"The way upward and the way downward is one and the same." —Heraclitus(Epigraphs to T.S. Eliot's poem "Burnt Norton") Two wheels, one escape: why the radical middle way is our best betFortune’s wheel: a medieval reality checkSamsara’s wheel: the bigger pictureThe shared insight: don’t bet…
Nonduality is usually treated as a spiritual teaching. And while nonduality doesn’t complain about such treatment, it leads to misunderstandings. Nonduality isn’t about lofty ideas or mystical experiences or smart-ass finessing or esoteric teachings or wise gurus or [insert whatever you believe it’s about]. It’s…
It helped me a lot After decades of seeking closure on anything and everything, I made a discovery: a short nondual insight on letting go of final answers. Perhaps it’s obvious to you—then at least I kept it short. Or perhaps it might help someone,…
An entire lifetime can slip by without seeing what this short musing reveals This is not blue. You look up A gazillion photons play with your eyes and you say simply blue. A neat trick, bundling so much into one concept! But just because your…
“What’s your thing, Marcel?”“Building a bridge between nonduality and rationality.”“Wait—spirituality and reason? Aren't they opposites? That's a bit odd.”“It seems that way at first. But after nondual realization, it turns out they’d always been on the same side." Without nonduality, reason spirals into abstraction.Without reason,…
TL;DR: The West inherited Stoicism’s moral blueprint—virtue through reason—then wrapped it in Christianity’s sin-and-forgiveness cycle. Secularizing it left us with the blueprint but no safety valve, fueling perfectionism and guilt. The East’s Buddhist–Taoist nondualism skips the blueprint entirely, trusting the present as nature itself. Epicureanism…
Why the radical middle way means zero burnouts There’s a kind of peace that chaos can’t reach. Not the peace of a retirement plan or a silent retreat with artisanal tea. Not the kind that comes from counting breaths in a candlelit room. I mean…
The present takes my breadth away The present: a blade without breadth, slicing time in memory and expectation. What is left? Current spurs the mindSlicing time by fatal designBreadthless blade of change Share:
And now a bit more seriousTwo wrongs don't make a rightThe Riemannian cracks of spacetime and the quantum world Riemann and Euclid stroll into a bar, their geometries clashing like non-commuting operators. The bartender, a quantum computing whiz, says, "Drink, fellas?" Riemann, juggling his zeta…
When you've been writing about nonduality as I have, you become intimately familiar with the challenge of finding words for something deeply meaningful yet entirely ineffable. This is why, in my understanding, nonduality and religion can be perfectly compatible: whether we celebrate Jesus's resurrection, contemplate…
Have you ever revisited a fairytale you loved as a child, only to find it wasn't quite the same? The story is familiar, but somehow, there's so much more to it—meanings that seem to have been waiting for you to catch up. Isn't it wonderful…