Let’s start off with a quote from the greatest non-dual philosopher of our time, Ronnie Coleman:
“Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights.”
Everybody wants stillness of mind, but nobody wants to deconstruct their identity.
I want to give you a serious warning: this piece deconstructs the mechanics of how you identify yourself. It is intense and confrontational. If you’re currently not doing well, or you just don’t feel like reading something heavy right now, I suggest you bookmark this and come back later. Please take good care of yourself.
You wouldn’t be able to function in society if you thought in terms of raw reality.
Therefore, your mind creates simplified models of reality, called concepts. And you think in terms of those models.
Every word is a concept. Every image made to encode an idea is a concept. This is very useful—you can’t function without them.
However, keep in mind that the map isn’t the territory. Your thoughts are concepts—but concepts are just models. They aren’t raw reality.
You can visualize the collection of all your concepts as a big Jenga tower. Every concept you have is a block in that huge Jenga tower.
A typical person’s ego thinks that if their Jenga tower collapses, that’s death or insanity, because the ego falsely identifies with its concepts. So people’s egos are very hostile and defensive towards arguments that disprove part of their worldview.
Whereas in reality, the Jenga tower is just your collection of concepts. They’re not pieces of reality; they’re just your personal conceptual pieces.
In a liberated mind, the Jenga blocks become fluid. Concepts are still used, but they aren’t rigidly stuck together anymore—you no longer identify with them. The structure simply shifts and realigns as circumstances change, dissolves the moment a better argument appears, or playfully tumbles into absurd, temporary shapes.
A typical spiritual path involves pulling out blocks until the rigid structure collapses.
But remember: your biology still needs concepts to buy groceries and navigate traffic. So when the rigid tower collapses, the blocks don’t vanish into thin air—they just lose their structural grip. They crash down into a loose, fluid pile on the floor. You still use the blocks when you need them, but you’re no longer frantically trying to balance a fragile monument.
This path isn’t strictly necessary—it’s also possible to just realize that you’re living in a cloud of concepts, which isn’t actual reality. It’s possible to realize that without your tower collapsing.
The classic technique of observation can help create the quiet distance needed for the tower to become fluid and non-rigid.
For now, briefly visualize your Jenga tower, with every block being a concept. Also visualize yourself.
Have you done that? Good.
Notice what your mind just did. You visualized a Jenga tower of all concepts, and then you placed “yourself” outside of it—maybe as a figure, a floating cloud, or a point of awareness looking at the stack.
But that figure, cloud, or point of awareness doesn’t exist in raw reality. It’s a concept.
Look at how weird that is: I asked you to visualize yourself—not visualize a figure or cloud or point of awareness, yourself. And your brain instantly generated a concept and went, “Yep, that’s me looking at the tower.” You seamlessly identified with a concept that was just made up on the spot.
Your mind does this constantly. It has created a continuous, uninterrupted concept of a being with your name and history and personality, and pretends that this being exists separate from your raw biological processes.
Just as your brain effortlessly fabricated something outside the Jenga tower and labeled “I am that,” it has been fabricating “you” your entire life.
Yes, your biological processes exist—but that’s all. There’s no separate “you” on top of that.
If you look in the mirror, you feel that “you” are looking at your biology. But obviously it’s just your biology looking at itself—it’s your eyes, your brain, etc, doing the work.
When you look in the mirror, where exactly is that true “you” separate from your biology? Are you the brain? No, that’s biology. Are you the observer? No, that’s just a concept fabricated by your biology—just like your biology fabricated that observer outside the Jenga tower.
So there’s just your biology—plus the concepts it made up. The person you think you are—the one separate from your biology, the one with your name—is just a concept, built in the exact same mental factory that just fabricated your imaginary observer.
All your concepts are inside the Jenga tower, right? So how can a self-concept you literally just made up in a visualization be outside that tower?
You thought you were a being external to your conceptual tower?
You’re a concept. You’re a block in the tower.
You are not the one controlling the concepts. You are one of the concepts.
You aren’t the player in control of the game. You are one of the blocks.
Close your eyes for a moment. Drop out of your head and feel the raw physical sensations happening in your body right now.
Do this for ten seconds or so, or longer if you prefer.
After you’ve done that:
Did you terrifyingly feel your tower shake?
Or did you just comfortably disagree / comfortably think “yes, very clever” / comfortably create some new conceptual block and add it to your tower?
Take a moment to look for the imagined external player of the game. Put aside all your concepts and biological processes for now, and look—is anyone there?
You might intellectualize that you’re “I AM” or similar—but those are still just concepts. “I AM” is simply the concept “this is raw reality, not a concept.” That’s still a concept.
Plus “I AM” is obviously not the thing being referred to when you or others use your name.
Also, you wouldn’t be thinking “I AM” right now without a physical brain.
Even if you claim to be pure awareness: if I removed your brain from your skull and then asked you who you (the one carrying your name) are, would you experience nondual awareness? Of course not: the biological organism would be dead, and the factory that manufactures the “this is me” concept wouldn’t function anymore. Awareness as you personally experience it would be no more. And omnipresent awareness “out there” obviously doesn’t answer to your name.
If you want to reply “is there anyone there aside from my concepts and biological processes? I don’t know”:
Think about it. If someone were actually there, you’d be able to point directly to them and say, “That’s me. It’s not a concept, it’s not raw biology, and it’s the exact entity that carries my name in everyday life.”
But you can’t find something like that.
“There is no one” is your actual observation. “I don’t know” is just the ego assuming: “There must be someone here, I just can’t see them right now... so let’s call it a mystery.”
You looked in a room, saw that there was no one there, but you’re assuming there must be someone there, so you said “don’t know.” But the observation was clear: there’s no one there. If you had actually looked in and seen someone standing in the corner, you would have just pointed at them.
Stop assuming the person with your name must be somewhere in the room. Look for them. You can’t find them. The room is empty.
If you think you found someone, look closer. It’s either raw biology, a conceptual block, or something that doesn’t answer to your name.
There is just a biological machine running. The self-concept—a Jenga block—was generated by the biological machine so it could more effectively secure resources and procreate.
How to reach enlightenment
Enlightenment means integrating the lived knowledge that the one worried about health, the one upset that others don’t like them enough, or the one panicking over money—is just a block inside that conceptual Jenga tower. There is no external master player who could get harmed. It’s just a block getting upset.
So the next time you are stressing out, catch the machine in motion:
Worry arises about your reputation => you take a moment to feel that => then you think: “who is the one who feels worried about their reputation? Oh right, the sensation is real but it’s just a biological machine defending a block.”
Or:
You’re annoyed at someone => you take a moment to feel that => then you think: “who is the one who feels annoyed? Oh right, the sensation is real but it’s just a biological machine defending a block.”
Keep repeating that recognition as things come up, until enlightenment.
Genuine, unforced laughter is a great sign.
If you’re thinking “this isn’t enlightenment, this is just how a scientist thinks”: don’t confuse the ego’s PR statements with how it actually functions.
The scientist views himself as a mostly objective, rational brain standing outside the Jenga tower, observing and analyzing it. That’s just another version of the “figure outside the tower” illusion. The scientist doesn’t really operate as if he’s a concept generated by his biology.
If you walk up to a scientist and say “you’re an idiot, you’ve produced nothing of value in all your career”, the scientist becomes immediately hostile or defensive.
Whereas if you do that to an enlightened person, they may just laugh -- genuinely, not performatively. Why not? It’s funny that one block is screaming at another block that the second block is an idiot.
The enlightened person has integrated and embodied that he’s a block. Whereas the scientist with “I am just biology” beliefs or the spiritual seeker with non-dual beliefs can point to “correct beliefs”, but those beliefs are just concepts in their minds. In other words, they’re blocks in the tower, while they still quietly think they themselves are figures outside the tower.
This is a massive trap that can lead you astray: the trap of turning “I am a Jenga block” into yet another conceptual block and adding it straight to the top of the tower, while still seeing yourself as the external player.
Let’s discuss that in more detail:
The “turning things into Jenga blocks” trap
Say some teacher instructs you to just focus on the “I AM.” The proper way to do this is to focus on the ‘I AM’ until the entire Jenga tower is recognized as just a collection of temporary concepts—leaving nothing behind but the quiet reality of your raw biology. There is no separate everyday ‘you’ standing outside the tower.
However, the non-functional way to interpret the “I AM” instruction is to create a new Jenga block with “I AM; this is raw reality and not a concept” written on it. And then putting that concept on top of the Jenga tower.
The trap is turning “I AM” into a concept while insisting that it’s not a concept, and then adding that to your collection of concepts.
This misses the actual point: that your entire Jenga tower is just a bunch of man-made concepts that aren’t reality.
The proper way to do this feels uncomfortable, while the non-functional way feels pleasant: “Yes, I AM!” The ego doesn’t like genuinely being deconstructed, while it loves hoarding blocks.
The exact same thing happens with the classical teaching of “no-self.” Instead of facing the reality that the room is empty, the ego quickly fabricates a massive, shiny new block labeled: “I am pure awareness.”
It feels beautiful, spacious, and deeply pleasant to claim “I am consciousness itself.” But it’s just a sneaky way to conceptualize an even grander external player outside the tower. True no-self doesn’t feel pleasant like that; it feels like discovering you are a piece of wood inside a stack.
Another example is Jesus (Yeshua) of Nazareth: he functioned as a radical, norm-violating block-puller, constantly trying to get people to stop taking their rigid, legalistic conceptual towers so seriously. In return, people turned “Jesus is the son of God” into the second largest conceptual block of them all.
The Pharisees built a massive conceptual tower. Jesus arrived and told them to stop that. Western society responded by turning Jesus into a humongous block that they inserted right back into the tower.
He explicitly warned against this exact trap in Luke 6:46: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”
In other words: “Stop turning me into a concept. Instead, face the terrifying reality that your everyday ‘self’ is a block in the tower—and look at the living reality that remains when you stop worshiping dead wood.”
But instead, people worshipped the person pointing to liberation, rather than letting that reality dismantle their own towers.
If you asked certain ancient masters if they were enlightened or what enlightenment was, they might refuse to answer, give a nonsensical reply, or literally hit you with a stick. They weren’t being mystical—they just refused to add a new block to the tower.
That mistake happens often: a teacher tries to get someone to realize that their Jenga tower isn’t actual reality and is instead just a bunch of fluid man-made concepts. The spiritual seeker listens to that, feels some resonance, but then turns that idea or teacher into a new concept and plops it on top of their Jenga tower. They feel proud and wise, but they have missed the point entirely—they still think their Jenga tower of concepts is an unshakeable tower of reality that must be defended, instead of just a funny, silly construction.
A lot of spiritual people focus on gathering new pretty conceptual blocks to add to their tower. They think that’s spiritual progress.
Or they seek out a teacher not to help them realize that all towers are just wood, but simply to plop a shiny, feel-good spiritual tower straight on top of their mundane one—adding a new beautiful layer to the static structure they mistake for reality.
Even if you have the perfect spiritual conceptual tower... so long as you think you’re the master player standing outside of it, that’s still not enlightenment.
The person with the pristine conceptual tower is often somewhat dogmatic, predictable, inflexible, egoic, attached to a specific identity, not very effective and unwilling to be “unspiritual” or look bad.
Contrast this with what happens when the tower is seen as just wood. Functioning becomes fluid, funny, and entirely unattached to any single worldview. Because the conceptual structure adapts automatically, behavior is unpredictable to others, highly effective, and entirely unconstrained by arbitrary norms.
Compassion and immense helpfulness may flow out naturally, without the heavy burden of self-sacrifice. Because of course your hand puts food in your mouth—of course you help others.
“Unspiritual’ blocks are used just as freely, and “unspiritual” shapes are assembled without hesitation. Why not? No temporary architecture is raw reality anyway.
Quick question—consider the statement “my only political position is that I’m pro-breasts.”
Take a second to answer: is this a good spiritual teaching?
It’s a great teaching, because it’s almost impossible to turn this into a ‘noble’ or ‘advanced’ conceptual block. You cannot be proud of it. You cannot use it to signal to others that you are a high-vibrational, evolved being. If you rationalized, you were adding blocks to your tower. If you laughed, you caught the fluidity.
Anyone who has a fixed identity that they would ideally like the world to recognize, such as “spiritually advanced person”, is ultimately still attached to the specific shape of their conceptual tower.
If you think you’re free because you “play with conceptual blocks as you wish”, but really you’re only playing with them in ways that benefit you, then you’re still overly attached to the current state of your tower—including the “you” block embedded right inside it.
You’re not free. You’ve merely written “The Free Player” on a brand-new block and plopped it right on top of the stack.
Instead, where there is true fluidity, structures are put together and taken apart as needed, with complete indifference to how others label them—because there is no illusion that the temporary architecture defines what is real.
Without a permanent self-block to protect, there is no threat in looking foolish, appearing spiritually unadvanced, acting like a “normie,” or losing.
I know a wobbling tower feels like death—but if the illusion of its solidity collapses, that is the freedom you’ve been looking for. The temporary structures can still be built and used, but you’ll finally see them for what they are: just wood.
For the last part of this message, you’re invited to answer the following questions:
Question one: Can you see that you are a block inside the conceptual tower, and that there is no master player outside the tower?
If yes: is this reality actually hitting you right now, or did you just comfortably disagree / comfortably think “yes, good message” / comfortably turn this insight into a new conceptual block and add it to the top of the stack?
If you are not convinced that you’re a block: put aside all biological processes and concepts for a moment, and look—is that imagined master player actually there?
Take a moment to answer for yourself / look before you proceed.
Question two: Do you think you’ve understood this discussion of Jenga blocks?
Take a moment to answer.
Question three: Be honest—when you answered the previous question, did you think of yourself as external to / different from the Jenga blocks, or did you think of yourself as one of the Jenga blocks?
Did you treat the Jenga tower as an object “out there”, while “you” were looking at it from over “here”?
Question four: Do you think you’ve successfully transcended or gotten rid of your Jenga tower?
Or not?
If you answered “yes” to the previous question: you’re a block inside the Jenga tower, so how can you have transcended it or gotten rid of it, yet you’re still here?
Who is the “I” claiming it’s transcended / gotten rid of its Jenga tower?
That “I” is a block inside the tower. So how can the Jenga tower be gone if a block inside the tower is busy proclaiming the tower is gone?
If your mind scrambled outward to intellectualize why this text is wrong, then ask yourself: who is the one who thinks this text is wrong?
If you smiled, gave the “correct” spiritual answer, and silently added “Yes, I am a master who gets this” to your tower, then ask yourself: who is the one who is a master?
If you thought, “Yes, good message. Anyway, let’s go do something else now”—then do you truly think you’re already enlightened and have mastered non-duality and have nothing more to learn here? Or are you just leaving before your tower starts wobbling?
It’s normal that this feels so uncomfortable: your biology wants to keep manufacturing the concept that is “you”, because that’s beneficial for securing resources and procreating. I’m poking straight in your biological self-interest, so of course it feels threatening and like you’d prefer to go do something else now.
But the actual freedom you’ve been looking for lies in realizing that sensations arise, and you’re just a block; you’re not an external player who is in danger.
However, for that to actually bring you genuine peace, you first have to uncompromisingly look into the room—and see that there’s no one there. If someone were in the room, you’d point to them; you wouldn’t say “I don’t know” or “let’s go do something else.”
The thing that carries your name really is just a concept -- a block.
With all my love,
Your star sister,
