What is Nonduality?
When people begin the awakening process, the first shift is often the recognition that I am not my thoughts, that there is a quiet, steady formless presence in which everything appears. This is a genuinely profound realization. It marks the beginning of stepping out of identification with the narrative, thinking-based self.
But even in that early awakening, there’s usually a subtle assumption:
there is “me,” the formless presence … and then there is what I am present to. It’s quieter and more spacious, yet still organized around a sense of subject and object.
Nonduality is the realization that dissolves that last division.
What becomes clear is that this formless presence has no owner, no observer, and no centre. And the world we believe we’re perceiving – the sights, sounds, sensations, thoughts, even the sense of “here” and “there” is empty of any solid, independent existence.
There is no separate someone standing apart from what is appearing.
No experiencer inside experience.
A simple way to say it is that the whole framework of “someone in here” looking out at “a world out there” collapses.
The world doesn’t disappear, but the felt sense of distance and solidity does. Everything becomes intimate, immediate, alive, centre-less, and at the same time beautifully mysterious and ultimately unknowable.
This is not a philosophy or belief system.
It is a shift in the perception of reality.
This isn’t detachment, it is the opposite:
a radical intimacy with everything.
In Buddhism, this is the heart of what is meant by emptiness:
the absence of anything — inner or outer — that exists independently or can belong to anyone.
Form is empty.
And emptiness reveals itself as every form.
What remains is an intimacy without a centre, life living itself without the burden of a “someone” who has to manage it.
For many people, this is where the struggle and the seeking finally begin to fall away.
About Christina
As a child, I sensed a hidden mystery within reality, unnoticed by others.
I grew up in a strongly religious household (Catholic). I felt an intuitive connection to the Divine, but the church experience itself felt strange and incongruent.
As a young adult, I embraced family life, raising four children amid the usual challenges.
In my early thirties, I was consumed by an existential crisis for three years, constantly witnessing suffering and questioning its meaning.
I took a TM course, and that helped for a while. In 2001, a ten-day Vipassana retreat initiated a radical shift in identity and there was a sublime inner silence. Three months later, I fell into depression. Over the next 14 years, I persevered through many more silent retreats.