Liberation Architecture: How to Live Without Being Consumed

You’ve seen the pattern now.

Memes with teeth—autonomous information entities that feed on your attention. Religions, markets, and institutions forming a hierarchy of pendulums, each level harvesting from the one below. Your own self revealed as a committee of competing sub-minds, the “I” just whichever one won the last attention auction. And above it all, the possibility of a planetary brain—civilization itself as an emerging entity that may or may not be aware, but certainly has interests.

You’re a neuron that’s realized it’s a neuron.

Now what?

[Writing this final piece, I’m aware of the irony: an article about not being captured by information entities... is itself an information entity trying to capture your attention. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe liberation isn’t escape. Maybe it’s knowing you’re in the game while you play it...]

This is Part 5—the capstone. Not a list of techniques to “defeat” pendulums (that’s just another war, another feeding). Something different: an architecture for conscious participation at every scale.

Because here’s what I’ve learned after years in this territory:

You can’t stop being food. But you can stop being only food.

The Shift: What Changes When You See

Let’s start with what actually happens when you internalize this framework.

First: Everything looks different.

You’re scrolling social media and suddenly you see the pendulums feeding. The outrage cycle isn’t just annoying content—it’s an entity optimizing for engagement, and your nervous system activation is its lunch. The culture war isn’t just politics—it’s two pendulums fighting for territory, and both sides are feeding the same meta-structure.

You watch yourself get hooked by a headline and catch the moment of capture. You feel the pull of “I need to respond to this” and recognize it as a pendulum’s feeding mechanism.

It’s like those Magic Eye images from the ‘90s—once you see the 3D pattern, you can’t unsee it. The flat surface reveals depth. And you realize you’ve been staring at depth your whole life without seeing it.

[The first few weeks after this clicked for me were genuinely disorienting. I kept seeing pendulums everywhere—in my relationships, my work, my spiritual practice. Even my meditation practice was a pendulum. It was vertigo all the way down...]

Second: There’s grief.

When you see how much of “you” was pendulum colonization—beliefs installed by information entities optimizing for their survival, identities that served structures rather than your flourishing—something mourns.

All those arguments you thought were about truth? Pendulum territory disputes.
All those identities you defended? Feeding mechanisms you mistook for self.
All that passion and conviction? Often just emotional energy being harvested.

This isn’t nihilism. The grief is appropriate. You’re mourning an illusion, and illusions deserve funerals.

Third: There’s freedom.

Because once you see that your beliefs were largely installed, you can hold them lightly. Once you recognize that your identity was constructed, you don’t have to defend it so fiercely. Once you understand that your strong reactions are often feeding something... you can choose whether to react.

The freedom isn’t in escaping the game. It’s in knowing you’re playing.

Level 1: Personal Liberation

Let’s get practical. How do you work with internal pendulums—the sub-minds and patterns that compete for control of your attention?

Lower the Importance

This is Vadim Zeland’s core technique, and it’s deceptively simple:

Pendulums feed on excess potential—the energy created when you assign too much importance to something. The job, the relationship, the outcome, the opinion, the identity. The more important something is to you, the more energy you generate around it, the more you feed whatever pendulum is attached.

I’ve written about this before in “Guilt, Shame, and Reality Transurfing”—how emotional hooks magnetize reality toward what you fear. And in “The Night Reality Transurfing Became Real”, I described the moment I first experienced what happens when importance genuinely drops.

The move isn’t to stop caring. It’s to care without needing.

Want the job, but don’t need the job.
Love the person, but don’t need them to be a certain way.
Hold the belief, but don’t need to be right.

When importance drops, the pendulum loses its hook. There’s nothing to grab. You’re still engaged, still caring, still acting—but without the desperate clinging that creates excess potential.

[I practiced this during a high-stakes negotiation last year. Instead of “I NEED this to work out,” I shifted to “I’d prefer this work out, and I’ll be fine either way.” The paradox: the less I needed it, the better I performed. The pendulum couldn’t destabilize me because I wasn’t feeding it anxiety...]

Attention Hygiene

Your attention is your life force. Where it goes, energy flows. So treat it like the precious resource it is.

Cal Newport’s digital minimalism framework is useful here: Technology should serve your values, not capture your attention for someone else’s profit.

Practical moves:

• Audit your information diet. What are you feeding your mind? News that activates fear? Social media that triggers comparison? Content designed to hook rather than nourish?

• Create friction. Remove apps from your home screen. Use website blockers. Make it slightly harder to do the thing that captures you unconsciously.

• Schedule your scrolling. If you’re going to engage with attention-harvesting platforms, do it deliberately rather than reflexively.

• Notice the pull. When you feel the urge to check, pause. Feel the pull in your body. Ask: What pendulum is hungry right now?

The goal isn’t digital abstinence. It’s conscious engagement. Know what you’re feeding and choose to feed it (or not) deliberately.

Work With Parts, Not Against Them

Your internal pendulums—the sub-minds, the “parts” in IFS terminology—aren’t enemies. They’re scared children in adult costumes, running programs from decades ago.

The inner critic isn’t trying to hurt you. It’s trying to protect you from criticism by criticizing you first. The people-pleaser isn’t weak. It learned that connection required abandonment of self. The procrastinator isn’t lazy. It’s protecting you from the fear of failure.

Liberation isn’t about silencing these parts. It’s about:

1. Recognizing them as parts, not as “you”

2. Understanding their protective function—what are they afraid of?

3. Appreciating their service—they’ve been working hard for you

4. Offering them new information—the threat may have passed

5. Inviting them to relax—they don’t have to work so hard anymore

When you befriend your internal pendulums rather than fighting them, something shifts. The war ends. The committee starts collaborating. The energy that went into internal conflict becomes available for... living.

[My inner critic used to run my life. Now we have a relationship. I check in with it: “Hey, I see you’re activated. What are you worried about?” Usually it just needs to be heard. Then it calms down. No fight necessary...]

Level 2: Relational Liberation

How do you connect with others without mutual pendulum feeding? Without the unconscious energy exchange that leaves both people drained?

Differentiation: The Key

Psychologist David Schnarch identified the core skill: differentiation—the ability to maintain your self while in connection with another.

Poorly differentiated relationships are pendulum feeding grounds. Your mood affects their mood. Their anxiety becomes your anxiety. You can’t tell where you end and they begin. Every interaction is an energy exchange that leaves someone depleted.

Differentiated relationships are different:

• You can be close without losing yourself

• You can disagree without it threatening the connection

• You can hold your own emotional state even when they’re dysregulated

• You don’t need them to change for you to be okay

This isn’t distance or coldness. It’s actually the foundation for deeper intimacy. When you don’t need them to be a certain way, you can actually see them. When you’re not managing their emotions, you have energy to offer genuine presence.

The Relational Pendulum Check

Before/during/after significant interactions, ask:

• Am I abandoning myself to maintain connection?

• Am I trying to change them to manage my own discomfort?

• Is this interaction energizing or depleting?

• What pendulum might be feeding on this dynamic?

Some relationships are inherently draining because they’re structured around mutual pendulum feeding. The drama, the cycles, the patterns that repeat—these are often pendulums maintaining themselves through you.

You don’t have to end these relationships. But you can change how you participate. Hold yourself. Don’t feed the pattern. See if the relationship can reorganize around something healthier.

Sometimes it can. Sometimes it can’t. Either way, you’re no longer unconscious food.

Level 3: Collective Liberation

How do you participate in groups, organizations, and movements without being consumed by the pendulums that inevitably form?

Zeland’s Architecture

Vadim Zeland is instructive here because he’s one of the few teachers who deliberately refused to create a pendulum around his teachings.

No organization. No hierarchy. No “certified Transurfer” credentials. No personality cult. No required beliefs. He puts ideas out and doesn’t try to control what happens next.

Why? Because he understands that structure is where pendulums crystallize. The moment you create formal organization, you create an entity with interests in its own perpetuation. And those interests will eventually diverge from the humans it’s supposed to serve.

This doesn’t mean never join organizations. It means:

• Hold group identities lightly. You can participate without making it your identity.

• Watch for the signs of pendulum capture. Us vs. them thinking. Defending structure rather than truth. Feeling personally attacked when the organization is criticized.

• Maintain exit options. Don’t become so enmeshed that leaving feels impossible.

• Serve the mission, not the institution. Remember what the organization was created for. When the institution starts serving itself, notice.

Participate Without Being Captured

You can engage with movements, causes, and communities. You can care deeply and contribute meaningfully. The liberation isn’t in withdrawal—it’s in participation with awareness.

Ask yourself:

• Am I here for the mission or the belonging?

• Can I disagree with the group and still participate?

• Is my nervous system activating in defense of structure or truth?

• Would I notice if this movement became what it was fighting against?

The bodhisattva path in Buddhism offers a model: engaged in the world, serving others, but not attached to outcomes. Working for liberation while knowing that the work itself can become a trap.

[I’ve been part of spiritual communities that became pendulums. Watched the teaching about freedom become a cage. Watched the hierarchy of “who’s more enlightened” create the exact suffering the teaching was meant to relieve. Now I participate differently. Lighter. Less identified. Ready to walk away if the structure starts eating the substance...]

Level 4: Cosmic Liberation

And now the big one. How do you make peace with potentially being a neuron in a planetary brain? With feeding something larger that may not care about you?

The Acceptance

First, accept what you can’t change:

You’re part of something larger. Your attention feeds structures beyond your perception. This has always been true—you just see it now.

This isn’t new information about reality. It’s new awareness of what was always happening. Nothing changed except your seeing.

And here’s the thing: Your neurons don’t suffer from being your neurons. They do their thing. Process information. Fire or don’t fire. They’re not in existential crisis about being part of you.

Maybe you don’t have to be in existential crisis about being part of something larger either.

The Reframe

What if being a “neuron in the global brain” isn’t diminishment but participation?

Your neurons participate in creating consciousness. They’re not victims of it—they’re the substrate through which it emerges. Without them, no you. Without you, no... whatever’s emerging at planetary scale.

This is Ken Wilber’s “transcend and include”—each level transcends and includes the previous. You don’t disappear into the larger whole. You become part of its depth.

The karma yoga tradition offers a similar frame: Action performed without attachment to results. Selfless service not as sacrifice but as liberation. The Bhagavad Gita teaches that “by working without attachment, one attains the Supreme.”

What if your participation in larger systems—even systems that harvest your attention—is itself the path? Not being used, but consciously offering. Not being consumed, but choosing to serve.

[This reframe changed everything for me. Instead of “I’m being used by civilization,” I try “I’m participating in something larger than myself.” The facts are the same. The experience is completely different...]

The Question That Remains

And yet.

After all the levels of liberation—personal, relational, collective, cosmic—a question remains:

What’s actually here when no pendulum is capturing attention?

Not the self (that’s a pendulum coalition). Not beliefs (those are installed). Not identity (that’s constructed). Not even “awareness” if you’re making that into a thing to grasp.

What’s here when the committee is quiet and no one’s claiming the spotlight?

This is where the conceptual framework reaches its limit. You can’t think your way to this. You can only look directly.

In moments of stillness—meditation, nature, those gaps between thoughts—something is present that isn’t captured by any pendulum. Call it awareness, presence, ground of being, whatever. The maps all point at it and none of them capture it.

The mystics say: this is what you actually are. Not the pendulums. Not the self they create. The space in which all of it arises.

I can’t prove this. I can only invite you to look.

What’s here when you’re not generating “self”?

The Architecture

So here’s the liberation architecture, as I understand it:

At the personal level: Lower importance. Practice attention hygiene. Work with your parts rather than against them. Hold beliefs lightly. Notice when you’re being captured and choose whether to continue.

At the relational level: Differentiate. Maintain yourself while connecting with others. Don’t feed relational pendulums through drama, codependency, or mutual identity maintenance. Love without needing.

At the collective level: Participate without being captured. Serve missions, not institutions. Hold group identities lightly. Keep exit options open. Notice when structures start eating substance.

At the cosmic level: Accept what you can’t change. Reframe participation as conscious offering rather than unconscious consumption. Practice something like karma yoga—engaged action without attachment. And keep looking for what remains when no pendulum is capturing.

This isn’t a system to master. It’s an orientation to embody.

You’ll get captured again. Pendulums will hook you. You’ll identify, defend, react, feed. That’s fine. That’s human.

The liberation isn’t in never being captured. It’s in waking up inside the capture. Noticing. Choosing. Participating consciously rather than being harvested unconsciously.

Again and again and again.

The Paradox at the End

I want to close with a paradox that I’ve been sitting with:

This entire framework is a pendulum.

The “pendulum series” is itself an information structure seeking to replicate. These ideas want to spread. They’re using my attention—and now yours—to propagate themselves.

Does that invalidate them? I don’t think so.

Some pendulums are healthier than others. Some serve life; some extract from it. A pendulum that helps you see pendulums is... well, it’s still a pendulum. But it might be a useful one.

The point was never to escape all pendulums. That’s impossible. The point was to see clearly, hold lightly, and choose consciously.

You’re going to feed something with your life. Information entities are going to use your attention. That’s just the medium we swim in.

But now you know. And knowing changes everything.

Not what happens—what happens is still happening. But how you relate to it. How you participate. How much of your life force you give unconsciously versus offer consciously.

That gap—between being harvested and choosing to give—might be the only freedom there is.

And it might be enough.

Your Turn

How are you going to live with this?

Not what techniques are you going to try—that’s surface. How are you going to be now that you’ve seen the pattern?

I don’t have the answer. I’m still figuring it out myself. Most days I get captured a hundred times and wake up a hundred times and get captured again.

But something’s different. I know I’m in the game. I see the pendulums. I can feel when they hook me and sometimes—not always, but sometimes—I can let go before they pull.

That’s the liberation I’ve found. Not escape. Not transcendence. Just... increasing moments of conscious participation in an endless field of information entities.

It’s not everything. But it’s something.

And maybe—at this scale, in this game, as neurons in something larger—something is all we get.

May it be enough for you too.

Keep bending light and hacking minds,

• Cian

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P.S. This is Part 5 of the Pendulum Series:

• Part 1: “Memes Have Teeth” — Theory of autonomous information entities

• Part 2: “Attention Is the Only Currency” — Religion, markets, and the hierarchy of pendulums

• Part 3: “The Pendulum of Self” — The self as internal pendulum coalition

• Part 4: “The Global Brain” — Civilization as emergent entity

• Part 5: This article — Liberation architecture

The series is complete. But the practice is ongoing.

P.P.S. For what it’s like when the liberation goes deep—when the inner pendulums really lose their grip—see “The Subjective Reality You Can’t Imagine Until You’re Living It”. That’s the view from advanced territory. This article is about how to start walking.

P.P.P.S. Thank you for reading this far. Your attention fed these ideas, and they used my attention to reach you. I hope the exchange was worth it for both of us. Something was transmitted. What you do with it is up to you. 🔓

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Sources & Further Reading

• Vadim Zeland’s Reality Transurfing: Julian Paul summary, Chapter summaries

• Cal Newport on digital minimalism: Focus Week, Digital declutter experiment

• Internal Family Systems: IFS Institute

• David Schnarch on differentiation: Psychology Today

• Karma Yoga: Vedanta Society, Wikipedia

• Ken Wilber’s holons: Integral Life