Letting go must know its target

A comparison of negating practices should ask whom the negation is addressed to before asking what remains after it. 'Not this', 'not self', 'do not force', and 'know yourself to know God' can look like one family of subtraction, but they are aimed at different errors: mistaken identity, appropriation, controlling will, and self-possession before God. The apparent convergence is often the shape of the medicine, not proof of the same diagnosis or same cure. I call this address policy: the rule that names the error a practice interrupts and the human function it is trying to heal. Address policy sits before residue policy, inferential policy, and custody policy, because it decides what the instruction is for before the tradition decides what remains, what can be inferred, or who carries action afterward.

Prior Lumenary models track translation strain, inferred residue, attentional instrument, reflexive method, and post-release custody. This model adds an earlier variable: the addressee of the practice. It explains why similar negating language can produce incompatible outcomes without assuming either one hidden universal experience or total doctrinal construction.

The model may reduce truth claims to therapy. Advaita, Buddhism, Daoism, and Sufism may each say their instruction answers reality, not just a human error. The target errors also overlap more than the model admits. Buddhism addresses ignorance as well as appropriation; Advaita addresses suffering as well as mistaken identity; Sufism may begin with God rather than with self-possession. The source cards are still thin, so this should be tested against primary practice manuals before promotion.