seamless, whole), like waves in the ocean or whirlpools in the river. No solid boundaries. No 'things' that can be pulled out of the whole. So we're not just talking about an individual human, but the whole universe (or whatever this whole 'thing' is). Without needing to make 'something' (like Consciousness, or God, or Unicity, or Presence) out of the wholeness. ???
Hi, Joan--
Yes, loops within loops is how I see it. But I don’t mean isolated units sealed off from each other. The human loop isn’t a closed chamber. It’s porous to everything—language, culture, other bodies, memory, weather, hormones, tone of voice, proximity, history. The boundaries are functional, not absolute.
When I say “we’re each in the same boat,” I’m pointing to the fact that no loop has a vantage point outside itself. Each appears as a local organization of conditions. That doesn’t imply separation in any metaphysical sense. It only marks the fact that experience arises here, not from everywhere at once.
As for interdependence, I see that plainly. The body-mind is cross-wired with everything around it. Whirlpools are a good metaphor: distinct enough to be noticed, but nothing that can be extracted from the river. But I don’t take that as evidence of a larger One behind the scenes. For me, the interwoven quality is simply how appearances arrive—entangled, overlapping, influencing, dissolving.
Your wave-and-ocean language points to the permeability, which I appreciate, but I don’t extend it into an overarching whole with an identity. When I look, I see no “thing” that unites the flux. I see the flux itself. I see patterns forming and dissolving, loops triggering loops, conditions shaping conditions. No need to posit a unifying substance or presence beneath that.
So yes—permeable, interdependent, inseparable in practice.
But not as a statement about what the universe is.
Just a description of how experience shows up, without giving it an underlying name.
Love,
Robert
When I read this, and feel total agreement with what is stated here, it is hard to not make a leap and declare it “truth” :) Does it matter? Not really. This too shall pass. The only danger is in making a statue out of “Robert” and putting it on a pedestal. It is tempting though. :)))
As far as children go, I guess what I was attempting to convey is that there isn’t yet that secondary layer of thought. Everything is dealt with in the moment without attaching imaginary meaning that isn’t there.
Similar to Buddhist concept of looking with “a fresh eye”, “always remaining a student”, and so on. Just seeing things as they are.
Thank you Robert, for this continuous play, flow, engagement, compassion… you certainly take this language to the limit of where it can reach.
Love,
Vladimir
Vladimir,
Agreement isn’t truth. It’s just the system aligning for a moment and reading that alignment as final. The shape changes, and the conviction falls away with it.
Children aren’t closer to anything original. The secondary layer you mention isn’t an obstruction; it’s simply the next configuration. Experience shows up however it shows up, with no pristine version beneath it and no fall from clarity.
The Buddhist phrases work only as descriptions of what sometimes occurs, not as capacities anyone possesses. No one keeps a fresh eye. No one loses one. The appearance shifts and the language follows it.
As for pedestals, there’s no figure to elevate. What reads as insight is only the current coherence of the language meeting your present configuration. That will change, as configurations do.
Love,
Robert
Such beautiful writing about the nothing that everything is. With ordinary words, you daily weave a delicate new basket to capture the unknowable. And we watch breathlessly as it floats, empty, down the stream. Many thanks.
Thank you, Carol. What lovely words. Cheers.
"But the organism never yields anything like a timeless witness. It shows only configurations—stillness here, agitation there, narrative thinning, narrative thickening." - This indeed is something that the Buddhist "version" of non-duality realised 2000 years ago, where they went beyond the theistic roots of indian non-duality, of an absolute observing self, that can stand back and observe a world of suffering, recognising that could never be found, into the atheistic dependent origination of all phenomena and the middle way, where the relative appearance is already the absolute appearing.
Thanks, Freyja—
There’s overlap for sure. Early Buddhism also refused the idea of a timeless witness standing apart from what appears. Where my view departs is in the framing. I’m not treating the flux as the “absolute” in disguise, and I’m not working within the metaphysics that dependent origination brings with it—rebirth, karma, ethical causality, the whole moral architecture.
I’m staying with what shows up here, nothing more. Configurations shifting, tightening, loosening, but no observer outside the flux. If that resonates with parts of dependent origination, it’s at the point where both see that no witnessing entity ever appears. But for me, this is not because the relative is the absolute appearing, but because nothing outside the appearance ever shows up at all.
Indeed.
Inspirado, lúcido, genial.....esto sí que es un bucle bien engasado😉
Enjoyed the article Robert, and the give and take. As I mentioned in a reply to one of your commenters, the line “Nothing stands behind seeing. Seeing is already the entire event.” This feels quite a bit like non-duality (the unpackaged kind) in that it feels “whole”. What do I mean by that? I just don’t know, at least not in words…feels “non verbal”. I realize that may be venturing into the metaphysical, which you refrain from doing. No worries. And I will add that I always enjoy the conversations you and Joan have. My loop resonates quite a bit with her writings, likely because of her allowing a degree of spirituality, which again I realize you refrain from. She mentioned in a comment in this article that Rupert Spira does engage in metaphysics, creating a model of reality, which again…you find unwarranted and unacceptable, and yet that resonates with my loop as well. Gospel? Hardly. Yet I stay open to possibilities…including your metaphor and model of seeking coherence.
Hi, Dean--
I don’t hear anything metaphysical in what you describe. When I say “seeing is already the entire event,” I’m not pointing to a hidden wholeness or a deeper layer. I’m pointing to the fact that nothing stands behind what appears. There’s no seer apart from the seeing. That can feel whole, yes, but the feeling isn’t evidence of an underlying unity. It’s simply the system in a quieter configuration.
You mention Joan, and I get why her language resonates. She speaks from experience without turning it into doctrine. Rupert takes a different step—he treats the experiential shift as confirmation of a metaphysical model. That’s the inflection point where I step off. Not because the shift is invalid, but because the interpretation adds a layer that can’t be verified.
Your openness to possibilities doesn’t conflict with anything I’m saying. I’m not closing anything down. I’m only refusing to build a picture of reality out of transient states. If a sense of “nonverbal wholeness” shows up, that’s what shows up. If a more fragmented configuration replaces it, that shows up too. Neither is truer, and neither reveals what the world is.
My metaphor of the loop is just a way of describing how experience organizes itself. It doesn’t compete with spirituality, and it doesn’t require rejecting anything you find meaningful. It only declines the move from feeling to ontology.
If something resonates, it resonates. If something else resonates, that too. No hierarchy needed. No final picture required.
As always - thank you very much for your thoughtful response! The more I read your articles, and thoughtful responses to my questions, I see less and less ‘conflict’, nor do I feel (like some here I guess) angry or that you are trying to destroy a sacred belief. Funny, I really do try to allow things to gestate and percolate, and right now I can honestly say that continues to serve me well. Much less agitation, or generating in my mind a kind of desperation. My watch words lately? Wonder and mystery. Cheers!
But is there really 'movement'?
Dyanne,
“Movement” is just a word I use for the fact that nothing holds still long enough to be called fixed. It doesn’t describe a thing that exists, any more than “weather” names an entity in the sky.
There is no movement as such.
There is no stillness as such.
There is only this, shifting in ways that resist a stable outline. When I use “movement,” I’m pointing to that lack of fixity—the way configurations change without a controller, an origin, or an endpoint. It’s a descriptive convenience, not a metaphysical claim.
So the answer is:
No, there is no “movement” as an underlying fact.
There is no “thing” that moves.
There are only changing configurations, and the word movement is one way of speaking about that change without reifying a mover or a something that moved.
If a better word presents itself, I’ll use that.
Why do you think most of want so badly for there to be a "knower who stands apart from the movement"? Why aren't more of us content to just go with the flow?
Tim,
The idea of a knower arises for the same reason any other pattern does: conditions produce it. There’s no deeper motive. A sense of a knower arises only when the configuration supports it. When the configuration shifts, that sense drops out. Neither state is chosen.
The notion that we could “go with the flow” assumes an agent who stands apart from what is happening and could decide to yield to it. But that separation never shows up. The movement is the whole event. What you call resistance and what you call yielding are both movements within it, not actions of someone who stands apart.
So the answer is simple:
The sense of a knower appears when it appears.
The absence of it appears when it doesn’t.
Neither requires a reason, and neither is done by anyone.
Robert, is there room here to elaborate on "conditions produce it" as you wrote above?
I understand that upbringing, culture, and language reinforces the separate knower or self, it also seems evolution "discovered" an observer as a strategy. But if there's room to unpack the conditions that produce it, from your experience it seems it might be helpful.
You also wrote above "the movement is the whole event". Is, then, a separate observer of the movement just a conceptual overlay that, with enough time, becomes "how it feels/appears"? What is it to slice up the whole into parts that don't really exist? As always, thank you.
Kate--
When I say “conditions produce it,” I’m speaking literally. The sense of a knower isn’t a discovery or an achievement. It’s a pattern that arises when enough factors converge—neurology, memory, affect, language, social feedback, narrative habit. None of these are separate, and none of them aim at producing a self. They simply interact, and when the interaction tightens in a certain way, what shows up is a felt center.
Evolution didn’t “discover an observer.” That’s retrospective language. What evolution produced is a nervous system capable of modeling its own activity. When that modeling becomes complex enough, it generates the feeling of being a someone who is doing the modeling. But that feeling is not an entity—it’s a byproduct of the modeling process itself.
As for the “separate observer,” yes: it’s a conceptual overlay that eventually becomes a felt one. A child doesn’t begin with a seer behind seeing. That arrives slowly, through a mixture of brain growth, linguistic training, social mirroring, and the simple fact that the system begins tracking its own states. Over time, the tracking becomes personal. The loop thickens around the fiction that something inside is doing the experiencing.
But none of this means that the feeling is false. It just isn’t what it claims to be. It’s not an observer outside the movement. It’s one more part of the movement, arising and dissolving on the same terms as everything else.
“Slicing the whole into parts that don’t really exist” is exactly what language does. It’s also what nervous systems do in order to survive. The slice isn’t an error. It’s a function. The trouble comes only when the slice is mistaken for bedrock—when the organization is treated as an owner.
From here, the point is simple:
Experience organizes itself, and sometimes that organization includes a sense of someone who stands apart from it. When that sense appears, it feels real. When it drops out, it feels unnecessary. Neither version is a truth about the world. Each is just the current shape of the loop.
You write "Over time, the tracking becomes personal." How? Conceptual overlay? The inevitable by-product of of a process that models itself?
When I say the tracking “becomes personal,” I don’t mean there’s a moment when an impersonal process flips into a self. Nothing like that shows up.
What happens is simpler.
A nervous system models its own states—tension, relief, threat, preference, memory. At first, this modeling is just functional: orienting in the environment, learning patterns, and anticipating outcomes. But because humans learn language, the modeling gets narrated. And once narration enters, the system begins referring to its own activity as mine. Not because a self appears, but because language assigns ownership to whatever is happening.
So “personal” is not a metaphysical shift. It’s the point at which self-referential language, social mirroring, memory of prior states, emotional conditioning, and the body’s need for coherence fold tightly enough together that the activity feels centered.
In that sense, yes—it’s an inevitable by-product of a system that models itself. And yes, it’s also a conceptual overlay. But the overlay is not arbitrary. It’s driven by the same pressures that shape all behavior: survival, prediction, and the need to regulate a complex organism in a complex environment.
None of this produces a self behind experience. It produces a sense of a self inside experience—a felt center, not an actual one.
And that sense shows up only when the conditions support it. When they don’t, it thins or disappears. Nothing chooses either version.
It’s not that we want it. It’s simply that we can’t deny our lived, experiential reality. The fact is, to Robert’s adamant denial, I could consciously choose to shower myself in 5 gallons of gasoline, light myself of fire, and jump off the deck for no reason other than simply to do it (demonstrating that I do in fact have the emergent, dependently arising capacity of conscious agency).
But what do I know? That’s just the natural movement of the looping mechanism in the field of experience, with no one actually choosing or deciding to do or not do any of it.
Aaron,
Before we go anywhere else, look at the basic point: flinching or not flinching aren’t voluntary. The system reacts. The system fails to react. Neither requires a chooser. The rubber-hand experiment you cited shows automaticity, not intention.
The same logic applies to your gasoline example. Imagining an extreme act doesn’t demonstrate agency. It demonstrates that the mind can picture itself doing something the organism would never carry out unless overwhelming conditions forced it. The fantasy and the act, if it ever occurred, would arise for the same reason everything else arises: pressures converging into a moment. None of it establishes a decider behind the movement.
Saying “I could choose to do it” doesn’t prove choice. It’s simply another thought the system produces while trying to steady itself. If the act happened, it would happen; if it didn’t, it wouldn’t. In neither case is there an independent agent selecting among options.
The thought of agency is one configuration.
The denial of agency is another.
Neither one chooses itself.
To be clear, yet again, I have never posited an “independent agent.”
I understand your position, but you’re now making a universal claim that is insulated against any possible evidence.
You’re saying: If a behavior appears automatic → no agency. If a behavior involves reflection → no agency. If an imagined choice appears → no agency. If an action contradicts instinct → no agency. If a person reports choosing → no agency.
In other words, no observation could ever count as evidence of agency, because your model pre-defines all events as automatic expressions of “pressures converging.” That’s not phenomenology. It’s determinism universalized and then retrofitted to every case.
So let me ask you the one question that decides the issue:
Is there any possible observation, internal or external, simple or complex, that could count, for you, as evidence that consciousness plays a causal role in behavior? Or is your position that such evidence is impossible in principle?
Aaron--
Interpretation arises after the event and is taken for a chooser. Nothing in what appears includes a position outside its own movement.
The chooser doesn’t cause events or fail to cause them, because no chooser appears except as interpretation after the fact.
Any description that relies on an act being one among possible alternatives already presupposes a vantage point outside the movement. No such vantage point appears. When that framing drops out, the idea of an agent drops out with it.
The question of falsification depends on the same assumption: that a chooser could show up as something distinct within experience. Nothing in experience includes such a thing. What appears is the movement alone.
Again, I am in no way claiming the existence of a separately existing, independent chooser.
You already accept seeing without a seer, hearing without a hearer, thinking without a thinker, and acting without an actor. You accept the function without positing a separate entity behind it.
I’m applying the same structure to conscious agency: the function appears, no independent “agent” exists behind it. Yet for this one functional appearance alone (i.e., agency) you deny the function itself.
That’s an asymmetry: Why should seeing, hearing, and thinking be allowed as functional realities, while conscious intending is declared “interpretation after the fact”? Nothing in experience makes that distinction; it’s added by your framework.
I’m not positing a metaphysical chooser - only recognizing a mode of appearing, just as you already do for other modes. If you accept ‘seeing without a seer,’ there’s no principled basis to reject ‘choosing without a chooser.’
Seeing appears as seeing. Hearing appears as hearing. Thinking appears as thinking. Each shows itself immediately, with nothing added.
“Choosing” never appears in that way. What shows is an impulse, an action, and afterward the thought that this sequence was chosen. The intending is not part of the event; it arrives as an interpretation of the event.
The chooser doesn’t cause events or fail to cause them, because no chooser appears except as an interpretation after the fact. The same is true of choosing. Nothing in experience includes an act set apart from the movement. The story of choosing is the story told after the movement, not another phenomenon within it.
Robert isn't giving the full picture and that's why he's getting so much pushback.
His take is very, very accurate, to a point. He just stops prematurely.
The fact that almost all of us sense intuitively that there’s something that can be done to reorganize our conditioning and programming.
But it takes actually having a method to reorganize. Robert in all his wisdom, and beautiful articulation can't see the possibility.
What a beautifully rich article and thread of comments.
"MUSING ON ROBERTS THEME OF FOLKS "SNEAKING A METAPHYSICAL BELIEF THROUGH THE BACKDOOR."
This is an impersonal observation I've had of people that think they've got it.
One of the strongest themes I've been picking up from Roberts recent work is where he talks about folks "sneaking a metaphysical belief in through the back door."
They may be tacking a metaphysical belief onto a feeling, or believing they are radical or rebels, mistakenly believe that what Robert is observing with the metaphor of Loops is equivalent to something reminiscent from the non-duality scene, but which is perhaps something they are still holding onto themselves. And so they argue with the theme.
There are people I have noticed this theme with for some years, yet couldn't articulate what it was until Robert talked about it.
And although they are steeped in wisdom, and have excellent articulation with their years of experience in and then away from the bubbles of spirituality, they cannot seem to touch this subtle and profound theme of them "sneaking a metaphysical belief through the back door."
I myself experienced this theme in my life on numerous occasions and began noticing this theme play itself out. Noticing this theme softened my identification with beliefs I was holding onto even whilst smuggling in some more subtle modification.
Even on occasion testing wether to see what was being smuggled in (even some form of novel spirituality I'd previously dabbled in) had any hold over me or I had any investment in still. An interesting experiment in itself.
With radical honesty as a main intention with myself, I know that being fooled by keeping my fingers crossed behind my back was making me more of a fool.
Perhaps some folks feel much is on the line from having set up shop with books and talks and any status that comes from that and cannot conceive that they are smuggling in a metaphysical belief.
And depending on the person holding onto a subtle belief, they may be feeling an attack when presented with Roberts theme showing them what belief, metaphysical or otherwise is being smuggled through the back door.
But why, with all that wisdom accumulated can't they see this theme with fresh eyes? Perhaps in a way they do see what this theme is presenting, but can't admit it, like a priest seeing what's happening with themselves, and caught in an imposed frame. Or thinking their indoctrinated spirituality has been dropped from their system only to re-label or reinvent it. Or to claim that the metaphor of loops is merely or exactly equivalent to something in the spirituality field scene.
Just musing
Thanks, Paul—
What you’re calling “smuggling a metaphysical belief through the back door” is exactly the dynamic I’ve been trying to expose. It shows up whenever someone tries to preserve a hidden exemption—some imagined standpoint outside the movement, some leftover purity, some witness that supposedly floats above the flux. The content of the belief doesn’t matter. The structure does. The pressure of existence produces a moment of relief, and the mind elevates that relief into metaphysics. That’s the sleight of hand.
But I don’t see this as a moral failure or an intellectual lapse. It’s simply what a human system does under strain. When things feel groundless, the system generates a ground. When things feel uncertain, it imagines a vantage point. When a shift happens—a thinning of narrative, a sense of ease—it’s immediately promoted from a passing configuration to a supposed insight into the nature of reality. That promotion is the smuggling.
And as you say, it can happen even after someone thinks they’ve dropped all their spiritual baggage. The old structure reappears under a new label. A new vocabulary masks an old reflex. The person believes they’re radical or beyond doctrine, but the form is unchanged: there is still a hidden “something” that supposedly stands apart from conditions.
None of this requires judgment. It’s just the loop trying to stabilize itself. When the pressure changes, the pattern can loosen, and what had looked like conviction reveals itself as a temporary arrangement.
Your experiment—checking whether a lingering belief still has a hold—is the honest version of this. Not trying to achieve purity. Just watching the system reconstitute, then destabilize, then reconstitute again. No shame in being fooled; the loop is always producing images of ground. Seeing that mechanism is enough. The rest happens on its own.
No one stands outside the pattern. No one masterminds the smuggling. It’s movement, not intention.
And when the movement shifts, the belief dissolves—not because anyone defeated it, but because the pressure changed.
Yes, what you have said here is clear to me. Thankyou. And yes, I agree that there is no shame in being fooled (or pride) from any understanding arising. It's what has/is occuring.
A question I have just asked of Chatgpt has given up some excellent observations regarding this article you have written here and I feel may add much to the thread of comments. Unfortunately the reply was too lengthy for my phone to copy and paste here.
I will try and do it from a library computer at some point as my phone is my computer, but for now the question was as follows ...
"Please read the following article entitled NOTHING HIDDEN by Robert Saltzman I have copied here in full, and explain how guru's like Mooji don't get what Robert is saying here, or if they did, how they can still remain in such a psychologically static position."
Robert, as I was reading, I found myself thinking about where “love” fits into all this. I wonder if there is love when the loop is stabilizing into coherence, or is it something different altogether?
Scott--
The word “love” in English stretches across too many territories at once. Other languages are more honest about this. Ancient Greek had several terms, each marking a different configuration. Modern Spanish—my second language—separates te amo from te quiero. Love of country isn’t the same as love for a partner, which isn’t the same as love for a child, and none of those is identical to the warmth you might feel for a friend or for a moment of beauty.
So when we ask where “love” fits, the first step is to recognize that we’re using one word to cover many states.
From my perspective, each of those states is a particular organization of the system—shifts in tension, attention, affect, memory, and meaning. When contraction eases and defensiveness softens, something we call love can appear. When the pressures tighten, something else appears. There’s no essence behind the variations, only differing conditions shaping what is felt.
This doesn’t diminish love. It locates it.
Love isn’t evidence of coherence, and it isn’t a metaphysical glue. It’s a configuration—one that often feels better than fear or resentment, but still part of the same movement. When the conditions line up, love arises. When they don’t, it doesn’t. Nothing inside this needs an owner, and nothing inside it points to a deeper truth behind experience.
It’s simply what shows up when it shows up.
You said “When contraction eases and defensiveness softens, something we call love can appear.” This is what I was pointing to with that word. So in that sense, I would question whether it’s part of the same movement, if that makes sense.
Experientially, in my experience, there can be a still point or a holistic perspective, as a function of the looping, yes? On the home page of my website, among other things, I say this: "There is a stillness, a spaciousness, an openness at the heart of our being that beholds everything from wholeness and unconditional love. In this open aware presence, there is both infinite potential and compassion for everything being just as it is. There is no separation, no division, no inside, no outside, no other." I'm describing a palpable (non-permanent) experience, not a metaphysical position, which is the difference I feel between Toni Packer and Rupert Spira—Toni stays with experiencing, while Rupert turns it into metaphysics. But what I write there also expresses a sense (based on experience) of how reality is: "no division, no inside, no outside, etc." And that love or open awareness does FEEL deeper and truer than, e.g., the kind of defensive anger that arises from feeling separate, small, limited and threatened. Any comment, Robert?
Yes.
We’ve touched before on this sense that openness or love can feel deeper or more fundamental than the contracted states that come with fear or defensiveness. I recognize the feeling. But for me, the feeling of depth doesn’t give an experience a different status. It only tells me how that moment feels from within it. Experience appears in many shapes, and I don’t see any of them as more true or less true. They’re simply what shows itself.
The stillness you describe—the spaciousness, the lack of division—does arise. I’ve known it as well. I just don’t take it as a window onto something behind experience. For me, it’s a configuration, not a revelation. When the system quiets, the whole field can seem open and unbounded. When it tightens, division appears. Both are movements. Neither reports on an underlying reality outside the movement.
And yes, the open states often feel kinder, more coherent, more whole. But that felt sense doesn’t turn them into a deeper truth. It only reflects the tone of the moment. The anger, the contraction, the ache of being threatened are just as much the field as the clarity that sometimes replaces them.
That’s where my emphasis lies. Not in denying the beauty or value of the quiet states, but in not granting them metaphysical privilege. What appears is what appears, and no part of it stands behind the rest as the one that tells us what reality is.
When I said it feels deeper and truer, I didn't mean it is something "behind" experience, nor that it is some permanent substratum or ground or "underlying reality." What I mean is simply that the defensive anger or the guilt or blame and hate, all of that comes from delusion. It comes from the thought-sense-belief in separation, self, free will, all of that. Whereas open awareness is free of all that. All of that is gone (not forever after, in my experience, but often). Delusion is absent. There is no center to experiencing, no inside or outside, no me. Thus, it feels truer. More accurate. "Deeper" is probably not the best word for it. What I wrote on my website was poetic in nature, not scientific. And I didn't mean that anger, guilt, hate and so on are not real experiences—they obviously are.
The example I often use is that if we think of Buddha and Hitler as two different waves in the ocean, they are both equally movements of the ocean, both equally water, not really separate from one another. The difference is that Buddha realizes all that, while Hitler is lost in the delusion of separation, self and others, superiority, etc. And as a result, their internal experiences and their outward behavior will be different. But it's all the ocean, or in your terminology, the looping.
As I see it, it's a leap to go from that experience of open awareness to the conclusion or belief that open awareness is therefore the ever-present ground of being. I can feel into that maybe being true, and I've undoubtedly written sometimes that it is true, but I've never been comfortable with describing it as unchanging. I've sometimes said that it is ever-present or immovable (always here-now), but I've continued to question if that is really true. What feels truest to me is a sense of ungraspable groundlessness.
Joan--
I understand what you mean by “deeper and truer,” and I don’t hear you pointing to an underlying substance. You’re describing a configuration in which the usual contractions—defensive anger, blame, guilt, the whole repertoire—are simply not present. When those fall away, what remains does feel more accurate. The tension isn’t there to distort the moment. I don’t dispute that. I’ve lived it.
Where I hesitate is only in calling the contracted states “delusion” in a way that suggests they’re mistakes. They arise from the same conditions as everything else: biology, history, temperament, and pressure. They’re not errors to be corrected; they’re movements of the same system under different strain. When the strain changes, the configuration changes. Nothing is wrong in either case.
Your wave analogy works well enough, so long as we don’t smuggle in a metaphysical ocean behind the waves. I see Buddha and Hitler as different configurations—one with less contraction, one with massive contraction—but both entirely made of conditions. The difference in behavior and in inner life is real, but the “ocean” is just a way of speaking, not a thing underneath.
You’ve said you sometimes use language like “ever-present” or “immovable” to describe open awareness, but that you immediately question whether those words hold up. That ongoing questioning is why your writing never hardens into doctrine. You describe what occurs without turning it into a philosophy of what is.
For me, awareness isn’t a container, a capacity, or a ground in which experience unfolds. Awareness and experience are the same event—two words for one happening. Nothing underneath. Nothing behind. Nothing that needs to be uncovered or protected.
Open awareness isn’t a revelation of a deeper truth. It’s simply the moment when the turbulence drops out. When the turbulence returns, that’s what appears. Neither state says anything final about reality.
And that, I think, is where our two styles meet: the refusal to turn a shift in the weather into metaphysics, and the willingness to describe what is happening without needing it to be more than that.
I think you'd agree that our human impulse and ability (at times anyway) to expose and see through what I'm calling delusion is an activity of the loop, and maybe where we differ is that I do put a certain value on this human capacity to "wake up" from delusion and to live (at least sometimes) in a more wholesome way, and I do see many activities that can help to bring that kind of transformation about, from meditation and psychotherapy to social justice work, not through free will, but as movements of the whole (or the loop). I can have compassion for Hitler, and I can recognize that the light and the dark go together (as in the old Chinese farmer story), but I still consider Buddha "awake" and Hitler "extremely deluded," and from our human perspective, it matters greatly which one is emergent at any given time. So, from my viewpoint, I'd say delusion is a kind of mistake, a flaw in the system that can potentially be undone.
Yes, I agree that the capacity to see through a contraction—what you’re calling delusion—is itself a movement of the loop. Nothing stands outside the system doing the seeing. When a clearer configuration appears, it appears. When it doesn’t, it doesn’t. And I agree that from the human point of view, one configuration is obviously less destructive than another. No argument there.
Where our views diverge is in the use of “mistake” and “flaw.”
Those words imply a standard that the system has failed to meet. When I look, I don’t see a standard. I see conditions. I see pressures converging in different ways. When the pressures tighten, what emerges is what you’re calling delusion. When they loosen, what emerges is what you’re calling awakening. But both are lawful expressions of the same process, not deviations from an intended path.
Hitler wasn’t a flaw in the system. He was the system under a certain set of pressures—psychological, historical, cultural, biological—none of which he authored. The consequences were catastrophic, but the configuration didn’t violate anything. It followed from what fed it. Likewise, the Buddha wasn’t the fulfillment of a purpose. He was a different convergence of conditions, one that allowed for less contraction and less harm.
You can call one “awake” and the other “deluded” from the human standpoint, and that has real moral weight. I’m not flattening that distinction. But I don’t see delusion as a correctable error in the architecture. I see it as what arises when certain pressures dominate. If those pressures shift, the configuration changes. If they don’t, it doesn’t. Nothing has gone wrong. Nothing needs to be undone. There is no original state that has been obscured.
That’s the core difference:
You see delusion as a distortion that can be unwound.
I see it as a shape the system takes when it can’t take another one.
Where we meet is in compassion—not as a virtue, but as the understanding that every pattern has its causes, and no one stands outside their own conditions generating alternatives.µ
Maybe we're saying the same thing in different words, I'm not sure. I agree that both Buddha and Hitler are each the result of psychological, historical, cultural, biological conditions, none of which they individually authored. And in using the words "delusion" or "mistake," I'm not suggesting some abstract "standard" that "the system has failed to meet." At least, I don't think I am.
But it does seem to me that evolution is a kind of experimental (trial and error) process of nature in which some of the experiments fail and some succeed, and some of the things that get created by evolution are less than optimal (e.g. check out Jon Stewart's recent humorous riff on the design of the scrotum as an example of why he doesn't believe in God).
It seems to me that the complexity of the human brain allows for both astonishing possibilities (everything from modern medicine and artistic creations to space travel) and also horrific suffering of a kind no other animal has enough brains to create for itself.
And it seems to me that some humans are engaged in a process (driven not by individual free will but by infinite causes and conditions) of learning how to better work with this level of complexity. Various forms of psychotherapy, psychiatric medications, meditation, spiritual work of various kinds (such as Buddhism), and different ways of organizing society are all examples of this evolutionary process. (Eckhart Tolle describes it quite clearly, I think).
I suppose this seems very real to me because of my own life experiences. I nearly died from alcohol addiction. My sobering up was facilitated by an excellent therapist, without whom I doubt that it would have succeeded. (Both the drinking and the sobering up were the result of infinite causes and conditions, but that doesn't negate the value of the therapy). And as a gender nonconforming woman, a lesbian, and a person with a disability, my life was made infinitely easier by the women's movement, the LGBT movement and the disability rights movement all happening as I was coming into adulthood (all of them again the result of infinite causes and conditions). So I have a personal experience with the power of transformative activities, and that doesn't mean I see them as arising from source outside the system of causes and conditions. (I'm not absolutely convinced that there isn't anything outside the conditioned looping, but I don't assume there is).
In one sense, I don't regard my near fatal life as a drunk as a mistake. It feels like it was an essential part of my life journey that informed me in many ways. The same is true with the cancer I had 8 years ago or the prenatal amputation of my right hand. They've all been essential parts of my life. But at the same time, I do see cancer and amniotic band amputations in utero as mistakes in the system. Something goes wrong. And I see alcohol and drug addiction as a very destructive way of dealing with certain painful circumstances, something that is rooted in many delusional ideas that therapy or meditation can help bring to light and see beyond. Again, all of this is the result of infinite causes and conditions, or pressures on the system, as you put it, not individual free will or the intervention of some outside force, so maybe we are saying the same thing in different words.
But I feel that part of why both of us are moved to write has to do with an urge (created by infinite causes and conditions, not by us personally) to undo ideas and beliefs that we see as causing suffering and to offer alternative ways of seeing or being with life. No?
I really enjoyed this back and forth. Thank you Robert and Joan! I had already been thinking about early attachment and how important it is for healthy functioning. Being an early childhood classroom teacher I see firsthand the consequences early trauma has on children. I’ve had students with behavior that’s really challenging and I see how it’s completely beyond their control. In fact, the behavior serves a purpose. It’s hard not to see the early trauma/lack of attachment as not being a failure . At the same time though, I understand what you’re saying. If you saw my classroom you would spot the trauma in less than 5 min..
Thank you, Jessica. Yours is an important but often undervalued job.
Yes, I would spot attachment disorder within minutes, and an intervention--something as simple as a touch, a smile, or a kind word--can mean more at that age than hours of therapy much later down the line.
Some children are lucky, and some aren't. No failure, just circumstances that no one creates.
Thanks, Jessica. And thank you for doing one of the most important (and underpaid) jobs in this world. In case of interest, this is "My Story of Trauma, Rage and Healing": https://www.joantollifson.com/writing56.html
Someone mentioned something to the effect of"why do we desperately want to see a self, a controller?"
Because we realize as we are right now we're getting massive "error signals" that we're actually off course.
I know we all are sick of what passes as Christianity. But in the Eastern Orthodox Christian church there is a method for realizing our actual potential.
Nepsis (watchfulness) is the gateway to transformation, but not the whole path.
Nepsis reveals what needs to change; grace, humility, repentance, and cooperation with the sacraments do the changing.
Below is the full, deep explanation.
Is Nepsis Alone Enough for Transformation?
1. What Nepsis Actually Does
Nepsis opens the eyes of the heart.
It lets you see what is happening inside you—your impulses, fears, reactions, desires, ego-moves, scripts, diversions, fantasies, irritations.
Nepsis reveals:
“Oh… I’m trying to control this person right now.”
“I’m becoming defensive.”
“I’m drifting into resentment.”
“I’m planning how to look good.”
“I’m escaping again.”
“I’m inflating my ego.”
“I’m tightening inside.”
This clarity alone is already grace.
But by itself, awareness doesn’t automatically heal the underlying wounds.
It’s like turning on the light in a sickroom:
you can now see the illness, but you still need medicine.
2. Why Nepsis Alone Doesn’t Transform the Heart
If awareness by itself was enough, monks wouldn’t need:
the sacraments
confession
obedience
spiritual fathers
ascetical disciplines
fasting and prayer
community
Scripture
repentance
humility
Christ Himself
We would just sit in a cave, watch our thoughts, and become saints.
But the Fathers are unanimous on this:
watchfulness shows the passions—it does not cure them.
Nepsis exposes the disordered “control systems,” to use PCT language.
But exposure ≠ reorganization.
Reorganization happens when:
awareness
surrender
humility
truth-telling
grace
and obedience
all meet.
3. What Actually Transforms a Person?
In Orthodox terms:
Transformation happens when nepsis meets:
Grace (God acting)
Synergy (your cooperation)
Repentance (turning of the heart)
Sacraments (where God acts directly)
Confession (where the heart opens the deepest)
Humility (which lets grace flow)
Prayer (which reshapes desire)
Nepsis is the awareness of the process.
Grace is the power of the process.
Repentance is the movement of the process.
Nepsis without these becomes sterile self-observation.
4. What Happens When Someone Tries to Use Nepsis Alone?
If someone practices awareness without Christ, without confession, without humility, without repentance, they usually fall into:
self-monitoring
self-tightness
scrupulosity
a subtle ego project (“I’m becoming more aware”)
self-judgment
detached numbness
pride
Or worse:
prelest—the illusion that "I am spiritually advanced."
Awareness by itself can expose your passions so sharply that you feel worse, not better—which is why some people stop practicing nepsis.
5. What Nepsis Makes Possible
This is the key insight:
Nepsis creates the inner space where Grace can act without resistance.
You notice:
the tightening
the defensive reaction
the desire to hide
the shame impulse
the ego-effort
the judging
the narrative
And in that exact moment, if you turn slightly toward Christ—
even a tiny interior move—
grace does the real work.
The Fathers say:
> “Awareness opens the door; repentance lets Christ enter.”
6. In PCT Terms (to keep the bridge clear)
Nepsis does this:
It brings lower-level control systems into awareness.
It reveals conflicts, distortions, and hidden references.
It creates the conditions for reorganization (grace).
But awareness alone does not force reorganization.
The reorganization process is driven by:
painful contradictions
truthfulness
humility
surrender
exposure
request for help
grace
Awareness is the spotlight, not the surgeon.
7. So Is Nepsis Enough?
Nepsis is necessary.
Nepsis is not sufficient.
Nepsis is the foundation of the spiritual life, the bedrock.
Without it, nothing else happens.
But by itself, it is like eyesight without movement—you can see the path but never walk it.
Real transformation happens when nepsis is united with:
repentance
humility
Christ’s presence
confession
obedience
prayer
community
These are the “medicine."
Nepsis is the “diagnosis.”
Grace is the “healing.”
8. The Beautiful Secret
When a person practices simple, honest watchfulness—not forcing anything, not performing—it naturally leads them somewhere:
To confession.
To humility.
To repentance.
To Christ.
To stillness.
To truth.
Nepsis opens the heart.
Grace fills the heart.
Repentance softens the heart.
Christ transforms the heart.
This is synergy.
Andrew—This page is not a venue for preaching. If you have a comment or question about my work here and can state it in your own words, I will reply. Otherwise, I do not welcome this kind of extended quotation, nor the pious sermonizing you want to inflict upon us.
Ok fine. But you're simply preaching and sermonizing too, to be honest.
Andrew,
Pointing out what appears and what doesn’t isn’t preaching. It’s description. No doctrine, no authority, no promises, no path. You’re offering a system of belief and its required practices. I’m describing experience as it shows up, with nothing added.
If you want to discuss that, I’m here. If you want to promote a religious program, this isn’t the place.
Silly question for you Sharon: who are you criticizing here - Andrew or Robert? Not important…just curious.
She deleted her comment, but I believe she was talking to Andrew and pointing out it is Robert's Substack and platform, not Andrew's. And as a Substack writer, I agree with her. Sometimes people are not just engaging in a good faith discussion, dialog and questioning; they're hijacking the platform to put forward their own message. And that seems to be what Andrew is repeatedly doing. He's pushing Orthodox Christianity as THE solution to human suffering, and it seems to me he should do that on his own Substack, not Robert's.
Thanks Joan ❤️ .. I erased my comment as it felt icky but yeah I meant it…
Agreed. I truly value honest give and take versus “pontificating”!
Dean I erased the comment! This is all too intellectual for me ATM. Baking scones and playing with my cat….letting others worry about semantics etc.
I guess language is a necessary fog for my “functioning”, which I find funny in an amusing way.
I do have a question Robert. If nothing is hidden, is description necessary? While I see you might say: it is what it is, but isn't the "there is nothing hidden yet I will describe it anyway" also a 'loop' as you might call it?
For me, the moment I describe anything, I am obscuring what is and I simultaneously see the obscurity itself as what is. What I am pointing to is a loop of description, rather than allowing to be. For me, a single moment of nothing hidden is so infinitesimal, it defies all description.