This That Is: On Reality, Nondual Healing, and the Freedom in Direct Experience

“What you are is intrinsically aligned with the very nature of what you are trying to understand.”— Peter Brown

There’s a kind of healing that doesn’t come from improvement. It comes from seeing. A healing that arrives not with the fixing of wounds, but with the recognition that nothing has ever been broken.

Not metaphorically - but actually. In the heart of present experience, in the nakedness of awareness, there is no self to improve, no story to resolve, and no world to fix. Only this - the raw, vivid, immediate actuality of being.

And so, the real inquiry begins:

• What is this?

• What is it that sees?

• What is it that is seen?

These are not questions to answer, but to fall into. Not with the mind’s concepts, but with the simple sincerity of attention.

The Illusion of the Handle

You might be standing in the middle of your life, holding tightly to invisible “handles” - stories, plans, beliefs, roles - with the sincere hope that they will provide safety and orientation. That if you just hold tight enough, you’ll be okay.

But when you look directly… where are these handles?

They dissolve under the light of inquiry.

It’s like the moment you realised your mother wasn’t holding the back of your bike anymore. The sense of safety wasn’t in the holding - it was in the flow. The ground was never lost; only the illusion of control was.

This is the edge where many stop. Where the mind says, “But if I let go… how will I survive?” Yet the truth is: you’ve never been the one holding things together.

There were never any handles to begin with.

Radical Empiricism: A Love Affair with What Is

William James called it “radical empiricism” - the idea that experience itself is the foundation of what’s real. Not as interpreted. Not as thought-about. But as it is.

This is where healing begins: in giving attention to what is actually here, prior to what we think is here. Not in rejecting thought or sensation, but in seeing them for what they are: textures of experience, not truths.

Experience, when met directly, is not inert. It is vivid, alive, and intelligent. It is the dance of color, sound, sensation, light, movement - awareness in motion. It is God coupling with God. Shiva meeting Shakti. The self kissing itself through the mirror of form.

What you're looking for - that intimacy, that peace, that meaning - is the very nature of your perceiving.

Inquire Gently

Healing, then, is not an act of spiritual contortion or effort. It’s the surrender of illusion. A falling into the direct simplicity of presence.

Try asking:

• Where is attention right now?

• What texture does this moment have?

• If I let go of all concepts - what remains?

Let experience seduce you. Let the present moment reveal itself to you - not as object, but as lover. As itself. Without name. Without category.

There is only one category - this.

From Compassion to Clarity

This path may start with a desire to feel better, to be a better human, to help others. And there is a place for that. But ultimately, real compassion is not rooted in story. It’s not about being a “good” person.

Compassion arises from the recognition that there is only one reality here - and it’s you, me, this. The seamless, indivisible appearing of life. In that, there is an intelligence that holds all things - including what we call suffering - in its infinite embrace.

To meet this moment is to meet all beings. Not through effort, but through being.

No Resolution, Only Freedom

The liberating truth is that this will never resolve. It was never supposed to. The mystery is not a puzzle to be solved, but a beloved to be known through intimacy. Through letting go - in being.

There is only this: no rails, no finality, no handle. Just this wild, formless, ever-creating self-engagement.

The invitation?

Don’t settle for knowing about reality. Be reality. Taste it. Let it show you what it is.

Be willing to be nothing. Be willing to be everything. Be willing to be this.

That’s the whole show.