From Conceptual Frameworks to the Direct Feeling of Reality

We typically perceive the world and our lives through two distinct lenses: the conceptual and the experiential. The conceptual perspective represents the ordinary way we conceive of and hold the world. It is built upon ideas, descriptions, labels, names, interpretations, frameworks, narratives, and stories. This perspective arises from consciousness or life having the capacity to render what is showing up, seemingly capturing, describing, categorising, and characterising it using language and concepts. We identify patterns in phenomena – subjective states and the seemingly objective world – apply initial notions or labels, and then elaborate upon them with likes, dislikes, worries, and desires. This ongoing description of the world is relentless.

A central assumption within the conceptual framework is that we actually know what things are because we have names and descriptions for them. We tend to believe that what we think is happening is in fact happening, fusing our interpretations with reality itself. This way of holding the world conceptually strongly suggests the existence of distinct, separate phenomena, bounded entities, stability, continuity, and endurance over time. It also creates a sense of duality and often hierarchy between experiences, where some states or moments are deemed “better” or, if we are spiritually inclined, “more awakened” than others. Perhaps most primally, this perspective often gives rise to a sense of a separate self, a bounded individual existing in and perceiving a world of objects, separate from what is not self.

While concepts and language can be useful, this reliance on descriptive frameworks can lead to difficulties. Being stuck in an experience or circumstance, for example, first requires us to conceptually know what it is. The conceptual world can often be experienced as a realm of problems to be resolved, bringing suffering, stress, overwhelm, fear, anxiety, insecurity, and confusion. Our interpretations can be partial, terribly misleading, or even flat-out wrong, as they are incapable of containing the infinity that is actually here.

In contrast, the experiential perspective is completely different from the ordinary conceptual view. It is the direct encounter with what’s here, feeling the presence of reality itself, outside of whatever we might think it is. This ceaseless encounter with whatever is showing up defines our existence. From this vantage, experience itself is the real teacher.

The Path to Experiential Understanding: Feeling What’s Here

In the exploration of nonduality, the core practice, if we can even call it that, for shifting towards this experiential understanding is called experiential inquiry. This is an invitation to discover the ways in which what’s here, what’s happening experientially, transcends all the notions we have about it. The simple way to discover this divergence between our concepts and what’s actually here is to simply feel experience. This means feeling the presence of what is here, the felt sense of what’s present. We are always feeling the presence of our experience; this practice involves bringing a little noticing to that fact.

Experiential inquiry is a wordless, non-conceptual investigation. It is not about getting rid of our knowledge, ideas, or interpretations, which arise spontaneously and can be useful. Trying to stop thinking or suppress aspects of our experience is seen as a fool’s errand and unnecessary. Instead, the invitation is to continue feeling what’s here, the felt sense of what’s here, even as labels and frameworks are being layered on top. The feeling of the moment itself is non-conceptual and is, paradoxically, where the indescribable, insubstantial, and transcendental nature of reality is found. To find this nature, one goes to what feels most concretely, palpably here, and then feels that.

Discoveries Through Direct Experience

When we feel our experience directly, independent of our interpretations, we discover its inherent nature, which diverges entirely from the conceptual view:

Transcendence of Description: Reality is ultimately unthinkable and cannot be collapsed into thought or captured by descriptions. What is here experientially is so different from what we imagine descriptively. It transcends all our notions of what it is. The experience itself is always transcending the interpretation layered upon it.
Boundlessness and Indeterminacy: The feeling of experience has no conclusion; it just keeps going endlessly. It is boundless, infinite, bottomless, unresolvable, undefinable, and indeterminate. You can never get to the bottom of what experiences are by looking. Any aspect of experience, when explored, reveals infinity; there is too much information, too much detail, too much complexity for it to ever be captured by concepts.
Dynamism and Instability: Experience is not a static, fixed thing but is constantly on the move, a ceaseless flow and dynamism. It is ever-changing and impermanent, vanishing as it appears. As it arises, it shifts into something else, disappearing as it appears. Nothing is set in stone.
No Findable Boundaries or Separation: Feeling experience reveals that there are no findable borders, boundaries, or edges. Life is nondual. Concepts like inside/outside or here/there dissolve under scrutiny as experience transcends these distinctions. While experience shows up as seemingly distinct phenomena (thought, emotion, sensation, objects), they are like the colours of a rainbow, appearing discrete but seamlessly blending into a single whole. You cannot find where one aspect of the experiential field begins or ends in relation to another; they are distinct yet inseparable.
No Separate Subject/Object: The exploration of nonduality reveals that there isn’t a separate person at the centre of the boundless field of experiencing. What is thought of as the self is simply more experience; there is a seamless continuum of experiencing, not a separate perceiver observing objects. Ultimately, you cannot find a subject (a perceiver) or an object (something perceived). There is just experience experiencing itself.
No Findable Time: Experientially speaking, we never actually encounter a past or a future. Although we can conceive of what came before this moment, experientially we only find “now”. The moment is immediately here without any findable beginning and without a findable end. Experience has no duration; it is here for no time.
The Unlosable “Isness”: Despite the constant vanishing of phenomena, there is an undeniable constancy: the flow of experiencing itself. This basis of every instant is its “isness” or pure mystery of being, which is always being felt and cannot be lost. Any state of mind, even one described as having “lost touch with the ground,” is itself made of this ground. There is no journey to this “isness” because there is no having ever left it. The deepest realisations reveal the unbreakable, inviolable, indestructible nature of this reality.
Non-Hierarchical Nature: This experiential understanding reveals the fundamental equalness of everything. Regardless of how an experience is described conceptually (e.g., joy, sorrow, clarity, confusion, ease, unease), at its basis, it is the same inconceivable, indescribable presence – pure infinity, mystery, transcendence, or the “isness”. There is no better or worse experience from this standpoint.

Applying the Inquiry: Feeling Specific Phenomena

The method of feeling experience can be applied to any aspect of what is showing up:

The Body: Instead of treating the body as a static, definable object, feel the presence of what the label “body” refers to in your actual experience. Investigating the body or its sensations (like touch) experientially reveals that you cannot get to the bottom of what they are made of; they are concretely present yet ungraspable, indeterminate, and boundless.
Thoughts and Emotions: Feel the presence of thought, whatever its content. Ask not analytically, but experientially, “What is thought?”. Feeling thought reveals it is boundless and indescribable. Similarly, emotions like anxiety are seen as concepts, while deep grief, when felt directly as life itself, transcends its description and is experienced as mysterious and inconceivable.
Objects and Perceptions: Feel the presence of what is being perceived, whether a seemingly stable object like a table or a room. Experientially, what is perceived is a dynamic, alive dance, not a static, fixed thing suggested by the label. Our knowledge of the world is only through experience. Looking at visual perception reveals a single whole, not separate pieces, despite the conceptual divisions we make.
Breathing: Feel what you call breathing. The word “breathing” is a label, but feeling what it refers to reveals something is present experientially, a movement, but you cannot arrive at a conclusion of what it is; it is boundless.
Light/Sound: Feel the presence of light or sound. Although we have names and concepts for these, experientially, they are endless and you cannot get to the bottom of what they are. While they may appear distinct, experientially they are inseparable.

Freedom Found in Indefinability

This shift to experiential understanding brings profound freedom. The things that challenge and trouble us, that we feel stuck in or victimised by, are often defined into existence by our concepts. Spiritual concepts like “bondage” are descriptions based on the idea of something being bound. However, when investigating experience directly, including what we call bondage, being stuck, or limitations, the same indeterminacy is found. There isn’t a findable thing there that one could be stuck in, nor a findable person to be stuck. The transcendent nature of experience means it is inherently free of all definition and conceptualisation. There is no place for confusion or problems to exist in this boundless, undefinable reality. Liberation, in this sense, is freedom from all our ideas and notions about what reality and ourselves are. Everything is pure freedom.

Effortless Being and Abiding Understanding

The experiential reality is not something we need to create or make effort to achieve. The engine of experience is already running effortlessly and spontaneously. Life itself is the absolute master of qualities like openness and flow. The flow of experience is endless and spontaneous; it never gets stuck. Openness is just the way life is. The practice of allowing everything to be as it is can be potent because it reveals the intrinsically full, complete, whole, undivided, perfect nature of reality just as it is, without needing to micromanage or change experience. It is often the effort to control the flow of experience in order to secure a sense of well-being that creates unrest.

The feeling that this understanding might slip away often stems from orienting to the particulars of experience and the distinctions created by descriptions. By focusing on what is common to all experience – the ground, the basis of everything, the “isness” – we see that this cannot be lost because it is everything that appears, including the very sense of having lost it. The notion of something discovered needing to “abide” becomes moot because the ground cannot ever be lost; it is inherently stabilised already. This reality is unbreakable, inviolable, and indestructible. The deepest realisations are those that reveal the impossibility of this ever going anywhere. It is not a particular state or moment of realisation; it is every experience, the isness of all moments and all states of consciousness.

In essence, shifting from conceptual understanding to experiential understanding is not a process of replacing concepts with a new set of ideas, but rather directly feeling the presence of what is, allowing experience itself to reveal its nature. It is seeing that reality transcends all our attempts to define it, discovering the boundless, dynamic, undivided, and inherently free nature of every moment. This is not merely philosophy; it is our actual experience right now. Every experience, regardless of its conceptual label, is a doorway into this boundless infinity. It is simply meeting what is here, now.