Issness Is All That Is Issing 🙃

Nov 30, 2025

Happy Sunday Friends! 🌞

This week I finished jury duty, and it was a lot. We deliberated for almost four days on a very complicated case: three defendants, thirty-three charges, and twelve strangers in a room trying to see clearly together. The weight of it wasn’t lost on any of us—we were making decisions that would directly affect these people’s lives, and everyone took that responsibility deeply seriously. I’m genuinely grateful I got to be part of it. If you ever have the chance to serve, I highly recommend saying yes. It’s a crash course in watching how different minds process the same information… and in seeing when your own “character” gets loud, opinionated, and absolutely sure it’s right—and then having to put that aside and come back to just the facts in front of you. ⚖️

That experience is the perfect doorway into today’s article, which is all about blank slate awareness, tabula rasa, and what happens when we dare to loosen our grip on who we think we are. As I joked on a recent live stream, “Issness Is All That Is Issing”—and today we’re going to walk right into that.

Also, now that jury duty is complete, my live stream schedule is getting back to normal 🎉: I’ll be on Insight Timer every Tuesday and Thursday at 10:00 AM Eastern, and live on Substack every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday at 10:00 AM Eastern. I’d love to have you with me as we keep exploring all of this together, live and in real time.

Lots of Love,
Max 💫💖

Imagine that you are not you.

Not a better you.
Not a more spiritual you.
Not “future you” after three more books, two more retreats, and the perfect morning routine you still haven’t stuck to.

Just… not you.

For a moment, let the usual storyline drop: your name, your history, your relationships, your to-do list, your problems, your hopes. Don’t fight them, just let them drift to the edge of your awareness, like a TV playing softly in another room that you’re not really in the mood to watch.

What’s left?

Most people, when they even touch this question, feel one of two things:

A weird, almost vertigo-like freedom.
Or a quiet panic: “If I’m not me… then who am I, and who’s going to manage all this chaos?”

Welcome to the blank slate.

The character and the perception machine

From the time you were tiny, something in you has been collecting data:

“This is my hand.”
“That face smiling is good.”
“That tone of voice means danger.”
“This is what people like me are allowed to want.”

Layer after layer, experience after experience, your “you” was scribbled onto the empty page. Nobody asked your permission; it just happened. Congratulations, you’ve been professionally conditioned.

Your character is brilliantly constructed. It’s your perception machine. It scans the world and constantly asks, “What does this mean about me? About my safety? About my worth?”

This is not a mistake. It’s how the human brain works. It’s subjective, biased, dramatic, and incredibly efficient. Without it, you wouldn’t know when to cross the street or how to drink coffee without pouring it into your ear.

So we’re not here to bash the character. Your character is how consciousness currently experiences this particular slice of time and space. It’s gorgeous and ridiculous and heartbreakingly fragile.

But if that’s all you ever know, you will feel trapped.
Trapped in your story. Trapped in your patterns. Trapped in the rat race of suffering, wondering why your spiritual practice still hasn’t given you a lifetime guarantee of inner peace.

Because the character can only see what fits its script.

Cracks in the mask

And yet—while the character is busy judging and interpreting, something else is quietly going on.

Moments that don’t quite fit the storyline sneak in:

Those seconds in nature where time disappears.
Laughing so hard you forget to defend yourself.
Holding someone’s hand in a hospital room and suddenly, there are no roles, only presence.
Watching a movie and, for just a beat, completely forgetting yourself (and not because you checked out on your phone).

Those are cracks in the mask. Tiny ruptures in the “I am only this person” story.

Through those cracks, something wordless shines. Timeless. Spacious. Not interested in your resume, your trauma, or your spiritual progress report.

You could call it Truth, awareness, Love, God, Beingness, consciousness, or nothing at all. The label doesn’t really matter. Every label splits it in two: this vs. that, true vs. false. The thing itself doesn’t split. It just… is.

And honestly, if you are going to put something on a T-shirt, I’m partial to:
“Issness Is All That Is Issing.”
Silly? Yes. But it points to something real: this isn’t a person doing awareness correctly. This is awareness “issing” as everything—including your confusion, your resistance, and your attempts to understand what the hell “issing” even means.

And it’s always here, even while the character is busy interpreting, reacting, scrolling, fixing, and trying to become worthy. It doesn’t care how many lessons of A Course in Miracles you’ve done. It’s not grading you.

Acting, readings, and getting out of the way

When I used to act, there were nights where Max wasn’t “doing” the character. The character was just… happening. Lines arose. Emotions moved. The body responded. Max was still in there somewhere, but he was more backstage than center stage, finally letting someone else have the spotlight.

Those were the nights the audience would say things like, “It felt so real,” or “Something was different tonight.” On those nights, I wasn’t trying to be real. I was letting something real use me.

Later, when I did intuitive readings, the same dynamic showed up.

If I stayed as “Max, trying to be intuitive and helpful,” things were muddy. I’d worry:
“Am I getting this right?”
“Do they like me?”
“Is this landing, or are they just being polite?”

But if I let go—if I relaxed the grip on “me” for a bit—something else clicked in. The words, images, and insights came from somewhere beyond my personal opinions. I wasn’t manufacturing them. I was watching them arrive.

Was it pure, perfect, and bias-free? No. As long as there’s a human nervous system involved, there’s distortion. But it was remarkably clearer when I got out of the way.

As a kid, that blank-slate openness came very naturally to me. Later, I learned to refine it, but the essence was the same: step aside and let something larger speak.

You don’t have to be an actor or an intuitive to know this space. You’ve tasted it any time you’ve disappeared into what you’re doing so fully that the “you” doing it falls away. No incense required.

The terrifying freedom of “tabula rasa”

Here’s the tricky part:

The idea of a blank slate can sound romantic—
until you actually feel it.

Tabula rasa doesn’t mean you lose your memories or personality. It’s not brain damage. It’s not pretending you never suffered, or bypassing your trauma, or floating off into spiritual la-la land while your life catches fire in the background.

It’s more like this:

For a moment, you stop assuming that your past, your labels, your wounds, and your preferences are the only reference point for reality.

You stop automatically consulting the character’s script before you feel, see, or respond.

You loosen the requirement that everything must be interpreted as “for me” or “against me.”

And in that loosening, there’s a strange, raw openness.

Who am I, if I’m not the sum of my stories?
What if this moment doesn’t need my commentary?
What if life knows what it’s doing, even without my constant editing?

That can feel like standing on the edge of a cliff with no railing.

The mind screams, “If I’m not my story, I’ll vanish. I’ll become nothing. I’ll be unsafe.”

But notice: every time you cling back to the old script for safety, you also pick up your old suffering. The same loops. The same offense. The same meaning-making that has exhausted you for years. Same show, different day.

Nothing wrong with the character

I want to be very clear: there is nothing wrong with the character you play.

Your nervous system, your preferences, your quirks, your humor, your particular way of moving through the world—none of that is a mistake.

The problem isn’t the character.
The problem is forgetting that it’s a character.

If you think the movie is all there is, you will spend your life trying to fix the plot instead of realizing you are also the screen it appears on.

When you begin to sense yourself as the screen—this open, aware presence in which everything arises—the character becomes lighter. You can still pay your bills, send your emails, cry when you’re hurt, and delight in stupid memes. But the desperation eases.

You see that the perception machine is doing what it does, but it’s not all that you are.

A small experiment, right now

Let’s turn this from concept into a tiny live experiment as you read:

For the next few sentences, let everything be exactly as it is.
Don’t try to relax. Don’t try to “be spiritual.” Don’t try to understand. (Your mind will try anyway. Let it have its little moment.)

Just notice:

Thoughts are appearing.
Sensations are appearing.
Emotions, subtle or loud, are appearing.
Even the sense of “me reading this” is appearing.

Now, with a very light touch, ask:

What is not appearing?
What is here before the next thought, the next feeling, the next judgment?

You can’t see it as an object, the way you can see your hand or hear your inner voice. But you might sense a kind of open space—a silent, aware “something” that doesn’t come and go as quickly as the rest.

That space is already blank. It’s already free. It doesn’t need healing. It doesn’t need convincing. It doesn’t need your character to be more spiritual, more healed, or more “high-vibe.”

And yet, it’s not separate from your character. It’s what your character is happening in.

The courage to step aside

Letting go of who you think you are isn’t about self-improvement. It’s about curiosity and courage.

The courage to stop defending the image.
The courage to question the story.
The courage to admit that your perception machine, as brilliant as it is, might not be the final authority on Reality. (Shocking, I know.)

You don’t have to renounce your life or shave your head. You don’t have to move to a cave or pretend you no longer care about anything.

You’re simply invited to notice—again and again—that you are more than the one who is noticing.

So as this day unfolds, you might play with this:

When you catch yourself reacting as your usual character, just quietly ask:
“What if this isn’t the whole story?”
When you feel the old suffering loop starting up, ask:
“Who would I be here, if I didn’t automatically believe my interpretation?”

Not to get the “right” answer. Just to crack the mask a little, to let some light through.

Because in those cracks, the blank slate that has always been here starts to reveal itself—not as an idea you believe, but as the wordless truth of what you are, even when you forget.

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