Seamless Presence

Ever-Fresh Aliveness

“Radiant Light” by Fr. Arthur Poulin, a Camaldolese monk

Radiant Light

Father Poulin painted this after 9-ll, to show that God is still present and the light is still shining. Whether we call it God or radiant presence or no-thing-ness dancing as everything, or any other name, these words all point to a recognition of the wholeness in which everything belongs, nothing is missing, the sacred is everywhere, and there is a perfection in the apparent imperfection. I love the way Fr. Poulin paints everything as a kind of vibration or energy that feels unpindownable, alive and shimmering. A giclee of this painting hangs in my living room, a reminder of the radiant light shining forth everywhere.

My essential message in a nutshell:

This one bottomless moment is ever-changing in appearance while never departing from the immediacy of presence, right here, right now. All apparently formed things, including people, are like waves in the ocean—ever-changing and inseparable movements of an undivided whole. There is no inside, no outside, no separation, no division, no other.

The pattern-seeking mind conceptually divides, labels, categorizes, interprets and seemingly concretizes this ungraspable, unpindownable flow, creating a kind of virtual reality seemingly made up of solid, separate, independent, persisting things. We imagine ourselves as a separate self on a journey, authoring our thoughts and making our choices.

But our urges, desires, impulses, interests, preferences, abilities, thoughts, actions and apparent choices are choiceless movements of an undivided whole. Realizing this is the freedom to be just as we are, and for the apparent world to be just as it is.

When we are hypnotized by the thought-sense of being small and separate from the rest of life, feelings of deficiency, anxiety and dissatisfaction inevitably follow. We try to control ourselves and the world, we search for certainty and something to grasp. But in holding on to nothing at all, there is immense freedom.

What is offered here invites firsthand exploration and direct discovery, not belief or dogma. There is no finish-line, no method, no future goal, only this ever-fresh aliveness.

— from www.joantollifson.com

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What do we most deeply want?

Isn’t it to feel at peace with ourselves just as we are, and with life just as it is? To be fully present, right here, right now, needing nothing to be different from how it is? This doesn’t mean not changing a flat tire, getting a college degree, seeing a therapist or a doctor, working for a more humane society, meditating, doing yoga, working out at the gym, or whatever else we might be moved to do. It simply means that all such activities are a happening of the universe.

I’m not in any way adverse to teachings that invite us to “be here now” in the sense of bringing our attention out of the realm of thought and storyline and into the immediacy of here-now-presence, seeing how thought creates suffering and confusion, waking up (moment to moment) from the delusional stories we’re often hypnotized by, and re-turning our attention to the aliveness of right here, right now. Such teachings also invite us to marinate in stillness and silent presence. This is the kind of teaching offered by Buddhism and by people such as Toni Packer and Eckhart Tolle, and it most certainly has its place. For me, it was life-changing.

But all too often, this kind of spirituality unintentionally dangles an enticing carrot of someday being more present than we are now, more at peace, more awake… maybe even someday becoming fully enlightened, realized or liberated (whatever we imagine any of that might mean). All too often, such teachings can inadvertently reinforce the sense of a separate self who is trying (and often failing) to “be here now,” along with a dualistic divide between the experiences we consider spiritual and those we deem to be unspiritual. “Being here now” is good; “being lost in thought” is bad. Expanded experiences are good; contracted ones are bad. The mind is then constantly monitoring, judging and evaluating how we’re doing, comparing ourselves to our favorite spiritual superheroes and inevitably coming up short. The clearest of these kinds of teachings point out and encourage seeing through all of these pitfalls as one goes along, but still, these delusions can arise again and again. In my own experience, a subtle efforting and evaluating was always there, the sense that I was trying to do better. Sometimes, in Buddhism, it’s very overt, taking vows and following precepts, trying to be a bodhisattva.

So for me, it was enormously liberating when I first came upon what I call radical nonduality, initially through Tony Parsons, Nathan Gill, Leo Hartong, Chuck Hillig and Sailor Bob Adamson back in the late 90s and early 2000s.

This radical (to the root) perspective points to what is already whole and complete here and now no matter how it appears. It’s all the Holy Reality. This cuts through any idea that something more or different needs to happen, that this isn’t it, that we’re on our way to a better place. Some of my favorite expressions of this kind of radical nonduality, aside from my own work, include Darryl Bailey, John Astin, Rob Matthews, Peter Brown, Sailor Bob Adamson, Leo Hartong, Alexis Knight, Kat Van Oudheusden, and many others. (You can find John, Rob and Kat on Substack, and you can find all the folks I mentioned on my website recommended books page).

Some radical nondualists are more uncompromising in sticking solely to this radical message than I am. My work often still includes the liberating potential of “being here now,” alongside the radical recognition that there is only here-now-being, however it appears. Everyone’s expression has a slightly different flavor, and each of us has a slightly different approach or way of coming at it. I find some expressions clearer and more nuanced than others. But all words are approximations, and everyone I’ve named, myself included, points to the unpindownable, unresolvable, ungraspable nature of this living reality. The map is never the territory it represents, and yet, mapping is something the territory does. We don’t mistake the map for the territory, but we recognize that the map is also the territory showing up as a map.

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Update on what’s going on with me:

I’m focused these days on getting ready for my upcoming ostomy repair surgery in mid-March, trying to get many things like my taxes done first, and simultaneously trying to keep the body in as good shape as I can and also take time to rest and relax. I’m grateful to all of you for your love and support in many forms. As I’ve said, my posts will likely be more infrequent for a while as I go through all this, but I’m here, alive and well, and sometimes periods of lying fallow are an important part of the writing process. Who knows, I might even get down to shaping the massive amount of material I already have into a new book or two. We’ll see!

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My Books

As I’ve mentioned, I have now “Independently Published” my 4 most recent books on Amazon. The text remains the same in these new editions, but I get the best royalties if you buy these January 2026 editions. Here are the links to them on Amazon, beginning with my most recent book and ending at the bottom with a link to my first book at Penguin Random House:

DEATH: The End of Self-Improvement

NOTHING TO GRASP

PAINTING THE SIDEWALK WITH WATER: Talks and Dialogues about Nonduality

AWAKE IN THE HEARTLAND: The Ecstasy of What Is

BARE-BONES MEDITATION: Waking Up from the Story of My Life

A little bit about each of them:

Nothing to Grasp is a concise articulation of my essential message. Painting the Sidewalk with Water is a collection of talks and dialogs from my public meetings in the early 2000s. My first book, Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up from the Story of My Life, is a spiritual memoir that focuses largely on my work with Toni Packer, but also includes working with my first Zen teacher, discovering Advaita, and more. Awake in the Heartland and Death: The End of Self-Improvement both combine personal stories with expository and poetic prose about nonduality. Death: The End of Self-Improvement, my most recent book, first published in 2019, in addition to being about nonduality, is also about aging, dying, and going through cancer.

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Darryl Bailey’s books:

New Sarum Press also published my friend Darryl Bailey’s wonderful books, all of which I very highly recommend, and with New Sarum shutting down, Darryl has now made all of them available on his website to read or download for free, although I know he would welcome donations.

Here’s a bit of my recommendation and review of Darryl’s books on the “recommended books” page of my website:

These slim books are powerful gems that offer one of the simplest, clearest, cleanest, most lucid and concise articulations of the dynamic, ever-changing, seamless, automatic and inconceivable nature of reality that I have encountered. When this is truly grokked, it is a very liberating realization. Darryl’s writing is spare, lean, stripped down to the bone, minimalist and yet poetic, uncompromisingly radical (to the root), unpretentious, and refreshingly free of jargon, metaphysical beliefs or any kind of bullshit. He shows you that in this living reality, there is no separation or solidity, that the apparently separate self with free will is an illusion, and that nothing could be otherwise in this moment from how it is: “Whatever we are now, whatever we’re doing now, is an inexplicable movement accomplishing itself. Nothing can be added to it and nothing can be taken away from it… We don’t exist as anything apart from this flow.”

Darryl focuses on a few main points: everything is changing, there is only the happening of this moment, there is no way to describe or understand what this is, and there is no one controlling any of it or making it happen. Impermanence (or what he calls unform) is so thorough-going that no separate forms ever actually exist or persist. Everything is an inconceivable, uncontrollable happening, happening by itself. “Ultimately, my descriptions are false too,” he says, “but they invite you to step out of description, in order to experience a sense of freedom and well-being that is impossible to create or to understand.”

Darryl’s expression is never prescriptive, never aimed at self-improvement or an escape from the pains and difficulties of life. His writing is a dismantling of every hopeful and curative fantasy, every place you try to land, every thing you try to grasp. Of course, it is precisely our hopeful grasping and our belief that we “should” be other than how we are that is our suffering, so realizing what Darryl points out is a huge and liberating relief.

Although he spent many years meditating as a Buddhist monk, he doesn’t offer any kind of meditative path, but he does invite what he calls a simple, non-conceptual “acknowledgement of the moment,” in which “nothing needs to be accomplished,” and where “attention has permission to rest with the entire happening of the moment,” rather than being totally immersed in the storylines of thought. This could be called meditation, but Darryl makes it clear that he is not talking about techniques, or being in any particular posture, or doing any sort of intentional concentration or mindfulness practice. His emphasis is never on experiences or states of consciousness, but always on “the inexplicable wholeness of existence freely expressing itself.” This, as he makes clear, is effortlessly always already happening. Our every thought, urge, impulse, desire, mood and action is this inexplicable wholeness; there is no “wrong” expression. Everything is a “vibrant, mysterious dance,” or as he sometimes says, “The only thing that is ever experienced is the feeling of the warm vibrant happening of this moment.”

Darryl emphasizes the impossibility of influencing or controlling our lives or the world through individual choice or will-power: “Our appearance, direction, and actions simply happen. This realization is freedom.” And he adds, “This would be a doctrine of determinism if we existed as something separate from the movement of the universe, something being pushed around by it. But we’re not separate from it; we are this movement.”

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Love to all…