Why I Refuse to Sell the Dream

A severance line between waking up and staying asleep.

If you’re wondering what this is, what I’m doing, or what this work is actually about, start here. This isn’t coaching. It isn’t spirituality. It’s not about healing, improving, integrating, or becoming a better version of yourself. And it’s not about the dream getting softer. It’s about the dream ending.

If that feels harsh, wrong, cold, or too much, that’s fine. There are oceans of voices speaking to the softer side of the dream. This isn’t one of them. If something in you already knows it’s done pretending, done fixing, done rearranging the furniture inside the illusion, then this is where it begins.

Note: This piece stands at the threshold. It’s not part of The Vault, but it carves the line that separates the dream from what’s real. If you’re not sure whether The Vault is for you, start here.

This isn’t written to argue or to convince anyone who prefers the dream, which would be a totally valid preference. It’s written to save you years, maybe decades of circling. Years spent doing work that feels like progress, while unknowingly preserving the very thing that suffering is made of.

People sometimes wonder why so much of what I write seems bleak. Cold. Heavy. Unforgiving. Why I don’t write about the warmth, the beauty, the peace and the sweetness that many associate with awakening.

It’s simple.

Most of what is written about awakening isn’t about awakening at all. It’s about dreaming. About upgrading the dream. About swapping out the painful stories for better ones. Stories about love and presence. About wholeness. Stories that let the identity survive, just dressed in different robes.

I could write that. I could write the kind of things that make you feel safe. Things that soften the chest. Things that let you believe awakening means becoming a gentler, kinder, more present version of yourself. Things that affirm that you’re almost there. That it’s all love. That everything is unfolding perfectly.

And if I did, I would probably attract a very large following. There is no shortage of demand for that.

But the truth is, I have zero interest in that game. None. There are already more than enough people doing that. Enough teachers. Enough writers. Enough voices feeding the part of the mind that just wants to be safe inside the dream. The part that says, fine, take the suffering, but let me still be someone. Let me still be spiritual. Let me still be kind. Let me still be good. Let me still be whole.

That’s not what this space is for.

I write the way I do because this is about the end of the dream. Not the dream becoming softer. Not the dream getting more spacious or more kind. The end of it.

That’s why I write so much about the collapse. Not because I’m obsessed with pain. Not because I enjoy the brutality of it. But because collapse is the one thing most avoid, and the only thing that truly severs. Everything else is recovery, or what grows after the burn.

People often ask why I don’t write more about what happens after. After the dust settles and the collapse has burned everything. And the answer is simple: this space isn’t for that. The more that’s said here about what comes after, the more it risks becoming a construction project. A picture. A fantasy. A thing for the mind to chase. A thing to compare itself to. A thing to strive for. Another story. Another dream.

If reading this stirs something uncomfortable, good. Look at that. If there’s defensiveness, frustration, anger, dismissal, the urge to argue, the impulse to reject it as wrong, harsh, cold, or incomplete, that isn’t random. It isn’t about the words on the screen. It’s about what’s being touched.

What exactly is being defended. What feels threatened. What needs this to be wrong. What needs it to be softer, kinder, warmer, or more hopeful.

If that’s happening, then the dream is being exposed in real time. The machinery is running right now. And you can watch it. You can see exactly how the mind protects itself. How the identity reaches for anything it can use to discredit the thing that threatens it.

The words aren’t doing anything. They don’t have power. They don’t hold force. They are a mirror. If there’s a reaction, the reaction is yours. And the clean question is, whose is it.

Not to shame it or to fight it. And not to transcend it. Just to see it.

Because the truth doesn’t defend itself. The truth doesn’t need the dream to approve. The truth doesn’t negotiate with comfort.

The only thing that cares whether this is right or wrong, helpful or hurtful, too cold or not spiritual enough, is the thing this text is aimed at.

Look at it.

There are already oceans of voices talking about the other part. About presence, love, embodiment, healing, integration. And for most of them, whether they know it or not, it’s still the dream talking. The dream of being free. The dream of being someone who made it.

None of that is wrong. It’s just not what this is about.

This is about what happens when the floor disappears. When the scaffolding of self snaps and there is nothing left to hold on to. Nothing left to rebuild. No one left to rebuild it.

It’s not that there isn’t beauty, or tenderness, or sweetness. There is, more than ever. But it’s not something to attain. It’s not something you become. It’s not the reward for dismantling the dream. It’s just what remains when nothing is held anymore.

And the truth is, what happens after that is not really describable. Because there is nobody left for it to happen to. Life moves. Or it doesn’t. It looks like tenderness. Or distance. Or stillness. Or feral emptiness. Or laughter. Or silence. But there’s no one there claiming it. No one there who needs it to mean anything.

That’s why I don’t write much about the warm and fuzzy stuff. Not because it’s bad or because it’s wrong. But because it belongs to the dream. And I am not interested in feeding that.

This isn’t about becoming a better version of yourself. It’s about the end of the one who wants that.

PS: The fire is freely given.
If something cracked open in you and it feels clean to give a gift, you’re welcome to.
Not as payment. Not in return. Just as a quiet gesture of support, if that’s what stirs.

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All gifts support what’s slowly unfolding through → Suan Jai.

The fire is offered freely. The Vault holds something else.