Stepping aside to step in.
“Hi, my name is Youri Hermes. Something stepped aside in my writing process, which paradoxically allowed me to deliberately step in and create books that were never really mine to begin with.
You might recognize this experience in your own creative work, perhaps using different words for it. Either way, I’d love to share how this paradox shaped everything that became Stepping Aside.”
Following what emerged.
After publishing his first book trilogy, Remember to Forget, Youri naturally began offering book mentoring. Writers kept asking about his unconventional approach to writing and publishing, so he started sharing what he’d learned firsthand.
His three books each offer a different way into living freely and lightly. Each stands alone while pointing toward what’s already moving beneath our everyday questions.
He’s now guided various writers to publish their work, many starting from scratch. While his own books explore nondual insights, the writers he mentors can write about anything. Any book from any genre can emerge from an authentic and pure place.
The mentoring draws directly from his experience with the entire process, both from his own exploration and from guiding writers who often didn’t even know they wanted to write a book.
Invites you into 77 short and playful dialogues between your imagined self and your actual nature. It doesn't explain enlightenment. It loosens the grip of needing to chase it, making it instantly available.
Shares 60 interventions across 10 transformations, each one opening a new way of relating to life's tension and pressure. It explores how responsibility can arise naturally, without being something you carry.
Offers the relief of not solving life, and playing with it anyway. It's for anyone exhausted by self-improvement who still wants to engage fully with what's here.
What surfaced next.
As working with writers deepened his understanding of writing books, a fourth book surfaced: The Art of Unwriting. This became the first in what would become the Stepping Aside series.
This book pulls back the curtain on how authentic writing actually unfolds, when there’s no one trying to control the outcome. It speaks to those sensing a book stirring within them, unsure how to begin or whether they even should.
From this exploration, three additional books began taking shape, each one emerging from the same principle: that the most authentic work arises when we step aside and let it write itself. This four-book series is bundled under Stepping Aside.
Two trilogies, two purposes.
His first trilogy, Remember to Forget, emerged from necessity rather than strategy. These books simply had to be written. They demanded to exist, regardless of any business purpose. They turned out useful to people, but that wasn’t their primary drive.
The second trilogy, Stepping Aside, aligned more directly with his profession. Exploring writing without a writer controlling it. This trilogy spoke to writers curious about letting their work unfold authentically and effortlessly.
The first trilogy apparently became the foundation for the second. The deeper principles explored in Remember to Forget (realizing there’s no self and forgetting what you think you need) laid the groundwork for Stepping Aside’s practical application to writing.
You never know their true purpose until after they’re born. Will your book become the foundation for your next series? A business cornerstone? An influence that transforms everything? The book itself decides, often surprising even its author.
A book for every phase.
“First, I had to realize what stepping aside actually entails. Then I had to remember this revelation in countless ways, learning to forget everything I thought I needed to hold onto.
Eventually I was ready to play with this knowing, and I could finally remember to forget completely. Only then could I apply this understanding to something tangible: writing a book. Each phase apparently called for its own book.”
Phase I: Realizing
Stepping aside didn’t happen when I decided to write. The decision was never mine anyway. Writing took place as soon as I stepped aside.
When this happened, it felt like enlightenment. There was a huge transformation unfolding, and it had to be written down to give it a place. Others might be left speechless for a year or more.
My first book emerged: Enlightenment, no refunds!
It explores the human experience of great relief from stepping aside. As a spontaneous life event rather than a chosen action. I made a distinction between your false self and true nature.
Your false self seems to fall back every time, forgets, wants to hear it again, tries to stay. Only your false self can swing back and forth, from interfering in life and making it heavy to knowing you’re not the doer.
Your true nature always stays in the same place. It’s indestructible. It makes every human being enlightened, with only a few being actually aware of that. We don’t have to step aside in order for stepping aside to take place.
Phase II: Remembering
Then I noticed how easy it is to fall back. Stepping in to try to control things, especially when life isn’t working out our way. It might even feel like our responsibility to solve everything: being happy, freeing your book, saving society.
This brought forth my second book: Not your responsibility.
With everything that’s going on, we could see reasons every day that make us feel like we’re stepping in again. We might become aware that either stepping in or out is illusionary and unnecessary, because we already arrived despite any conditions or circumstances. Inherently, we are already free.
This realization might come with having to remind yourself, repeatedly. Simple reminders like “you’re not your thoughts” or “you’re already free” might not be enough. Sometimes you need dynamite to break free from old patterns.
I know I did, so I listed 60 direct interventions to “stay” in our sweet place of being.
Phase III: Playing
When you’ve realized your true nature and everything seems alright, you might be ready to deliberately step in again. Just to play with your insights and paradoxical ways of looking at life. You might even like to set goals again, because you don’t mind it not being spiritual. You either see yourself doing it or you don’t, and that’s all that can be said.
Playing with reality, surrendering to it, and letting your intentions be turned into a third book: Insert life-changing title here: the relief of not solving life and playing with it anyway.
This might give you more satisfaction than having to learn or do something in order to attain or maintain a state.
I was quite fed up with that approach. When you realize you’re already peace, love, flow, it doesn’t make sense to read a book to get to that. You could tap into it anytime anyway, or you don’t and you might be at peace with that not being your decision.
Phase IV: Applying
With these three books, a nondual-inspired trilogy, it felt round. It set the foundation for stepping aside.
Stepping aside affects everything, from leading to coaching and speaking. Everything that can be done.
When there’s no more interference, our apparent actions become effective and authentic. We don’t keep taking up space with endless worries, doubts and certainties. There’s ample space left for the activity to come through. Once the doer disappears, it flows.
I found myself applying this revelation to writing. So my fourth book came into being: The Art of Unwriting.
It reminds you that you’re not the one who writes your book. With it, your book gets written naturally and effortlessly. I’d written about this before, but never applied it to a specific area in book form. This book was my first attempt at doing so, and it was incredibly fun to write, because I was simply the witness.