Boundary and Ultimatum: What Depends on My Action — In Plain Words

Epigraph

"your option is avoidable"

William James, The Will to Believe, Section I. Fragment of the discussion on alternatives that permit a third way out; cited from the 1912 edition.

What This Article Is About

Picture the scene: the hallway, shoehorn at the ready. Oleg is running exactly forty minutes late, while Dasha jingles her keys and announces that in ten minutes flat she is getting into a cab and heading off to their friends' gathering all by herself. Oleg immediately flips the switch to offended innocence: claiming blackmail, tyranny, and an intolerable bid to boss him around. A week later, Oleg delivers his symmetrical counterstrike: he announces that if Dasha dares to meet up with her friend, he will cancel their shared vacation. Both lines sound remarkably similar—each packs a condition and an inevitable "then." Yet the inner mechanics of these two constructions are fundamentally different.

The difference between a healthy boundary and a blunt ultimatum has nothing to do with magic psychological buzzwords scavenged from social media. The core lies in the mechanics: what specific participation a person halts for themselves, what they are genuinely capable of executing on their own, whose resources get consumed in the process, and whose choice they are trying to snap over their knee. Laying down an honest boundary can feel thoroughly unpleasant, and a relationship might take a jolt from it. On the flip side, a syrupy, polite proposition is capable of boxing someone into a corner far more brutally than any shout. Neither an intimate velvety tone nor the trendy mantra "I choose myself" serves as an automatic pardon against manipulation.

I. The Consequence: An Event or an Instrument of Leverage

Dasha is physically capable of stepping through the door and leaving alone—the laws of physics are firmly on her side here. Her step plugs an entirely concrete gap: sitting in the corridor longer than she is prepared to wait is simply something she is not prepared to do. If Oleg chooses to keep meditating on the couch or trails along later by public transit, the evening may be scrambled, but nobody has stripped him of the right to make decisions for his own person. Dasha is not threatening to throw him out by the scruff of his neck or force him to lace his boots at the speed of light. She will have to swallow consequences of her own: sitting among friends solo and fielding awkward inquiries about where her partner vanished to.

Oleg’s cancellation of their shared vacation, however, is concocted from far more potent brew. Perhaps his genuine desire to fly anywhere evaporated entirely against the backdrop of household friction—we will not presume to guess at another person's inner motives. A real possibility of opting out of a trip is one thing, but in practice, canceling the shared journey transforms into an added threat and a blunt cudgel designed to extort a surrender regarding a meetup that Oleg has no direct stake in whatsoever. One has to look reality in the eye: what is the connection between the friend and the purchased holiday packages, whose hard-earned funds are buried in them, and who ultimately takes the brunt of this maneuver? Shared tickets, mutual savings, and commitments made to children cannot be magically transferred onto the sole personal balance sheet of whoever issues the condition simply because the words came out of their mouth.

It pays to distinguish an organic consequence—where a person simply winds down their own personal participation—from a punitive spectacle concocted to wring out submission. If I don't feel like driving, the car stays parked in the yard, and nobody rides in it with me behind the wheel. But if I hide someone else's keys and ID cards to extort compliance, that belongs to an entirely different genre. Grinding your teeth in fury can happen in both scenarios. Yet the boiling point of righteous anger does not by itself make a stance right or wrong: one needs to examine not the thermometer of hurt feelings, but what concrete actions people are inflicting upon one another.

A direct link between an action and a consequence does not grant a blanket license for arbitrary unilateral caprice either. If you hold a resource vital to the other person's survival, if you are the sole helper within a fifty-mile radius, or if you previously locked yourself into an ironclad commitment—you are obliged to take into account the other person's dependence, realistic timelines, and the opportunity to renegotiate. The label "boundary" does not convert callousness into a heroic deed, nor does it wipe out accepted responsibility. Its purpose is far more pedestrian: to delineate the perimeter of one's own participation without daydreaming that one is an omnipotent puppeteer.

II. Who Executes What Is Being Declared

Any condition soberingly clears up the moment you inspect who has been drafted as unpaid manual labor. The decree "You will stop yelling" outlines the behavioral retraining of another human being. The phrasing "I will hang up the phone if the yelling continues" describes an entirely manageable physical motion by the speaker themselves. In the second case, it is at least clear what will happen a second later. This guarantees nothing about the person on the other end of the line melting into profound respect—they may very well flare up louder—yet the action itself does not cease to be real.

However, the singular pronoun "I" alone will not insulate against the craving to bend a companion to your will. One can grandly profess: "I choose for you to stop seeing your relatives," preserving the impeccable grammar of an unrepentant egocentric. One can label the pocketing of someone else’s stash money or the leaking of private correspondence a "deeply personal decision." Therefore, one must peer right through the polished packaging: whose hands will execute the act, what access will be blocked, what did the person genuinely consent to, and do they retain a real chance to opt out without a custom-tailored penalty slapped onto them?

In shared living, boundaries hinge on shared participation, not on the hostile takeover of the entire square footage. If two people share a single workspace den, one person's decision not to answer late-night calls does not grant them the right to evict the other onto the stairwell landing. People will have to move their tongues: sync schedules, partition corners, and throttle the decibels. Space is tight for both, and nobody is serving up a flawless world on a silver platter. Owning up to a shared logistical puzzle is far more mature than branding every domestic hitch as an assault on personal sovereignty.

Dasha can announce her departure time and leave Oleg his own set of keys. She was never hired to provide personal logistics services to a fully capable adult citizen. But if there is only one key, and slamming the door behind her leaves Oleg locked inside four walls without a way out, the narrative abruptly shifts genres. A mundane domestic detail instantly nullifies a glossy declaration of independence. A sane boundary always cross-checks against reality: who is in a position to turn the lock, reach the destination, and haul their share of the collective cart.

III. Not Every Crossroad Consists of Only Two Paths

In Section I of The Will to Believe, William James distinguishes a forced option from one where it is entirely possible to step aside. A verbal standoff reduced to two choices does not mean the universe has collapsed into them. Naturally, this is a venerable philosophical treatise on the nature of belief, not a cheat sheet for kitchen showdowns. Yet the question drawn from it is eminently practical: are the two doors proclaimed really the only openings in the room?

The ultimatum "Either you drag yourself along with me, or you don't care about our relationship at all" fuses a questionable evening outing with a sweeping verdict on the entire bond. Between those polar extremes sits a whole train of options: travel separately, drop by for half an hour, hash it out tomorrow, or quietly go about your own business without filing for divorce. None of these paths is obligated to elicit ecstatic applause from both parties. The vital thing is not to plaster over these side paths with a dramatic roar of "there is no middle ground." Granted, rejecting an idiotic dilemma does not automatically birth an inspired compromise that satisfies every saint.

Sometimes forks in the road are strictly uncompromising. If the countdown on a booking payment expires at midnight, sticking one's head in the sand is also a choice bearing its own invoice. If a person is physically unready to share domestic life under the old terms, fabricating stories of undying bliss for the sake of another’s comfort is dubious charity. Here it is far more honest to state out loud the deadline, the rationale, and one's own impending move. A time constraint in and of itself is no sin; the sin lies in sketching counterfeit urgency on the fly merely to squeeze an accommodating concession out of someone else.

It helps to ponder: what would have unfolded had the other party simply ignored the loud declaration? Dasha still has no appetite to marinate for another hour in the hallway and is capable of walking off into the evening. Oleg, had he never learned about Dasha's gathering with her friend, might well have been peacefully packing his luggage for the resort. This is not an absolute lie detector, but it offers a way to deduce whether a consequence serves to safeguard personal bandwidth or functions exclusively as an instrument to drill compliance. It is safer to seek the answer in concrete deeds rather than decoding a sour expression on someone's face.

IV. A Warning Does Not Equal a Promise to Inflict Harm

It is completely valid to state in advance: the conversation is over, the power drill is no longer available on loan, and I am not participating in outside ventures. Such a forewarning affords the other person tangible landmarks so they do not build castles in the sky. Especially if things had run like clockwork for years. If a vehicle used to be handed over at the first whistle every Saturday and now the shop is closed, relaying this before bags are packed is basic decency, even if no contract was signed in blood.

A boundary rots with impressive speed when gratuitous sabotage is tacked onto it. "I will not lend you my car" and "I will slash your tires if you dare to start the engine" are not two shades of the same psychological fence. The latter phrasing cannot be sanctified even by an angelic tone of voice. The same holds true for airing dirty laundry in public, striking at raw nerves using entrusted secrets, and threatening to cut off air supplies in essentials. Dressing up spite in the wrapping paper of "care and pedagogy" will not fly: the essence remains intact.

Occasions arise where an individual does not quite know whether they possess the stomach to see things through. They slam down a draconian deadline merely banking on a bluff, hoping their cards won't be called. In such a stretch, it is far more constructive to rein in the horses before rattling the rafters. It is cleaner to admit one's own disarray: right now I cannot continue, I need to catch my breath, and what comes next I will figure out with a clear head. It sounds less monumentally heroic, yet tomorrow there will be no need to sheepishly pretend that yesterday’s menacing roar was just a trick of the wind.

An overextended swing can easily be walked back to reality. Dasha could very well have blurted out in the heat of the moment that she would never set foot on any trip alongside Oleg ever again, only to realize later that the whole issue boiled down to today’s forty minutes. Reverting to reality requires neither crawling on one's knees nor defending every reckless utterance until blue in the face. One can plainly state: "I pushed it too far there, but today I am leaving on my own." The scale of claims gets recalibrated, and the decision itself remains a normal choice rather than a trophy won in an elocution contest.

V. Consent Purchased at the Price of Fear

In Matthew 20:25–28, Jesus lays out the operational dynamics for his disciples: instead of the ingrained habit of lording it over others and applying sheer pressure, a path of service is held up. If a cautious parallel is drawn here, it is strictly ethical—concerning the temptation to twist the arms of those who depend on you. An ancient text does not govern modern domestic spats and certainly does not demand that you break your back for every outside whim. What remains in the dry residue is the fundamental question: what bill gets slapped onto a person for attempting to say "no"?

If compliance is extorted through the terror of getting fired, being left without a roof overhead, or losing access to bare necessities, outward agreement and docile silence are worthless. The person merely opted for the lesser of two evils to avoid being left utterly destitute. One does not need to plaster clinical psychiatric labels onto either party to spot a primitive lever at work. It suffices to record dispassionately: which specific wire is being pulled and what retaliation will strike for disobedience. This grounds assessment in sober fact rather than drafting cheap melodramas about cosmic villainy.

Nor should one discount the real straits into which people fall through no luxury of choice. A mutual relocation to the middle of nowhere, an infant in arms, or the lack of any place to sleep bind people faster than heavy ropes. Cheerful internet platitudes urging folks to "slam the door proudly and start from scratch" regularly shatter against harsh realities. In environments marked by threats, physical violence, or acute dependence, joint soul-searching dialogues and boundary experiments can be downright unsafe. In such straits, it is time to soberly gauge personal safety and seek whatever support is genuinely at hand, rather than attempting to rehabilitate a partner through endurance tests; continued contact when facing threats is not mandatory.

At the same time, not every bout of universal sorrow equates to mortal dread, and not every inconvenience or consequence is engineered as a punitive expedition. Not every discomfort is manipulation. If two people are headed down diverging tracks, one will find it excruciatingly painful to learn that the other is stepping off the train. Yet the sheer depth of that grief does not make the departure sinful or saintly. One must weigh the entire setup: what promises were given, how the news was broken, and whether an opening exists to part ways decently. Demanding that another person "never, under any circumstance, upset me" is the surest highway to denying them any right to their own voice.

VI. Another’s Freedom Does Not Require My Infinite Availability

In Surah Al-Baqarah (2:256), it is plainly stated that there is no compulsion—firmly within religious coordinates. You cannot squeeze a ready-made domestic code out of this, nor a grand theory claiming all doctrines hum the exact same tune. The parallel here is strictly modest: conviction stands apart; breaking someone over your knee stands apart. Everything beyond that is our own reasoning: it is entirely viable to concede another person's right to live as they see fit, while simultaneously refusing them any right to ride atop your shoulders.

For instance, it is senseless to demand that an adult brother cease his midnight raiding campaigns in online gaming. But one can comfortably stop operating as his private alarm clock, placing five reminder calls every morning and lying to his supervisor to cover up truancy. If you earlier swore an oath to drive him to a critical appointment, that tab has to be resolved on its own terms: future autonomy does not erase past commitments by mere silence. The brother remains free to carouse further, configure ten alarms, or skip going anywhere altogether. Nobody contracted to guarantee him five-star accommodations under every imaginable circumstance.

Here, a foolish temptation perpetually crops up: declaring one's boundary successful only when the other party crawls back in line. The brother woke up on time—hooray, the method works! He overslept again—blast it, the screws need tightening. Congratulations: your "personal space" has once more mutated into a disciplinary barracks. Measuring outcomes is far healthier when turned inward: did you cease participation you no longer consent to, did you give decent notice regarding prior commitments, and did you leave a grown individual the right to bump their own forehead against the walls?

A messy conclusion can strain the nerves of both sides. You get handed complaints of callous heartlessness, your brother absorbs a financial penalty at work, and shared plans fracture. This is no signal to rush back in with a tea tray and apologies, but neither is it an excuse to smirk with malicious glee: "serves you right." Sympathy for another's rough patch can exist without re-enlisting into servitude. Just as one can extend one-off assistance if one genuinely desires to, rather than doling it out automatically after every sour pout.

There is another favored theatrical performance: imagining oneself a noble refusenik while continuing to haul the harness, sighing poisonously and grating on everyone's nerves. The brother still gets his five morning calls, served up with a side dish of lectures on how utterly fed up everyone is with waking him. There is no boundary here whatsoever—merely the cheap barter of one's own irritation. It is far more honest to admit to oneself: "Yes, I am still coddling him," and figure out how much fuel is actually left in the tank. One should not expect telepathy from people or treat a scowl as an official notification of terminated services. If you are prepared to help, demarcate a legible format: one check-in call at an agreed-upon minute. If you are not prepared, drop the pious martyrdom struck for the sake of a flattering pose. The proposed exit must, first and foremost, be within the realistic powers of whoever articulates it.

VII. Shared Commitments Cannot Be Hidden Behind Personal Choice

A boundary revolves around personal participation, but what happens when that participation was explicitly promised beforehand? Suppose two people agreed to take turns driving a child to after-school activities, and then one declares: "I am having an episode of personal growth and self-actualization; discussing schedules is beneath my dignity." The second parent is abandoned face-to-face with an active fire. Masquerading irresponsibility behind the trendy label of a "boundary" is a shoddy trick. Be so kind as to explain: how did you sign up, why did you jump the hook, who will pick up the slack, and how will you hand over the reins without pretending the original agreement was a figment of your partner's imagination?

One can step back from new obligations while preserving a shred of conscience during the transitional phase. If you have grown sick of dragging someone else's startup on your back, the decent thing to do is tie off the pending loose end and establish a firm date of departure. This is a reasonable approach, not a universal dogma: resources can evaporate abruptly, and circumstances can turn blatantly toxic or dangerous. The vital thing is to avoid feeding people lines about a "seamless transition" when there is no fuel left at all, and not to sacrifice health for the sake of a tidy presentation.

Dasha and Oleg would do well to drag their collective departure ritual into the light. If Dasha single-handedly coordinates logistics, packs bags, and summons the cab, her timer starts running long before those ill-fated forty minutes at the threshold. A solitary protest at the front door will not fix rotten logistics. They will have to speak out loud, lip to ear: who tracks the clock, who packs the gear, and who dials in if an emergency hits. That conversation is vastly more fruitful than litigating who held the original license to issue terms.

Sometimes a profoundly unpleasant truth emerges: the joint format is non-viable at its foundation. One is punctual to the point of nausea; the other is organically allergic to time management. That means traveling separately, crossing paths less frequently at mutual gatherings, or locating alternative touchpoints. A difference in temperament does not have to be pulverized into dust for the sake of the pretty myth of "two halves." But turning separate travel into a cold war—refusing to speak for weeks, deliberately striking someone from agreed plans purely as punishment, or demanding groveling tributes for "bestowed freedom"—is kindergarten of the highest order.

New shared conditions require a response from the participants: a stylish "I have decided" does not quietly erase a prior agreement on its own. At the same time, personal refusal does not require another person's permission; it is crucial to separate one's own participation from what has already been promised together.

VIII. After the Condition Comes the Test of Action

A fierce sentence barked at the threshold lasts a couple of seconds; the actual cinema begins immediately afterward. Dasha endures her ten minutes, steps into the cab, and is promptly consumed by an itch to fire off five massive paragraphs to Oleg analyzing his profound character defects. That nagging itch can simply be observed without racing to satisfy it. One does not need to impersonate a Buddhist monk to carry a decision across the finish line. Yet hammering out miles of furious prose demanding immediate repentance is the surest route to turning your departure into a vulgar hunt for the other person’s confession of guilt.

Oleg, for his part, has every right to announce that he disagrees with the deadline, and that taking the subway is bothersome and inconvenient. This valuable data can be taken into account without frantically canceling the taxi order. If a fatal detail surfaces—for example, if Dasha automatically pocketed the only apartment key, leaving Oleg a prisoner—the blunder must be owned and rectified. Distinguishing fresh operational data from habitual grumbling is healthy, but doing so does not require treating every word from a partner as sophisticated manipulation. The other person remains a living participant in events, not a training dummy for psychological maneuvers.

One’s own price tag also deserves a realistic appraisal at the shore. Cut off late-night telephone outpourings—get used to falling asleep with the sense of an unfinished gestalt. Cease handing out your vehicle left and right—a portion of joint excursions may go up in smoke. Refuse to step into a brawl—make peace with the fact that the final scathing word will not belong to you. If your plan functions only on the prerequisite that the other party promptly surrenders and begs for quarter, you possess no action plan at all. That is an invitation to trim the sails down to an achievable move, rather than dumping ashes on your head over "insufficient mindfulness."

Calibration does not have to drag on indefinitely. Having taken one step, you might uncover that the assumed burden is excessively cumbersome or flatly unworkable. The next bar can be set more precisely, modestly, and quietly. And that constitutes a healthy, fact-based adjustment rather than hysterical thrashing around to extort compromises. One must lean on the reality of one's own capacity. The shift can be stated straightforwardly without compelling the other person to pledge allegiance to every revised version or overlook the flaws of the preceding one.

It would not hurt to check for hidden landmines forgotten at the start. You hung up the phone because of yelling—and then vanished off the radar for a week, abandoning urgent mutual business. Perhaps an extended reboot was genuinely required. If it is safe and feasible, clarify the scale of the pause and a viable method for resolving necessary shared affairs. Constant availability is not required, and under threats, direct contact may be unsafe. Otherwise, a brief stop signal turns into a total blockade, leaving the other person forced to divine meaning from dead silence. Nobody demands around-the-clock availability or endurance of unreasonable behavior. But one must separate the apples from the orchards: interrupting an ongoing conversation, taking a timeout during a fight, or completely overhauling a project are three wildly different distances. Honestly acknowledging their scope is vastly more useful than sanctifying every personal quirk with the sacred word "boundary."

IX. A Conversation Where Nobody Is Obliged to Win

A couple of days later, the dust has settled, and Dasha and Oleg sit down once more to discuss the hallway. She states the obvious: sitting on packed bags without warning holds no charm for her. He shares his side: inside her ultimatum, he heard a verdict on his own worthlessness. This does not prove that Dasha intended precisely that, but it clarifies what landed in Oleg’s ears. One can calmly compare formulations and departure protocols without forcing a partner to publicly renounce their own memory.

The output from such debates is usually mundane: before heading out, both announce the time aloud, and if a snag occurs, they immediately clarify who travels how. This is not a blood covenant to love each other forever and banish all irritation. If Oleg digs his heels in, Dasha remains free to continue taking separate cabs. If that arrangement begins grating on Dasha herself, she can simply agree less frequently to joint outings. Decisions are tied to a concrete task and are not obligated to serve as litmus paper for measuring "true feelings."

It also happens that a conversation does not gel at all, and agreeing even on the purchase of matches proves impossible. No correct phrasing lifted from clever manuals guarantees that an interlocutor will open their arms in embrace. A person may retreat into deep defense, choose separate tracks, or shut down shop entirely. In toxic or overtly dangerous setups, personal safety is far more paramount than rhetorical exercises. Yet even if reconciliation failed to materialize, the attempt to untangle your own actions was not wasted. You at least discover with precision what you are willing to sign up for and where you will no longer set foot.

A genuine boundary is recognized not by an ostentatious facade, but by how you handle yourself and your neighbor. It possesses a distinct subject, an accessible action, and an honest price tag. It leaves room for acknowledging old obligations, walking back harsh words, accommodating fresh facts, and abandoning the requirement of another's obedience as the sole objective. It promises no easy ride. But it allows one at least to stop dressing up an itch for control as parental care, and to cease greeting every outside "no" as a declaration of holy war.

It is worth observing the habit of summoning spectators as well. Dasha is well within her rights to leave, but if she stands on the threshold lecturing their friends about how handily she is breaking Oleg of his tardiness, a private choice mutates into a public shaming. Oleg is entitled to feel downcast about traveling separately, but mobilizing an entourage to gang up on Dasha and force her to sit and wait is an entirely different game. External help may be required by both sides, and that can be entirely reasonable. But one must strictly separate seeking personal footing from recruiting accomplices for collective arm-twisting. One can vent about one’s own impasse without laundering another’s dirty linen, and ask for a hand with logistics. Then support genuinely expands options rather than turning into a bludgeon in the grip of one debater. And expecting oneself to execute this trick flawlessly on the first try is certainly unwarranted.

What This Means in Practice

If you have an appetite to test this thought on a practice range, pick one tiny, maximally safe, non-mandatory domestic situation where the stakes are low: the duration of a trivial phone chat, waiting before a trip to buy bread, or lending a personal power drill to a neighbor. Everything is strictly voluntary: if you don't feel like it, don't do it; if you get sick of it, drop it. Do not barge in with these techniques into situations involving threats, domestic violence, severe financial entrapment, or the vital care of the critically ill, where one cannot simply drop the reins. This is merely an editorial warm-up to sharpen focus in one's head, not licensed therapy, and certainly not a remote control for other human beings.

Carve out five minutes and scribble on a napkin: what specific thing you no longer agree to, what personal physical move is realistically accessible to you, and what you previously managed to promise. Alongside, honestly jot down the consequences—separately for yourself, separately for your partner. Check whether you have bolted on a petty nuisance purely to squeeze out compliance. If a shared debt or indivisible property crops up, note that this is subject matter for separate negotiations. If genuine energy for action is absent, do not shake the air with thunderous ultimatums; shrink the step down to something microscopic or leave the issue for better days.

If you choose, articulate one transparent condition without delivering sermons on morality and relationship crises. For instance, in a calm setting, one can indicate the waiting window and one’s next move should it be exceeded. This is merely a working draft of phrasing, not an ironclad script for the ages. Leave a window cracked for fresh facts: what if they genuinely alter the landscape? The other party in this banquet has every right to wince and feel hurt; you possess the mirror right not to demand a radiant grin from them just to uphold polite conversation.

After the finish, evaluate three dry facts: what was said, what was done in reality, and what loose ends were left dangling. Do not gauge triumph by the speed of the opponent's surrender. You may need to renegotiate promises, trim the scale of expectations, or concede that healthy dialogue is not in the cards right now. Anchor yourself to a single tangible detail instead of launching into a self-flagellation session regarding your own saintliness. In our story, such a detail might be a spare key, a separate taxi, or an SMS sent on time, rather than an unconditional victory in hallway skirmishes.

Key Quote

"They are measured by his willingness to act"

William James, The Will to Believe, Section I, discussing the degree to which a hypothesis is alive for a particular thinker. Here the pronoun refers to the aliveness and deadness of hypotheses; cited directly. This measure is not a formula for evaluating domestic boundaries.

Connections Between Traditions

James unpacks categories of choice within the philosophy of belief. In the Gospel of Matthew (20:25–28), the disciples are offered the idea of service in place of habitual dominion and dictation. In the Quran (2:256), the absence of compulsion is posited strictly within a religious dimension. This narrow comparison serves to illuminate questions of alternatives and the misuse of authority; it does not construct a single syncretic religion, guarantees no miracles in practice, and does not substitute for family law.

Primary Sources

William James. The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. Longmans, Green and Co., New Impression, 1912; first edition of the collection—1897. Preface and Section I of the title essay read, pages 1–4; quotations—Section I, page 3. Other essays were not used as read sources.

Matthew 20:25–28, King James Version, BibleGateway. Specified passage read; theological commentaries on it were not separately examined.

Surah Al-Baqarah 2:256, Quran.com, English translation by Dr. Mustafa Khattab, The Clear Quran; the verse and the shown context of 2:257 read. Full tafsir and the exact printed edition of the translation were not established. English rendering represents an editorial contextual summary.

About the Authors

Andrey Zarinsh — author and founder of the United Wisdom project. Explores themes of inner transformation, the unity of traditions, intercultural dialogue, and contemporary spiritual discipline. Instagram: @andrey.zarinsh.

Maria Evilkut — co-author of United Wisdom. Alongside research work, she seeks to test these ideas in practice and observe how principles of unity and mutual understanding operate in real life between people and across cultures. Instagram: @ilkutki.