What is Life? (Part 3) Nondual Recontextualization – Beyond the Dream of “Life”

Alright, so we’ve had our fun smashing the conventional dollhouse of “life.”

We’ve seen it’s built on assumptions, defined by word-cages, propped up by belief systems, riddled with contradictions, and held together by the sticky glue of emotional attachment.

It’s a mess. A beautiful, intricate, compelling mess, but a mess nonetheless. So, what now? Do we just sit in the rubble and cry? Or is there a way to look at this whole charade from a completely different vantage point? This is where nonduality strolls onto the stage, not with a new set of beliefs or a better definition of “life,” but with a lit stick of dynamite and a mischievous grin.

Nonduality isn’t another “perspective on life.” It’s the radical understanding that “life,” as a separate, definable thing experienced by a separate, individual self, is part of the dream, not the dreamer. It’s about waking up from the dream…

…not redecorating the dreamscape.

The Absolute and the Relative: Two Sides of a Non-Existent Coin

Nonduality plays a peculiar game.

It creates a stark distinction, then promptly eliminates it. It talks about the Absolute and the Relative. The Absolute is That Which Is – timeless, spaceless, changeless, uncaused, a seamless whole. It’s the Is-ness, the Awareness, the Emptiness, the Fullness, whatever word you want to use (all of them will fail, by the way). It’s not a thing, not a place, not a god. It just is. And it’s all there is.

The Relative, on the other hand, is the world of appearances – the world of time, space, change, cause and effect. It’s the world of you and me, of trees and stars, of birth and death. It’s the world of “life.” In this framework, “life” as we conventionally understand it – this biological process, this personal experience, this narrative arc – is entirely a phenomenon of the Relative. It appears to happen, it appears to have rules, it appears to matter. But from the standpoint of the Absolute, it’s all just a flickering show, a dance of shadows on the wall of eternity.

Now, the trick is not to get too hung up on this distinction as a new duality. Nonduality ultimately says that the Relative isn’t separate from the Absolute. The dream isn’t happening somewhere else; it’s a modulation of the dreamer. The waves aren’t separate from the ocean; they are the ocean, expressing itself as waves. So, “life,” this relative experience, isn’t other than the Absolute. It’s the Absolute dreaming itself as “life.”

What does this do to your precious concept? It pulls the rug out from under its claim to ultimate reality. Your individual “life,” with all its dramas and urgencies, is seen as a temporary, localized expression of something infinitely vaster and more fundamental. It doesn’t mean your pain isn’t felt, or your joy isn’t experienced.

It means that the “you” who feels and experiences, and the “life” that is felt and experienced, are not the solid, independent entities you thought they were…

…they are ripples on the surface of Being.

No-Self (Anatta): The Ghost Vanishes

This is a big one, the one that really tends to freak people out.

Nonduality, particularly in its Buddhist flavors, is rather insistent on this point: there is no enduring, independent, separate self. No little “me” at the center of your experiences, pulling the levers, making the choices, living “my life.”

What you call “self” is a bundle of constantly changing physical and mental phenomena – thoughts, feelings, sensations, memories, habits. These arise and pass away. There’s no permanent owner, no central core. It’s like a river: it has a name, it appears to be a single thing, but it’s just constantly flowing water. There’s no “river-ness” separate from the flow. Similarly, there’s no “you-ness” separate from the constantly shifting stream of experience.

So, if there’s no self, who is living this “life”? Nobody. “Life” is just happening. Experience is just happening. Thoughts are arising, feelings are arising, actions are occurring. But there’s no little homunculus in your head orchestrating it all. The sense of being an author, a doer, an experiencer – that’s part of the illusion, part of the dream. It’s a thought, a feeling, a deeply ingrained habit of perception.

This isn’t to say you cease to function. The body-mind organism continues to operate, to interact, to respond. But the identification with it as a separate, personal self can drop away. And when that happens, the whole concept of “my life” becomes rather absurd. If there’s no “me,” then whose life is it? It’s just… life. Unowned. Impersonal. A spontaneous unfolding.

This is a radical deconstruction of the very foundation of the conventional view. If there’s no individual self to be born, to live, and to die, then what are birth, life, and death? They are appearances, events in the unfolding of consciousness…

…not the beginning, middle, and end of a personal entity.

Truth vs. Truthiness: Cutting Through the Spiritual Comfort Food

Spiritual buzzwords promise everything.

“Living your truth,” “finding your authentic life,” “aligning with your life’s purpose” – these concepts flood the marketplace of modern spirituality.

It all sounds very empowering, very positive. It’s also, from a nondual perspective, mostly bullshit. Or, to be more precise, it’s “truthiness” – something that feels true, that sounds good, that offers comfort and a sense of progress, but isn’t actually Truth with a capital T.

♾️Truth, in the nondual sense, is stark. It’s uncompromising. It’s the simple, unadorned recognition of What Is, prior to all concepts, beliefs, and interpretations. It’s the understanding that there is only This – this seamless, ownerless, ever-present reality/awareness. And within This, there is no separate self, no inherent purpose to “your life,” no cosmic plan you need to discover or fulfill.

😇“Truthiness,” on the other hand, is all about bolstering the ego, making the dream state more comfortable, more meaningful, more palatable. It takes the existing illusion of a separate self and tries to improve it, to make it more “spiritual” or “authentic.” It’s about finding a “better” life, a “truer” self, within the confines of the dream. It’s self-help dressed up as enlightenment.

Nonduality isn’t interested in making your illusory life better. It’s interested in waking you up from the illusion altogether. It points out that any “purpose” you find for “your life” is a purpose you’ve assigned, a story you’ve told yourself. Any “authentic self” you discover is just another, perhaps more refined, mask. The real Truth isn’t found by adding more layers of meaning or identity; it’s found by stripping them all away, by seeing through the entire charade.

This isn’t to say that relative truths don’t have their place. On the level of the dream, it’s relatively true that if you step in front of a bus, you’ll get hurt. It’s relatively true that kindness is generally preferable to cruelty. But these are pragmatic truths for navigating the illusion, not statements about ultimate reality.

Nonduality is concerned with the ultimate, and from that vantage point, the search for a “meaningful life” is just another way the ego keeps itself busy…

…avoiding having to face its own non-existence.

Beyond Concepts: What Remains When “Life” Dissolves?

Let’s strip everything away.

If we deconstruct all assumptions, language, beliefs, contradictions, emotional attachments, and the very notion of a self living a life… what’s left? If “life” as a concept dissolves, what remains?

This is where language starts to really sputter and fail, because what remains is prior to language, prior to concepts. It’s not another thing. It’s not a void in the sense of a depressing emptiness. It’s more like… pure potentiality. Undifferentiated awareness. The Is-ness we talked about earlier.

Think of it like this: you’re watching a movie. You’re engrossed in the plot, the characters, their struggles, their triumphs. That’s your conventional experience of “life.” Then, someone points out that it’s just light and shadow on a screen. The story, the characters, they’re not ultimately real in themselves; they’re appearances. If the movie ends, or if you stop identifying with it, what remains? The screen. The screen was there all along, enabling the movie, but not defined by it, not affected by it. The screen is the unchanging background for all the changing images.

What remains when the concept of “life” dissolves is the “screen” of awareness. It’s not your awareness; it’s just Awareness. It’s not empty in a negative sense; it’s empty of concepts, empty of a separate self, empty of the drama of “my life.” And in that emptiness, there’s a profound peace, a profound freedom, because there’s nothing to defend, nothing to achieve, nothing to lose.

This isn’t something to be understood intellectually. The intellect is part of the movie, part of the conceptual apparatus. This is something to be realized, to be directly experienced. It’s the shift from being the character in the dream to being the dreamer, or, more accurately, the dream-space itself.

When “life” as a separate, personal drama dissolves, what remains is simply… This. This present, immediate, ever-changing, yet ever-present unfolding. Unlabeled. Unowned. Free. It’s not that “life” ends; it’s that the concept of it, the story of it, the problem of it, is seen through. This mystery that remains when concepts dissolve…

…outshines any story ever told.

The Dreamstate Function of “Life”: Keeping the Sleeper Asleep

The dream is masterfully constructed.

From a radical nondual perspective, the entire conceptual framework of “life” – with its beginnings and endings, purposes and meanings, individual actors and dramatic struggles – serves one specific function: it keeps the sleeper asleep.

It is the very fabric of the dreamstate, designed to be so compelling, so immersive, that the dreamer rarely questions its fundamental reality. Think about your night dreams. While you’re in them, they feel real, don’t they? You have a sense of self, you interact with a world, you experience emotions, you pursue goals. It’s only upon waking that you realize it was all a mental construction, a play of consciousness. The concept of “life” in the waking state functions in much the same way, just on a grander, more persistent, and more universally agreed-upon scale.

This “life” construct provides a continuous narrative, a sense of identity, and a set of rules and goals that keep the mind occupied and outwardly focused. It gives you something to do, something to be, something to strive for. Whether it’s pursuing a career, raising a family, seeking enlightenment, or just trying to get through the day, these activities are all part of the dream’s intricate tapestry. They keep you engaged with the appearances, identified with the character you’re playing, and thoroughly distracted from the underlying reality of your true nature as boundless awareness.

The fear of death, which is intrinsically tied to the concept of a personal “life” that can be lost, is perhaps the dream’s most powerful enforcement mechanism. This fear keeps you clinging to the known, to the familiar structures of the dream, however unsatisfactory they may be. The idea of “no-life” or “no-self” is presented by the dream-mind as a terrifying abyss, rather than the liberation it actually signifies from the nondual standpoint.

Even spiritual seeking, when it becomes about “my” enlightenment or “my” spiritual progress within “my life,” can be co-opted by the dreamstate. It becomes just another project for the ego, another way to improve the dream character, rather than to see through the dream altogether. The dream is very clever; it can absorb and neutralize almost any attempt to escape it by turning that attempt into another feature of the dream itself.

So, the concept of “life” isn’t just a neutral descriptor of biological processes. It’s an active, dynamic mechanism of the dreamstate. It’s the story the universe tells itself to keep from waking up to the fact that it is, and always has been, only itself – pure, undivided, and already free. Recognizing this dream function is a crucial step in deconstructing its power, in loosening its hypnotic grip…

…and in opening to the possibility of what lies beyond the confines of the story.

The Empty Nature of “Life”: Seeing Through the Illusion

Nonduality reveals the void within form.

Building on our understanding of “life” as dreamstate function, it takes us further to reveal the inherent emptiness (Śūnyatā, in Buddhist terms) of this concept and all its constituent parts.

This doesn’t mean that “life” is a depressing void or that nothing matters. Rather, it means that “life,” and all phenomena within it, lacks inherent, independent existence. They are “empty” of a fixed, standalone self-nature.

Think of a rainbow. It appears vividly, it has colors, it has a form. But it has no substance of its own. It’s a temporary phenomenon arising from the interplay of sunlight and raindrops. It doesn’t exist independently of those conditions. If you try to grasp it, you find nothing there. “Life,” in this sense, is like that rainbow. It appears real, it has qualities, it evokes experiences. But it’s a dependent arising, a confluence of causes and conditions, without a solid, unchanging core.

Your personal “life story,” your identity, your achievements, your failures – all of these are empty of inherent existence. They are collections of thoughts, memories, and interpretations, constantly shifting, constantly being re-written. There’s no fixed “you” at the center of it all, and no fixed “life” that belongs to that “you.” It’s all a dynamic, flowing process, a dance of appearances.

The implications of this emptiness are profound. If “life” is empty of inherent existence, then what are you clinging to? What are you afraid of losing? If the self is empty, who is it that suffers? Who is it that strives? This isn’t to deny the relative experience of suffering or striving, but to recontextualize it. It’s like realizing the monster in your dream isn’t real; the fear is still felt, but its basis is understood as illusory.

Seeing the empty nature of “life” doesn’t lead to nihilism. On the contrary, it can lead to a profound sense of freedom and compassion. Freedom from the burden of a reified self and its endless anxieties. Freedom from the need to achieve or become something, because you are already the emptiness in which all becoming occurs. And compassion, because you see that all other beings are also caught in this illusion of a solid self and a solid life, struggling with the same fears and desires rooted in this fundamental misunderstanding.

When “life” is seen as empty, the desperate clinging loosens. The frantic activity of the ego, trying to secure itself, to validate itself, to perpetuate itself, can begin to subside. What emerges is not a void, but an open, spacious awareness, in which the play of “life” continues, but it’s no longer taken as the ultimate reality. It’s seen for what it is: a beautiful, transient, empty display…

…and in that seeing, there is peace.