Διά Analysis: Leveling

Phenomenologically, what shows itself in “Leveling” is not a level, but a basic movement: comparison. Not as a deliberate act, but as involuntary measuring: someone sits in meditation and notices clarity. Another person in the same room seems calmer, more open, more present. Immediately a gap appears — not between two states, but between two self-images.

What appears is not the other person’s objective “being further,” but a subjective feeling of lack or distance in oneself. The text names this precisely: “Others have something that I lack.” This is not a theoretical statement, but the description of an immediate impression, often felt in the body.

The opposite direction appears as well: “I’ve been doing this for a long time — I’ve earned my higher level.” Here too, what comes first is not a position on a scale, but a claim, an expectation, a need for recognition. What shows itself is the fear that duration has not paid off.

The text holds: what really varies are temperament, history, expression and masking. These four terms are phenomenologically precise. They describe observable differences without turning them into hierarchy:

• Temperament — basic emotional and energetic disposition
• History — biographical imprinting, trauma, resources
• Expression — how someone speaks, moves, shows up
• Masking — degree of self-concealment or self-display

These four dimensions are horizontal, not vertical. Levels arise only when these differences are arranged into an order that pretends to be more than difference: namely progress, depth, development.

Decisive is this: in immediate experience itself there are no levels. What shows itself are fluctuations — in attention, mood, load. The text concludes with a clear statement: “What is not recognized: attention fluctuates. Mood fluctuates. Load fluctuates. Instead, people say: consciousness fluctuates. That is the error.”

This sentence marks the category mistake: the condition of appearing (consciousness) is confused with what appears (attention, mood). Phenomenologically, it is the confusion of frame and picture, canvas and painting.

Psychologically, “Leveling” describes one of the subtlest forms of narcissistic regulation — not in a pathological sense, but as a normal human strategy of stabilizing self-worth. The text recognizes: “Levels are the human solution to lack and inflation.” This matters because it does not moralize level-thinking; it understands it functionally.

The basic dynamic is twofold. On the one hand: the feeling of falling behind, not being enough, insufficiency. Often this is not a conscious self-devaluation, but a diffuse discomfort searching for orientation. Levels provide orientation by turning an undefined “I’m not enough” into a definable “I’m on level 3, others are on level 5.”

On the other hand: compensatory elevation: “I’ve earned my higher level.” Here, duration (time invested) is translated into depth (ontological position). Psychologically this is understandable: if inner work is demanding, it must pay off. The thought “I have meditated / reflected / worked so long and nothing has changed” is hard to bear. Levels promise: it was worth it. You’re elsewhere now.

The text diagnoses sharply: “Comparison is the mechanism. It’s only refined. People compare depth, clarity, presence. The envy remains. The language becomes cleaner.” This describes a form of spiritual bypassing: the structure of envy (or disdain) remains intact, but is translated into a vocabulary that thinks of itself as “beyond ego.”

Especially precise is the observation: “What appears as a higher level in others is often just a person who confuses themselves less with themselves.” This names a core phenomenon: what is read as spiritual progress is often simply less identification — not more consciousness, but less self-referential absorption. Someone seems “further” because they are not constantly busy with themselves. That is not a higher plane, but a different relation to experience.

Conversely: “What appears as a higher level in one’s own experience is the confusion of path and goal.” The process (attention training, contemplative practice) is confused with the result. A moment of clarity is read as “breakthrough,” a stable phase as “arrival.” But what stabilizes is only a certain configuration of attention — not consciousness itself.

Psychotherapeutically, there are bridges to approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which distinguishes experience from identification, and metacognitive therapy, which clarifies the difference between thoughts and the relationship to thoughts. Internal Family Systems (IFS) can also connect here: “levels” can be understood as an inner part’s attempt to create order and safety through hierarchization.

Symbolically, the dominant image behind level-thinking is the ladder or staircase: a vertical structure on which one takes a position. This image runs through almost all cultures and times: Jacob’s ladder, Mesoamerican step pyramids, Dante’s mountain of purgatory, ascent narratives in mystery traditions, the degrees in Freemasonry and Rosicrucian orders, bodhisattva “stages” in Mahayana Buddhism, “stations” and ascent motifs in Christianity.

The ladder is an archetypal ordering pattern. It promises that difference is meaningful: not arbitrary, not contingent, but directed. The ladder says: there is above and below. There is a path. There is progress. This is one of the oldest human consolations in the face of existential chaos.

In spiritual contexts, the ladder is relocated inward. Heaven is no longer above the cosmos, but “deep within.” But the structure remains: higher and lower states, awakened and unawakened beings, developed and less developed souls. The image changes; the hierarchy stays.

“Leveling” demystifies this image not through polemics, but through precision: it shows that difference is real (temperament, history, expression, masking), yet not vertical. Differences are not stacked on top of each other, but placed next to each other. Not a storey, but a field.

Symbolically, this can be understood as a counter-movement to the ladder: instead of steps — a plane. Instead of hierarchy — plurality. Instead of “higher and deeper” — “different and different.” This resonates with traditions that refuse stage logic: Krishnamurti (“There is no path”), Zen shocks (“If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha”), radical Advaita (“You are already That”).

Literature also offers counter-images to the ladder: Kafka’s castle that is never reached; Beckett’s figures that do not progress; Camus’ Sisyphus who rolls the stone up the mountain without arriving. These texts deconstruct the progress narrative without falling into nihilism. They show: life is not tiered, but iterative, cyclical, horizontal.

Archetypally, “Leveling” thus operates with a re-mapping: ladder vs. plane, ascent vs. passage, hierarchy vs. difference. It does not deny difference — it changes its topology.

Linguistically, “Leveling” works with extreme reduction. The sentences are short, often incomplete, almost aphoristic. There are no expansive descriptions, no metaphorical abundance, no rhetorical decoration. The text is a scalpel, not a brush.

Especially effective is the structural work with repetition and variation. The text begins with a negation: “We rarely speak of levels because the structure of experience demands hierarchy. Rather because someone senses: […]” This move — first the wrong explanation, then the right one — is a form of Socratic correction. It picks up a common assumption and immediately undoes it.

Central is the list: “temperament, history, expression, masking.” These terms are intentionally non-hierarchical. They stand next to each other, separated by commas, without subordination. This is a linguistic gesture: difference without valuation.

A further key passage is the chain of ontologization: “From fluctuation arises the idea of an authentic state. From duration comes depth. From depth a state. From the state a level. Thus time is ontologized.” Linguistically this is remarkable: each step is built in parallel (“From X comes Y”), and each is a minimal shift. Fluctuation → state → depth → level. The text shows how language participates in reification: what begins as process is frozen into a thing.

The term “ontologized” is crucial. It is philosophically precise and poetically effective: it sounds like solidification, stiffening. Time becomes space, movement becomes position, becoming becomes being. This is not only description but also complaint: language freezes what flows.

The tone is sober, almost cold. There are no emotional appeals, no emphatic exclamations. The text refuses comfort and encouragement. This coolness is part of the effect: it interrupts the emotionally charged language of many spiritual discourses.

Linguistically, the text can be read as a critique of reification — a concept used from Lukács to the Frankfurt School: the transformation of processes into things, relations into substances. “Leveling” shows how spiritual language, too, reifies: from the flow of experience come stable entities; from fluctuation comes a “level of consciousness.”

Wittgenstein would recognize the move: “The meaning of a word is its use in the language.” The use of “level” produces a meaning that suggests levels exist outside the language game. “Leveling” makes the language game visible — and shows its limits.

Neuropsychologically, the central insight is: what fluctuates are not “levels of consciousness,” but measurable, variable parameters — attention, mood, load. These are not arbitrary terms; they point to well-researched dimensions.

Attention is among the most variable cognitive functions. It depends on sleep quality, stress, nutrition, circadian rhythms, task load, and emotional regulation. Attention fluctuates not only over days, but over hours and minutes. What contemplative contexts describe as “presence” or “clarity” correlates strongly with attentional control (sustained attention, executive attention).

Mood is neurobiologically grounded in serotonergic, dopaminergic and noradrenergic systems. It varies with context, hormones, and internal/external factors (social interaction, physical activity, daylight, cognitive load). What is spiritually experienced as “deep calm” or “inner spaciousness” can be described as positive affective valence combined with low arousal.

Load refers to cognitive load, stress response (HPA axis, cortisol), and allostatic load (cumulative strain). High load reduces available cognitive resources, impairs attentional control, and modulates emotional reactivity. A stressed person experiences less “presence” — not because their consciousness is “lower,” but because executive functions are overloaded.

The decisive point: all of these parameters are contents in consciousness, not consciousness itself. They appear in consciousness, but they are not the condition of its appearing. The category mistake the text diagnoses is neuropsychologically a confusion of correlate and condition: one measures attention and calls it “consciousness.”

This touches a methodological boundary discussed in different ways by Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson (neurophenomenology) and by Thomas Metzinger (self-model theory). Varela and Thompson argue that consciousness is not objectifiable because it is the condition of all objectification. Metzinger argues there is no self that “has” consciousness, only conscious contents that self-model.

“Leveling” stays close to this debate without taking sides. It only says: what varies are contents and modes, not the condition of their appearing. This is phenomenologically and neuropsychologically coherent: you can measure attention, modulate mood, reduce load — but you cannot produce “more consciousness,” because consciousness is not a quantity.

Practically, this matters in mindfulness research and contemplative neuroscience. What is measured (e.g., default mode network activity, gamma synchrony, anterior cingulate engagement) are neural correlates of certain attentional modes — not “levels of consciousness.” Confusing these levels of description produces conceptual noise and the illusion that one could train “consciousness” like a muscle. What is trained is attention, metacognition, emotional regulation — all valuable, but categorically distinct from consciousness as such.

Philosophically, “Leveling” is a critique of the ontologization of time. The phrase — “Thus time is ontologized” — is the conceptual core. It describes a category error with far-reaching consequences.

What does “ontologizing time” mean? It means that a temporal process (duration, repetition, stabilization) is turned into an ontological position (a being, a state, a level). Something that happens is treated as something that is. Processes become substances, becoming becomes being, time becomes space.

This error has a long philosophical history. Henri Bergson criticized in Time and Free Will (1889) the confusion of duration (durée) and space (espace). Humans tend to spatialize time — dividing it into discrete units, drawing it as a line, measuring it as a distance — and thereby miss the qualitative nature of lived time. Duration is qualitative, continuous, heterogeneous. Space is quantitative, discontinuous, homogeneous.

“Leveling” describes exactly this confusion: from the duration of a practice (“I’ve been doing this a long time”) comes a spatial position (“I’m on a higher level”). Time is translated into space — and loses its process character. What flows continuously is split into stepped floors.

Alfred North Whitehead radicalized this critique in Process and Reality (1929): not substances are primary, but events. The world is not made of things that change, but of processes that actualize. Whitehead called confusing process and substance the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness” — treating abstractions as if they were concrete entities.

That is what level-thinking does: it treats “levels” as concrete entities although they are abstractions. There are no “levels” out there or in here that one could enter like floors in a building. There is only experience unfolding, varying, stabilizing, destabilizing again.

Heidegger might speak of a forgetfulness of being: being (what makes it possible that anything is) is confused with beings (what is). Consciousness is not a being among beings, not something that has properties or runs through stages. It is the clearing in which beings can appear.

The text makes this epistemic shift explicit: “Levels do not order experience. They order comparison.” Levels are not structures of reality, but structures of ordering. They belong not to ontology (what is), but to taxonomy (how we categorize).

Existentially, this implies: if there are no levels, there is no “arrival.” There is no position one could reach from which to say: “Now I’m there.” This is not pessimism but relief: you don’t have to get anywhere. You are already here — not on a rung, but in the process.

This also touches freedom. If levels were real, freedom would be imagined as ascent: you would be trapped on your current floor, and liberation would mean “moving up.” If levels are constructs, freedom is not ascent, but the ability to see through the construct. Freedom is not a higher state, but letting go of fixation on states.

Spiritually, “Leveling” is a radical corrective against spiritual materialism — a term Chögyam Trungpa popularized in 1973. Spiritual materialism is the tendency to turn practice and insight into possession: insights are collected like trophies, states are pursued like status symbols, depth becomes new capital.

This dynamic is exposed sharply: “The envy remains. The language becomes cleaner.” Spiritual hierarchies — “levels of consciousness,” “stages of awakening,” “degrees of realization” — function structurally like worldly hierarchies. They promise distinction, recognition, superiority. Only the currency changed: not money or power, but presence and clarity.

The text refuses this economy. It does not say “everyone is equally far.” That would be a flattening lie. It says: differences exist, but they are not vertical. Spiritually, this is precise: there are people who confuse themselves less with themselves, whose attention is less reactive, who generate less suffering. But these differences are not positions on a ladder.

This resonates with non-dual lines that reject stage logic. Krishnamurti insisted: “There is no path to truth.” Truth is not the end of a way, not the top of a pyramid. It is what is visible when the search for a way stops. Similarly, the Zen provocation: “If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha” — any fixation on a goal, a figure, an ideal is already missing it.

In Advaita Vedanta, especially in radical non-gradual forms, developmental logic is also refused. Ramana Maharshi said: “There is no greater mystery than this: being reality ourselves, we seek to gain reality.” What is sought is already the seeker. Nothing needs to be reached because nothing was ever missing.

“Leveling” operates in that vicinity without adopting its grand vocabulary. It avoids terms like “awakening,” “Self,” “unity” — all the big spiritual signifiers that so easily become new fetishes. Instead it stays with the observation: what fluctuates is not consciousness, but attention, mood, load.

Spiritually, this means: non-duality is not a state one reaches. It is the structure of appearing that always already holds. What varies is not non-separation, but the experience of separation — a configuration of attention and identification, not a “lower level.”

The text thus releases from an implicit spiritual guilt: the feeling of not being far enough, deep enough, clear enough. That guilt is a product of level-thinking. If there are no levels, there is no falling behind. There is only fluctuation — normal, human, necessary. Stabilizing fluctuation is not enlightenment, but regulation. Both can matter — but they are not the same.

Contextually, “Leveling” functions as a precise intervention across several fields: therapy, spiritual communities, mindfulness discourse, academic consciousness research, and personal self-understanding.

Therapeutically, the text can be relieving. People socialized in spiritual or mindfulness contexts often carry implicit hierarchies: “I should be further,” “Others are clearer than me,” “I’ve meditated so long, but nothing has changed.” The text normalizes fluctuation. It says: what varies is not your ontological status, but your attention, mood, load. That’s human. That’s normal. There is nothing to repair.

In spiritual communities, the text can reveal implicit power structures. Where “levels” are treated as real — explicitly (degrees, titles, initiations) or implicitly (attributions of depth, clarity, maturity) — hierarchies arise. These hierarchies are not neutral: they produce dependencies, legitimize authority, and create distinction. The text cuts through the structure by showing: levels order comparison, not reality.

In mindfulness discourse, especially in and around MBSR/MBCT and the broader mindfulness movement, there is a tendency to treat mindfulness as a competence one can increase: “mindfulness levels,” “deeper practice,” “advanced meditation.” These phrases suggest a developmental ladder. “Leveling” clarifies: what is trained is attention, not consciousness. Important — but categorically different.

In academic consciousness research, the text touches a methodological question: can consciousness be measured? Neuroscience measures correlates (neural activity), psychology measures reports (subjective ratings). But do they measure “consciousness”? The text suggests: what is measured are contents and modes, not the condition of their appearing. This is not anti-science, but conceptual clarity.

Pedagogically, the essay works well as a foundational text for seminars and dialogues at the intersection of psychology, philosophy and contemplative practice. It offers a language that is neither reductionist nor dogmatic — opening a field where different perspectives can coexist without canceling each other out.

Within Διά — the larger project — “Leveling” marks an epistemic boundary. You can describe difference, analyze fluctuation, understand dynamics — but you cannot claim a hierarchy of consciousness without falling into category errors.

Διά stands for “through” and “between” — for passage, not arrival. “Leveling” is prototypical for the stance of Διά: no fixation, no substantialization, no hierarchization. Only movement, difference, permeability.