Going Grey and Loving Every Moment: Finding Space Beyond Absolute Answers

Welcome to my little Hobbit Hole basement studio – I'm not recording music this time, but writing.

Normally, these ideas stay tucked away in draft files until a manuscript is finalized. But as I work through the core themes for Volume 2 of my three-part series, Finding the Grace of Uncertainty—tracking for a mid-2027 release—I wanted to open the door early and share a few seeds of thought. Besides, at this stage of life, "going grey" isn't just happening to my hair; it’s become my whole philosophy.

For much of my life, I was conditioned to view the world through rigid binaries. Saved or lost. True or false. Black or white. We were taught that absolute certainty is the ultimate moral posture, and that stepping outside the safe lines of pre-packaged religious certainty meant stepping into disastrous life choices—with consequences rippling through binary rewards and punishments for all eternity.

Scared yet? Scared enough to nudge yourself back into views you once believed were rock solid?

But what happens when those old certainties about life and eternity crack?

When I first stepped away from dogmatic certainty, I assumed the goal was simply to find a better system—like downloading a quick phone or software update to patch the bugs. Yet as I explored the modern landscape—from self-help trends to esoteric non-dual philosophy—I kept noticing a familiar pattern. The spiritual and secular marketplaces are crowded with new dogmas that are often just old coercion wrapped in fresh vocabulary. It is entirely too easy to get caught in a Dogma Exchange, trading one anxiety-driven rulebook for another without ever changing our underlying posture.

Volume 2 is an exploration of a very different way of being: what I call Non-Dual Dualism.

It sounds like a mouthful, but the heart of it is practical and deeply human.

On one hand, we need practical distinctions to navigate daily life. We need to distinguish between helpful and harmful, order and chaos, morning and night. That is the necessary, functional side of human reason—the dualism that keeps us from walking into traffic.

The trouble starts when we weaponize those practical distinctions into absolute, unyielding boundaries. That is where non-dualism comes in. It reminds us that the rigid lines separating "us" from "them" usually exist only inside our own anxiety.

Living as a non-dual dualist simply means learning to sit comfortably in the grey areas of life, abiding not being sure of some things, and that is ok.

It means replacing the hyper vigilance of always looking for spiritual battles and culture wars with the quiet, open posture of curiosity. It means realizing that uncertainty isn't a terrifying void waiting to be filled with fresh dogma; it is the wide-open space where grace, genuine connection, and creative thought actually live. It is the wide pasture where the "goats"—those rugged free-thinkers of Volume 1 of Finding the Grace of Uncertainty—choose to roam.

Over the coming months, I’ll be sharing a few more of these pre-emptive thoughts on how we perceive truth, how high-control environments—including the Evangelical structures I deconstructed from, which align so closely with Dr. Steven Hassan’s models of thought enclosure—operate under new names to capture our attention, and where real meaning sits once the noise settles down. Too often what we believe with certainty is simply a ritual or performance art masquerading as enlightenment.

Thanks for walking the path with me. As always, the coffee is a dark roast, freshly ground, brewed and served piping hot, the hair is silver, and the conversation is wide open.