Writing:

A Note on Language and Frameworks: Nonduality without the Nonsense

The essays collected here move between several frameworks—clinical psychology, trauma theory, contemplative practice, and somatic work. Some of the terms I use are paradoxical by nature, and trying to define them too precisely would be like dissecting a living thing to understand what made it alive. You’d end up with accurate parts and a dead body.

So a small heads-up: some of what follows may not make complete sense at first. That’s okay. These ideas aren’t meant to be mastered intellectually on first contact. They’re introduced gradually, and their meaning tends to reveal itself through experience rather than explanation.

For now, let the concepts wash over you. Feel into them rather than trying to nail them down. Still, a bit of grounding can help

Being and Becoming

Being refers to what doesn’t change—Awareness itself, the field in which all experience arises. I often use Awareness (capitalized) and Being interchangeably. Both point to the same thing, which isn’t actually a thing at all. Awareness has no qualities, no location, no beginning or end. It’s paradoxical: empty and full, nothing and everything. The moment you try to make it an object of study, you’re already sunk.

Becoming refers to the world of change: personality, history, trauma, nervous system states, patterns, and development over time.

When I use Self (capitalized), I’m referring to Being and Becoming integrated—the whole system. Self is different from ego, or self-concept, or parts (lowercase), which are the adaptive strategies, younger aspects, and protective patterns we all carry.

From my perspective, psychology has focused primarily on Becoming. Spiritual traditions often orient toward Being. Each does something essential—and each tends to mistrust or dismiss the other.

Much of my work lives in the tension between these perspectives. These writings are an attempt to speak both languages at once, without collapsing one into the other.

A Promise About Language

I promise to do my best to avoid spiritual gobbledygook—language that sounds profound but doesn’t actually help. Where possible, I ground ideas in lived experience. Where precision breaks down, I’ll name that rather than pretend certainty exists where it doesn’t.

If a term starts to feel like something you’re supposed to understand rather than something you can actually work with, we’ve probably lost the thread.

You’re not meant to memorize these ideas. It’s my hope that you’ll recognize the truth contained in them.