Welcome to the Nondual Café

Hi, thank you for joining us in the Nondual Café! I’m your waiter today.

Today’s menu is the story of a former guest here: Marcel. I’ll tell you about his spiritual path, and how it ended. He’s a little embarrassed about some of it, but it’s too good not to share. Privacy is such a dualistic idea, right?

And I know the story even better than he does. Why? Because I’ve tended to his every spiritual need—especially the ones he wasn’t aware of. That’s what we do here: waiting on those who haven’t seen their freedom yet. The good news is that everyone seated in our establishment gets to see it. Guaranteed.

When Marcel was a teenager, he was depressed. It became so bad that he begged me for a way out.

I said, “You don’t need a knife or putting your finger down your throat. What you must see is that everything is nothing. You see? Now your life is light again!”

More wasn’t needed for Marcel’s life to take off. It was quite the adventure. ¡Híjole!

By his forties, though, he felt something was missing.

I teased him: “It’s that old fear-of-commitment thing. You’ve got yourself a Peter Pan complex.”

That’s how I sparked his interest in philosophy and spirituality. One day, while watching a sports game at the Café, I arranged for him to see a Volvo commercial—of all things—set to Alan Watts’ voice. Because apparently nothing says non-attachment like selling cars.

A couple of years later, satori arrived after immersion in both Western and Eastern philosophy, somehow without a spiritual teacher. In that instant, his perspective flipped to land in the infinite and reveal the answer to every question ever asked. The noisy but illusory world of concepts dissolved, revealing their quiet, timeless essence: being itself. Reading Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen sealed the shift. That was 2016.

Marcel said, “I’ve got to share this marvelous insight! The real world, including me, is emptiness, and we only imagine our personal selves and the world around us to exist beyond that!”

I replied, “Well, if you see it so clearly, why not write it down in a book?”

So he did. At first, few got it. So he wrote another. And another. Six in total.

I’ve got to hand it to him: solid books. Not perfect, but they explain nonduality with refreshing simplicity. They center on seeing the pervasive emptiness, with “no-self” following instead of leading the insight. Since Marcel didn’t know the standard spiritual vocabulary, he reached for ordinary language instead.

That was both their strength and their weakness.

Many readers saw nonduality through his books. But did that end their journey? Marcel wasn’t sure. Something still felt missing. Even he carried a restlessness he couldn’t explain.

So I sent in a few avatars of former Nondual Café guests to join his table.

One of them, Freyja Theaker, introduced him to Tiantai thought. She gave crisp words to his insight: emptiness (Ku) expresses as appearances (Ka). Marcel recognized emptiness as change, and appearances as memories of change.

True nondual recognition is seeing that neither emptiness nor appearances are real, but both together—the middle way (Chu). Not two, not one, but both.

That struck a chord. Marcel had thought emptiness was the final word. But if you only live by negating appearances, you’re still bound—by negation itself. Liberation means living emptiness so clearly that negation no longer guards freedom. How to do that?

Marcel had thought, “Obviously the self doesn’t exist beyond the experience of memory, because everything is nothing but change. But neither does a table and a chair. Yet I act as if they exist to get along in life. So why do I need realize no-self from within nondual awareness? I also don’t need to realize no-table.”

That’s why he told himself, “I might as well tell myself to enjoy life.” In practice that meant he was still going around in ego circles, still suffering.

Eventually, he grew tired of circling and asked for my help: “How can I remind myself to live as inconceivable emptiness without turning it into a negative concept? Whenever I anchor emptiness as a practice, even by negation, I end up conceiving it as just another appearance.”

That’s when I sent him an avatar as his teacher. Marcel always thought he didn’t need one. So stubborn! I knew he wouldn’t listen to anything vague or wishy-washy. So I sent him our best: Kat (Katrijn) van Oudheusden.

Kat showed him it wasn’t necessary to act as if there was a self—something he was still doing by demanding “enjoyment” from life. She helped him see that entertaining the ego is a losing game. Always.

Her book, Seeing No-Self, pointed him to the positive recognition of emptiness, not just the negative.

Then she recommended Liberation IS: The End of the Spiritual Path by Salvadore Poe. That book nailed it: the self is the original misconception on which all distinctions rest, the root of all suffering. It also showed how to directly engage from within emptiness, seeing our essential truth so clearly that the world of appearances loses its grip for good.

One more talk with Kat, and it was done.

Marcel found lasting freedom. He walked out the Café door, and I haven’t seen him since.

Just before leaving, I asked him what freedom was like.

He said, “Freedom is like a dog’s un-self-awareness—suited to the human condition rather than the canine. Why can a dog be happy even when old and sick? Because it isn’t bounded by a self.

“Mantras, breaths, anchors—they can be there or not. It makes no difference. Even the ego is no longer an enemy (and less of a nuisance to others), just another appearance. Action or inaction flows as it will, without a chooser behind it. Everything is already fine, even what isn’t. Freedom is just that, and infinitely more.

“Freedom is seeing it’s literally impossible for anyone to do wrong, even when we try! I still believed we discover our destiny by creating it. Now I see we merely discover it: there’s no one creating anything.

“Translated into Rational Nondualism terms, freedom is simply knowing you’re change instead of a bunch of memories.”

This way, Marcel came see our essential emptiness not as a refuge but as home: the stage, actors, and audience at once. The character “self” still pops up now and then, but only as part of the show. That’s how he lives the middle way of freedom.

Pretty cool, right? Everything is always as it should be because there’s no one to make it otherwise. Literally no one ever makes mistakes—or does something right—because persons aren’t real. You can simply marvel at it all and play along.

I hear he’s still toying with nondual philosophy. It’s what his character enjoys. He says it helps analytical types find their way to liberation—or at least points them in the right direction.

He also insists nonduality has implications beyond spirituality—something he calls “the intersubjective.” I’ve no idea what he means. There isn’t even a subject.

And yet, maybe he’s right. Perhaps our shared space of freedom is an invitation to take each other more seriously, to engage without making such a mess of our world. Perhaps even a bridge can be built between emptiness and reason, resting on mutual respect.

Either way, philosophy without liberation is incomplete. Liberation isn’t an insight or experience. It’s saying goodbye to your self by moving back home to your essential nature. Philosophy doesn’t do moving services.

Only you do.

So, as Marcel’s waiter, I’m out of a job. He doesn’t have spiritual appetites anymore. He’s just enjoying the show.

How about you?

Do you have a waiter?

Or are you free?

Thank you for stopping by Simply Nondual! If any of this resonated, I’d love to hear from you. The doors are always open and it’s free for everyone. If you’d like to support my work, please share this post or browse my books and Simply Nondual’s custom-designed gifts & gear on Amazon, Marcel’s Booktique, and more retailers.