Welcome to zeropoint.org

My name is Andrew and I write only when I feel the urge to express some of the thoughts and feelings that arise whilst living life. I have absolutely no ambitions to write books (why waste trees) or become a known author (the ego's dream) — those who need to read my material will find it by serendipity on the net.

I write for four main reasons: firstly, to clarify my own ideas — often changing my own viewpoint in the process; secondly, for the sake of putting out alternative viewpoints (often alternatives to alternatives) that encourage the reader to challenge accepted belief systems (including accepted alternative belief systems); thirdly, to expose some of the nonsense put out in the name of Truth; and fourthly, to show the limits of conceptualisation.

I am always amazed when seemingly intelligent writers, teachers and thinkers eloquently dismantle a particular dogma, exposing its contrived and arbitrary nature, only to replace it with their own dogma, often similar to the displaced one but with a different vocabulary. I have fallen for that one myself although I like to think that I am increasingly fluid in my belief systems and in my ability to drop ideology when needed.

Looking back at some of the articles I have written, I cringe at how the younger me who wrote it could ever have been so narrow and judgemental (and make so many typos). This is why I tend to avoid re-reading past material. Maybe we should change our names every year to reflect the new and hopefully more conscious person we have since become, or maybe we should use a different pseudonym for every article to reflect the illusory nature of personal identity.

So please don't expect to find a ideological consistency in my material. You only get that when someone is writing from a fixed ego position. I am not trying to present an ideology, only to show the limitation of ideology itself, and sometimes that will mean I have to temporarily take up a contrary ideological position — a bit like wearing different sets of clothes for different occasions. But don't think I live in that particular set of clothes!

I either develop thoughts into full-length (sometimes tediously long) articles, or write summaries in the "thoughts" section of this site. If a thought is more complete in itself as a novel idea (perhaps practical), then I put that in the "ideas" section.

Regarding my critiques which have sparked many vitriolic responses from readers, I do want to say that I don't actually enjoy being critical about particular writers, teachers and teachings. I write these critiques because I feel it important to challenge those who try to ideologically enslaves others into dogmas — even beneficial or "good" ones — dogmas that usually rest on the back of self-inflation or teacher-inflation, and contrived authority. And where there is contrived authority, there is always some sort of manipulation going on.

I have found in the spiritual and New Age arenas that there is a general reluctance to challenge teachers and their teachings, most probably from fear of being branded judgemental and unspiritual (harmful to the spiritual ego), and because rocking the New Age boat can have financial implications for those making a living from it. (A nobody like myself does not have any fear of being branded unspiritual!)

Although I am personally focused on nondual spirituality at the moment, I do feel that there is an important place for belief systems in our human existence — belief systems that "fit" our deeper psychological profiles — provided that we don't confuse beliefs with "reality" (whatever that is). I call these belief systems reality-maps to acknowledge both their separateness from the reality that they map, and their functional use in navigating and manufacturing reality. As we become conscious of this process of how our beliefs map and create reality, we start to free ourselves from the suffocating grip of outdated and limiting belief systems and worldviews. So becoming conscious of reality-maps and how they are manufactured, is central to the awakening process.

Whilst reality-maps define the world we experience, a subset of them which might be called neomyths, are the modern mythical stories with which we colour our lives, defining more our identity or ego. Here the emphasis is not so much on how belief-systems define reality (as with the reality-map perspective) but on our personal relationship with certain beliefs and how they give meaning to who and what we are. So reality-maps and neomyths are really just two different perspectives of what is ultimately the same illusion: reality-maps emphasise the contrived nature of reality whereas neomyths emphasize the contrived nature the self.

Ultimately, everything leads back to what the Buddhists so eloquently describe: "Form is emptiness; emptiness is form."

Thank you for visiting :-)

Andrew P