One of the most common confusions made by those on a nondual spiritual path like that of Advaita Vedanta is to presume that waking up entails the change of experiences that one “has.” The idea is that the Sage doesn’t “have” certain kinds of experiences–like negative thoughts or feelings–while those who are ignorant do.

This is a mistake owing to the intrusion of self-help into the nondual understanding. Let me explain.

I can do no better than to draw on the screen/image analogy. Let’s suppose that your true nature is like a blank, empty screen, and let’s say that all images–all thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions–are appearing in or on you, the screen.

Suffering arises with the identification with the content of the images, and thus with the deeply held feeling that you are the image and not the screen.

The self-help view, which is so prominent in our culture, is that you can manipulate the contents–the images–on the screen so that there are lots of positive experience and very few negative experiences. “Progress” is measured by the movement from “more negative” to “more positive” experiences while regressing is measured by the opposite. “Happiness,” on this mistaken view, refers to certain kinds of positive experiences while “misery” refers to certain kinds of negative experiences.

What I’ve just described as the self-help view is, itself, just more suffering. Clinging onto positive experience and avoiding negative experiences are both forms of suffering. And here’s the key: believing that you have to get rid of certain experiences in order to be happy is genuine ignorance (avidya).

The truth is that the direct path teaching of Advaita Vedanta is much, much simpler–though it can take some time to see that it applies “across the board.” It states that all that is necessary is for you to transcend all identifications with images on the screen. When you cease identifying with the mind, you also let go of “positive” and “negative” attributions. Moreover, when you identify with the screen, then you know that you don’t “have” experiences anyway.

The Sage doesn’t “have” any experiences (let alone good or bad ones, positive or negative ones); each experience, the Sage knows, is nothing but the screen revealing itself as this experience without really changing its essential nature as the screen.

And what is to be gleaned from this discussion? First, when the above is intellectually understood, then there is no longer any attempt to change the contents of experience, i.e., the images appearing on the screen; knowing all images (at this stage) to be only effervescent arisings, one just lets them be. Second, one lets go of “having” or “leading” a certain kind of life; that’s no longer there, no longer “a concern,” for the one who understands. Third, one knows that each experience is not only pointing to the screen and is not only illuminated by the screen; each experience, in the final analysis, is made only of the screen.

The overwhelming experiential knowledge would be akin to: “All is truly well.”