The Itch: A Raw Investigation of Being Human
The Itch
A Raw Investigation of Being Human
Preface
There’s a voice in your head that never stops. What if everything it’s telling you is wrong?
You want money. You want freedom. You want to stop caring what people think. You’ve been told you have to choose—material success or spiritual liberation.
What if you could have both?
The Itch is not another self-help book promising enlightenment in seven easy steps. It’s a raw, unflinching investigation into what it actually means to be human: wanting things, confused about who you are, occasionally clear, then confused again.
Drawing on ancient wisdom without the spiritual packaging, this book explores:
- Why the mind analyzing itself can never escape itself
- How to work with desire instead of trying to transcend it
- The difference between freedom from life and freedom in it
- Whether understanding yourself even matters—or if you should just live
- No moral posturing. No promises of transformation. No pretending the author has it figured out.
Just an honest look at the fundamental itch of being alive—that persistent sense something needs fixing—and the possibility that you’re already okay, right now, even while wanting more.
For readers tired of spiritual bypassing and hungry for truth that doesn’t come wrapped in certainty.
“We’re already dead stars. So why not taste everything while we’re here?”
Chapter 1: The Itch
There’s this feeling. You know the one. It’s not dramatic enough to call suffering, not clear enough to name. Just this persistent sense that something’s off. Something needs to be figured out, fixed, understood.
You wake up and it’s there. A low hum of unease. Maybe it’s about money—the bills, the anxiety of not having enough, the constant mental calculation of what you can and can’t afford. Maybe it’s about what people think of you. Did you say the wrong thing yesterday? Are they judging you? Do they think you’re failing?
Or maybe it’s deeper than that. Maybe it’s this nagging question: What’s the point of any of this?
I’ve spent years trying to scratch this itch. Reading books, trying practices, looking for answers. The funny thing is, the more you scratch, the more it itches. You think if you just understand yourself better, if you just figure out the root cause, if you just achieve this one thing—financial security, inner peace, enlightenment, whatever— then finally, the itch will stop.
It doesn’t.
Because here’s what I’ve noticed: the itch isn’t actually a problem to be solved. It’s more like… the sound the mind makes when it’s doing what minds do. Thinking. Worrying. Wanting. Comparing. The itch is just consciousness being self-aware and not particularly liking what it sees.
The Problem With Having Problems
We’re told constantly that if something feels wrong, we should fix it. Therapy, meditation, self-help books, life coaches, productivity systems. There’s an entire industry built on the premise that you’re broken and need repair.
And look, I’m not against any of those things. Some of them help. Some of them have helped me.
But there’s a trap here.
Every solution becomes another project. Every answer generates three new questions. You meditate to calm your anxious mind, and then you’re anxious about whether you’re meditating correctly. You read about letting go of ego, and your ego gets very interested in the project of letting go. You want to be free from caring what people think, so you start monitoring yourself constantly to see if you still care.
The itch persists because the one trying to scratch it is the same one creating it.
What I Actually Want
Let me be honest about what I want. Not what I’m supposed to want. Not the enlightened version where I claim to want nothing. What I actually want.
I want to be comfortable. I want enough money that I’m not constantly stressed about rent, bills, whether I can afford to replace something that breaks. I want richness—not just material wealth, but the experience of life feeling rich, textured, full. Good food. Meaningful work. Time that doesn’t feel squeezed.
I want to stop being so much in my head. I want the voice that narrates everything, judges everything, worries about everything—I want it to shut up for five minutes.
I want to not care what people think of me. Or at least not care so much that it dictates my choices.
I want freedom. But here’s the thing—I’m not entirely sure what that means. Freedom from what? From my mind? From society’s expectations? From wanting things in the first place?
And underneath all of this is a bigger question: Is any of this even possible? Or is the wanting itself the problem?
The Thinker’s Trick
Here’s where it gets strange.
Pay attention to your thoughts right now. Just for a moment. Notice that there’s thinking happening. Thoughts about what you’re reading, maybe. Thoughts about your day. Random memories. Plans. Worries.
Now notice: who’s noticing?
There seems to be a “you” that’s aware of the thoughts. A thinker behind the thinking. An observer watching the mental movie. And this observer—let’s call it the thinker—feels real. Feels like the actual you.
But watch what happens in different circumstances.
When you’re broke, the thinker is anxious, calculating, pessimistic. It tells you stories about failure and scarcity. When you have money in the bank, the same thinker is relaxed, optimistic, making plans.
When someone criticizes you, the thinker is defensive, hurt, rehearsing counter-arguments. When someone praises you, it’s proud, validated, already wondering when the next praise will come.
The thinker isn’t consistent. It shape-shifts depending on circumstances. So which one is the real you? Or is the question itself confused?
Maybe there’s no stable “thinker” at all. Maybe there’s just thinking, arising and passing based on conditions— your bank account, your biochemistry, what someone said to you, whether you slept well, what you ate. And then there’s awareness of this thinking. But the awareness isn’t a separate thing, another thinker. It’s just… awareness. Happening.
This sounds abstract, but it’s not. It’s the most practical thing in the world.
Because if the thinker is just thoughts claiming to be a thinker, then who exactly has the problem? Who’s itching?
Not Looking for Answers
I should tell you upfront: I don’t have this figured out. This isn’t a book written from some mountaintop of clarity. I’m not going to give you seven steps to freedom or three techniques to quiet your mind or the one secret to happiness.
I’m writing this because I’m in it. Still itching. Still watching my mind do its thing. Still wanting to be rich and free and at ease, while simultaneously suspecting that the wanting is exactly what prevents all three.
What I do have is some observations. Some things I’ve noticed from paying attention. From sitting with the itch instead of immediately trying to scratch it. From following different paths and practices and seeing where they lead.
And one thing I’ve noticed is this: every tradition, every teacher, every system that’s meant to help you tends to add more concepts, more beliefs, more things to do. More fuel for the thinker. Even the ones that say “let go of concepts” give you concepts about letting go.
So maybe what’s needed isn’t more understanding. Maybe it’s something else entirely.
Maybe it’s just… seeing clearly. Without the story. Without the thinker’s commentary.
But even that—”seeing clearly”—sounds like another thing to achieve, doesn’t it? Another itch to scratch.
Where We’re Going
This book is an investigation. Not a teaching. I’m going to explore the basic situation we’re all in: aware, wanting, confused, occasionally clear, mostly caught in our own minds.
We’re going to look at the thinker and how it operates. At desire and whether it’s the problem or the point. At money and freedom and whether you can have both. At the voices in your head—which ones are yours and which ones you’ve inherited from everyone else.
We’re going to question whether understanding yourself is even useful, or if it’s just another trap. Whether there’s a point to any of this investigation, or whether just living—without examination, without constant self- improvement projects—might be enough.
And we’re going to do this without morality, without pretending to be “good people” on a spiritual path. We’re going to look at the raw human truth: that we want things, we’re afraid of things, we’re confused most of the time, and occasionally something shifts and there’s clarity. Then it’s gone again.
No neat answers. No resolution. Just the investigation itself.
Because maybe the itch isn’t a bug. Maybe it’s a feature. And maybe scratching it isn’t the point.
Maybe the point is noticing you’re itching, and staying with that, and seeing what happens when you don’t immediately reach for relief.
That’s where we’re going. Let’s see what we find.
Chapter 2: The Thinker
The voice in your head never shuts up.
Right now, as you’re reading this, it’s commenting. “Is this true?” “I already know this.” “This is interesting.” “I’m hungry.” “I should check my phone.” “Why am I always distracted?” The commentary is relentless.
We call this the inner monologue, self-talk, the ego, the narrator. I’m going to call it the thinker. Not because it’s the most accurate term, but because it’s what most people recognize. That sense that there’s a “you” in there, thinking thoughts, making decisions, experiencing life.
The strange thing is that most people never question whether this thinker is real. Of course it’s real. It’s right there, narrating everything. It’s the most obvious thing about being human. You think, therefore you are, right?
But watch closely. The thinker isn’t what you think it is.
The Many Faces of I
Pay attention to how the thinker changes.
When you’re alone at home, comfortable, well-fed, well-rested, the thinker has a certain tone. Maybe it’s calm, planning, creative. It thinks about projects, ideas, what to do tomorrow. This version of you feels capable, generally okay with life.
Now remember the last time you were broke. Really broke. Checking your bank account and feeling that drop in your stomach. In that state, the thinker becomes someone else entirely. It’s anxious, catastrophizing, running scenarios. “How am I going to pay rent?” “I’m such a failure.” “Everyone else has their shit together except me.” This version is convinced that disaster is imminent and probably your fault.
Or think about when someone criticizes you. The thinker immediately becomes defensive, or hurt, or angry. It generates counter-arguments, rehearses conversations, justifies itself. “They don’t understand.” “That’s not fair.” “Who are they to judge?” This version needs to be right, to protect itself, to maintain its story.
Now think about when someone praises you. The thinker glows. It’s validated, confident, generous even. “See, I am good at this.” “They really get me.” This version expands, feels certain, makes plans from a place of security.
So which one is you?
The calm planner? The anxious catastrophizer? The defensive arguer? The confident achiever?
They all feel like “I” in the moment. They all claim to be the real you. But they’re completely different depending on circumstances—your bank balance, your blood sugar, your sleep, what someone said, whether you got laid recently, whether you’ve been scrolling social media for an hour.
The thinker isn’t a stable thing. It’s a pattern that shifts with conditions.
The Looker Looking at Itself
Here’s where it gets recursive and weird.
Once you start paying attention to the thinker, there seems to be something doing the paying attention. A witness. An observer. The awareness that notices thoughts.
This feels like progress. Like you’ve found the real you—not the thinking, but the awareness of thinking. The one watching the show.
But watch what happens.
You sit down to meditate, or just to observe your thoughts. And immediately, the thinker starts commenting on the observing. “Am I doing this right?” “I’m so distracted.” “This thought is interesting.” “I should be more aware.” The observer gets tangled up in what it’s observing.
It’s like trying to see your own eyes without a mirror. The moment you try to catch the observer observing, it becomes another thought. Another layer of thinking about thinking.
This isn’t a problem to solve. It’s just what consciousness does. It folds back on itself. The mind generates a sense of a thinker, then generates awareness of that thinker, then generates thoughts about that awareness, on and on.
And somewhere in all of this, you believe “I am thinking these thoughts” rather than “thinking is happening.” The difference is subtle but massive.
Who’s Driving?
Let me ask you something: Have you ever decided to think your next thought?
Try it. Right now. Decide what your next thought will be, then think it.
What happened?
You probably thought something like “Okay, I’ll think about… a tree.” And then the thought of a tree appeared. So it seems like you decided it. You’re in control.
But rewind. Where did the decision to think about a tree come from? That was also a thought. It just appeared. You didn’t decide to have the thought “I’ll think about a tree.” It arose. And then the image of a tree arose. And now there’s a thought reading this paragraph about thoughts arising.
At no point did you—the supposed thinker—actually originate anything. Thoughts just keep appearing, and the mind claims them as “mine.”
This isn’t philosophical. Watch it happen in real time.
You’re sitting at your computer. The thought arises: “I should check my email.” You didn’t plan to think that. It just appeared. And then your hand reaches for the mouse, and you’re checking email. Who decided that?
Or you’re walking past a bakery. The smell of bread hits you. Immediately: “I want that.” You didn’t choose to want it. The wanting just arose, triggered by conditions—the smell, your hunger level, some memory of eating fresh bread, the current state of your blood sugar.
The thinker claims credit for choices, but mostly it’s just narrating what’s already happening. Telling a story about a “you” who’s making decisions, when really decisions are just… happening. Emerging from a million causes and conditions you’re not conscious of.
This doesn’t mean you don’t have agency. You can still choose to walk into the bakery or not. But the choice itself isn’t as free as it feels. And the chooser isn’t as solid as it seems.
The Thinker’s Job Description
So if the thinker isn’t a stable, consistent thing, and if it’s not actually in control, what is it?
Best I can tell: it’s a story-generator. A narrator trying to make sense of experience.
Raw experience is just sensation, perception, feeling—lots of it, all at once, constantly changing. The thinker’s job is to organize this chaos into a coherent narrative. To create continuity.
To claim ownership. “I am the one experiencing this. I am the one who did that. I remember being five years old, and that was also me.”
This is useful. It lets you function in the world. It lets you learn from the past and plan for the future. It creates the sense of being a person with a history and a trajectory.
But it’s also the source of most suffering.
Because the thinker doesn’t just narrate what’s happening. It judges, compares, worries, wants things to be different. It takes everything personally. It creates problems that don’t exist in raw experience.
You’re sitting in your apartment. In the actual, direct experience: there’s the feeling of the chair, the sound of traffic outside, the light through the window. That’s it. No problem.
But the thinker kicks in: “I should be further along in my career by now. Everyone else is doing better. What’s wrong with me? I need to make more money. But how? Maybe I should go back to school. But I can’t afford that. I’m trapped. This apartment is too small. I should move. But where? I’m so behind…”
None of that is in the raw experience. It’s all thinker-generated. All story.
And the thinker is so convincing that you believe the story IS the reality. You believe you have a problem, that you’re behind, that something’s wrong.
The Default Mode
Neuroscientists have a term for this: the default mode network. It’s the brain activity that happens when you’re not focused on a task. When you’re just… existing. And what does the brain do in default mode?
It thinks about you.
It reviews the past, plans the future, worries about social standing, creates narratives about who you are and what your life means. It’s the thinker, thinking about the thinker.
And here’s the thing: this network is active most of your waking life. Which means most of the time, you’re not actually present to what’s happening. You’re lost in the thinker’s story about what’s happening.
You’re eating, but thinking about work. You’re with someone, but thinking about what you need to do later. You’re walking, but replaying an argument from yesterday. The thinker rarely lets you just be here.
And when you do drop into direct experience—when you’re absorbed in something, or there’s a moment of beauty, or you’re in danger and suddenly present—it feels like relief. Like coming up for air.
Because in those moments, the thinker shuts up.
So What Do You Do With This?
Knowing all this doesn’t make the thinker go away. I’m not suggesting it should. You need the thinker to function. To plan, to navigate complexity, to learn.
But there’s a difference between using thought and being used by it.
Between knowing “there’s thinking happening” and believing “I am my thoughts.”
Between the thinker as a useful tool and the thinker as your identity.
Most people are completely fused with the thinker. They don’t see it as one process among many. They ARE it. Every thought is taken as truth, every emotion as valid, every judgment as reality.
And that’s exhausting. Because the thinker is never satisfied. It’s designed to find problems, to compare, to want more. That’s its function. Keep you striving, keep you safe, keep you better than others, keep you from being caught off guard.
But you’re not trying to destroy it. You’re not trying to become thoughtless. That’s not the goal and wouldn’t work anyway.
What changes is the relationship to it.
When you see the thinker as something happening rather than something you are, there’s space. The thoughts don’t grip as tight. The judgments don’t cut as deep. The anxious spirals don’t pull you under as completely.
You start to notice: “Oh, there’s the anxious thinker. There it goes, catastrophizing.” And it’s still happening, but you’re not quite so tangled in it.
This isn’t enlightenment. It’s just… slightly less trapped. And that might be enough.
Chapter 3: What Everyone Wants
Let’s talk about what people actually want. Not what they say in therapy or write in their journals or post on social media. What they really want, in the privacy of their own thoughts at 2am.
Money. Enough of it that you’re not constantly stressed. Enough that you can live somewhere decent, eat well, replace things when they break, take a vacation without guilt, help your family if they need it. Maybe even enough to feel abundant, generous, free from the constant mental calculation of whether you can afford something.
Respect. Recognition. To be seen as competent, valuable, worthy. To have people listen when you speak. To not be dismissed or overlooked or treated like you don’t matter. To feel like you’ve achieved something, that your life has counted for something.
Peace of mind. To not be anxious all the time. To not wake up at 3am worrying about everything. To not be constantly second-guessing yourself, replaying conversations, wondering what people think of you, feeling like you’re failing at life.
Freedom. From obligation, from judgment, from the voices in your head telling you you’re not enough. The ability to do what you want, when you want, without someone else’s permission or approval.
Love. Connection. To be understood. To not feel so alone in your own experience.
These aren’t controversial desires. Everyone wants some version of this. But admitting it feels somehow embarrassing, like you’re supposed to want something higher, more noble, more spiritual.
Fuck that. These are real human needs. And pretending they’re not just creates another layer of confusion—now you’re ashamed of wanting what everyone wants.
The Money Thing
Money is the most obvious place where the gap between what you want and what you’re supposed to want gets painful.
You’re told money doesn’t buy happiness. That material wealth is empty. That you should be grateful for what you have. That attachment to money is spiritual immaturity.
Meanwhile, you’re stressed about rent. Your car needs repairs you can’t afford. You turn down invitations because you’re broke. You stay in a job you hate because you need health insurance. You can’t help your parents when they’re struggling. You watch other people live freely while you’re stuck counting pennies.
And then you feel guilty for caring about money. Like wanting financial security makes you shallow or greedy or unenlightened.
Here’s what I’ve noticed: the people who say money doesn’t matter usually have enough of it. It’s easy to be detached from something when you’re not worried about losing it.
Money absolutely matters. Not because it’s the meaning of life, but because its absence creates constant, grinding stress that colors everything. It’s hard to be present when you’re worried about eviction. It’s hard to be generous when you’re scared. It’s hard to explore consciousness when you’re exhausted from working three jobs.
Financial security doesn’t solve all problems. But it removes a huge category of problems that drain your energy and narrow your options.
So let’s be honest: wanting money is reasonable. The question isn’t whether you should want it. The question is what you believe it will do for you.
The Belief That Something Will Complete You
Here’s the trap with any desire: the belief that fulfilling it will finally make you okay. Once I have enough money, then I’ll be secure. Then I’ll relax. Then I’ll be happy.
Once people respect me, then I’ll feel confident. Then I won’t care what anyone thinks. Then I’ll be free.
Once I find the right relationship, the right job, the right living situation, then everything will fall into place. Then my life will begin.
The thinker loves this story. It creates a future where you’re complete, whole, at peace. And that future is always just out of reach. Just past the next achievement.
But watch what happens when you actually get what you want.
You get the raise. You feel great for a week, maybe a month. Then the baseline resets. Now you’re making more money, but there are new expenses, new comparisons, new things to worry about. The relief doesn’t last.
You accomplish something. People recognize it. You feel validated. But then what? The validation fades. You start worrying about the next thing. Can you maintain this? What if you fail next time? What if this was a fluke?
You get the relationship you wanted. The initial euphoria is real. But then the relationship becomes normal. It has its own problems, its own maintenance, its own ways of creating stress. It doesn’t complete you. It just adds complexity to your life.
This isn’t pessimism. It’s just how it works. The thinker will always find the next problem, the next lack, the next thing that needs fixing. Because that’s its job. It’s built to be dissatisfied.
Getting what you want doesn’t end wanting. It just shifts the target.
The Hedonic Treadmill
Psychologists call this hedonic adaptation. You adapt to any change in circumstances, positive or negative, and return to a baseline level of happiness.
Win the lottery, and within a year you’re about as happy as you were before. Become paralyzed in an accident, and within a year your happiness level is similar to what it was before. Obviously the circumstances are different, but the subjective experience of “how happy I am” tends to revert to a set point.
This is both depressing and liberating.
Depressing because it means achieving your goals won’t give you lasting satisfaction. All that striving, all that effort, and you end up roughly where you started emotionally.
Liberating because it means not achieving your goals won’t destroy you either. The thing you’re terrified won’t happen or might lose—your happiness doesn’t ultimately depend on it as much as you think.
But the thinker doesn’t believe this. It’s convinced that this time will be different. This achievement, this amount of money, this person, this place—this will be the one that sticks. That finally delivers.
And so you keep chasing. Because what else are you going to do?
What You Actually Want vs What You Think You Want
Here’s what makes this complicated: sometimes you don’t actually want what you think you want.
You think you want a prestigious job. But what you really want is respect. And you might get respect through that job, or you might just get stress and resentment while still not feeling respected.
You think you want a relationship. But what you really want is to not feel alone. And a relationship might give you that, or it might just give you someone else’s problems to worry about while still feeling fundamentally alone.
You think you want money. But what you really want is the feeling of security, or freedom, or abundance. And money can provide that, up to a point. But past that point, more money just means more things to manage, more taxes, more people asking you for it, more worry about losing it.
The underlying desire is rarely about the thing itself. It’s about a feeling you think the thing will give you.
And feelings can’t be achieved. They arise based on conditions, then pass. They’re not destinations you can reach and stay at.
So Does That Mean You Should Stop Wanting?
This is where a lot of spiritual teaching goes wrong. It identifies desire as the problem and prescribes non- attachment as the solution.
Just let go. Don’t want anything. Be content with what is. Desire is suffering.
And yes, there’s truth there. The desperate grasping for things to be different than they are creates suffering. The belief that you need something external to be okay creates suffering.
But trying to stop wanting is just another form of wanting. Now you want to not want. You want to be the kind of person who’s beyond desire. The thinker has just found a new project: becoming desire-less.
And it doesn’t work anyway. You’re a biological organism. You’re going to want food when you’re hungry, warmth when you’re cold, connection when you’re lonely. That’s not a flaw in the system. It’s the system.
The problem isn’t desire itself. It’s the story around desire. The belief that fulfilling it will complete you. The grip, the desperation, the conviction that you can’t be okay without getting what you want.
You can want money and also see that having it won’t fundamentally solve your life. You can work toward goals while knowing that achieving them won’t end the searching. You can desire things without being enslaved by the desire.
This is a different relationship to wanting. Not trying to eliminate it. Just… seeing it clearly.
The Freedom You’re Actually After
Most people say they want freedom. But freedom from what? To do what?
Freedom from money worries? Okay, but even rich people have money worries. They just worry about different numbers.
Freedom from others’ opinions? Sure, but you’re still going to care what some people think. Unless you’re a psychopath, you’re wired for social connection, which means you’re wired to care about how you’re perceived.
Freedom from your own mind? From the thinker’s constant commentary? That’s closer to something real. But even that—you don’t want to be thoughtless. You want thoughts to stop being so heavy, so gripping, so convincing.
Maybe freedom isn’t about removing everything that constrains you. Maybe it’s about being okay within the constraints. Wanting things without being desperate. Caring what people think without being controlled by it. Having thoughts without believing them all.
Maybe freedom is just space. Room to breathe. Perspective. The ability to notice when you’re caught in the thinker’s story about how your life should be different, and to not be quite so tangled in it.
You still want what you want. You still work toward things. You still have preferences and goals and desires. But there’s less grip. Less conviction that everything depends on getting it. Less belief that once you do, you’ll finally be okay.
Because here’s the secret nobody wants to hear: you’re already okay. Not in some cosmic, everything-is-perfect sense. But in the actual, immediate sense that right now, in this moment, unless you’re in acute danger or pain, you’re fundamentally okay.
The thinker will immediately object. “But what about—” “But I need—” “But if I don’t—”
And those might all be valid concerns. But they’re concerns about the future, or stories about the past. In the direct experience of now, are you okay?
Usually, yes.
And that doesn’t solve anything. You still have problems. You still want things. Life is still complicated.
But maybe, just for a moment, you can notice: the urgency is optional. The desperation is added. The sense that you’re not okay until X happens—that’s the thinker’s doing.
What everyone wants is to feel okay. Whole. Complete. At peace. And we go looking for that through achievement, through acquisition, through other people’s validation.
But maybe it’s not something you get to. Maybe it’s something you notice was already here, underneath all the striving.
And then you go back to striving, because that’s what humans do. But with slightly less grip.
Chapter 4: Watching the Mind Watch Itself
Okay, so you’ve noticed the thinker. You’ve seen how thoughts arise on their own, how the commentary never stops, how the mind creates problems that don’t exist in direct experience.
The natural next step seems obvious: just watch. Don’t engage with thoughts. Don’t get caught up in them. Just observe them arising and passing. Be the awareness, not the content.
This is where most meditation instruction starts. Sit quietly. Notice your breath. When thoughts come, don’t follow them. Just note “thinking” and return to the breath. Simple.
Except it’s not.
Because the moment you try to watch your thoughts, something strange happens. The watching becomes another thought. You’re trying to observe the mind, but the mind is doing the observing. It’s like trying to see your own face without a mirror. The instrument you’re using to look is the thing you’re trying to look at.
This isn’t a problem you can solve. It’s just how consciousness works. But it’s worth understanding, because otherwise you end up in an endless loop of trying to perfect your awareness—which is just another project for the thinker.
The Meditation Trap
You sit down to meditate. You close your eyes. You focus on your breath.
Immediately, thoughts start. “Am I doing this right?” “My back hurts.” “I wonder what time it is.” “I should be more focused.” “This is pointless.” “No, I should stick with it.” “But I’m so distracted.” “Everyone else is probably better at this.”
You remember the instruction: just notice the thoughts. Don’t engage. So you try to notice them. “There’s a thought about my back hurting. Just a thought. Not engaging.”
“There’s judgment about how distracted I am. Just noticing.”
“There’s a thought about… wait, I’m thinking about noticing. Is that the same as noticing?”
And now you’re thinking about thinking about noticing. The observer has become another layer of thought, watching itself watch thoughts.
This can go on indefinitely. You can have thoughts about your thoughts about your thoughts. Each layer feels like progress—like you’re getting more aware. But you’re just adding more commentary.
The thinker is very good at this game. It can play “spiritual observer” just as convincingly as it plays “anxious worrier” or “confident achiever.” It’s still the thinker. Just wearing different clothes.
The Awareness That’s Aware of Being Aware
Here’s where it gets recursive in a way that breaks language.
There’s awareness of thoughts. That much is clear. Thoughts are happening, and there’s awareness of them happening.
But then there’s awareness of that awareness. You notice that you’re aware. And that noticing feels significant. Like you’ve found something real—the pure awareness beneath the thinking.
But then you’re aware of being aware of being aware. And that’s another thought. Another layer of the thinker claiming to be the witness.
It’s turtles all the way down. Or all the way up. Depending on how you look at it.
Some teachings try to solve this by pointing to a “pure awareness” that exists before thought. A consciousness that’s just… there. Not thinking about being there. Not observing itself. Just aware, without an awareness of being aware.
And maybe that’s true. Maybe there is some ground of consciousness that precedes all the layering.
But the moment you try to find it, you’re thinking. The moment you try to rest in it, you’re trying. The moment you evaluate whether you’ve got it or not, you’re back in the thinker.
You can’t think your way to what’s before thinking. You can’t use the mind to get beyond the mind.
So What Actually Helps?
If watching thoughts just creates more thoughts, if trying to be aware becomes another mental activity, what’s the point of any of this?
Here’s what I’ve noticed: the point isn’t to achieve some perfect state of awareness. The point is just to see the process clearly.
You don’t need to stop thoughts. You don’t need to be the perfect witness. You just need to notice, over and over, how the mind works.
How a thought arises out of nowhere. How it triggers an emotion. How that emotion triggers more thoughts. How the thinker claims ownership of all of it and turns it into a story about who you are and what’s wrong and what needs to happen next.
You notice how seductive that story is. How convincing. How it pulls you in every single time, even when you’ve seen it a thousand times before.
And then you notice when you’re not in the story. When you’re just here, present, not tangled up in the commentary. These moments happen on their own. Not because you achieved them, but because the conditions for getting lost shifted.
The noticing itself doesn’t require effort. It’s happening already. Awareness is always here—it’s just usually occupied with the thinker’s stories.
When the stories quiet down, even briefly, the noticing becomes obvious. You’re aware. You’ve always been aware. It’s not something you have to create or perfect or maintain.
The Strange Loop
Douglas Hofstadter wrote about “strange loops”—systems that refer back to themselves in a way that creates paradox. The sentence “This sentence is false” is a strange loop. If it’s true, it’s false. If it’s false, it’s true.
Consciousness observing itself is a strange loop.
When you try to observe your awareness, the awareness becomes an object. But awareness is the subject—the one doing the observing. So you’ve turned the subject into an object, which means there must be another subject observing it. But then that becomes an object. And so on.
You can’t step outside consciousness to look at it, because the stepping outside is still consciousness. You can’t find the edge of your own awareness, because the looking for the edge is awareness.
This isn’t a problem. It’s just the structure of what you are.
But it means you can’t escape yourself through more sophisticated self-observation. You can’t think your way out of thinking. You can’t be aware your way out of awareness.
What you can do is stop trying to escape. Stop trying to perfect the observation. And just be here, tangled and all.
The Difference Between Noticing and Thinking About Noticing
There’s a real difference between these two, even though they’re easy to confuse.
Noticing is direct. You’re sitting in traffic. You notice the irritation arising. You feel it in your body—the tightness, the heat. You see the thoughts it generates—”This is taking forever.” “I’m going to be late.” “Why is everyone so stupid?” You notice all of this as it’s happening.
That’s just awareness. It’s not special. It’s what’s already occurring.
Thinking about noticing is commentary. “I’m being mindful right now.” “I’m observing my irritation without getting caught in it.” “This is good practice.” “I’m getting better at this.”
That’s the thinker, narrating the noticing. Turning it into a story about what a good practitioner you are. The first one doesn’t require effort. It’s just what’s here when you’re not lost in thought.
The second one is another layer of thought. More narrative. More self-improvement project.
You can tell the difference by the quality of attention. Direct noticing has space in it. There’s just experience, happening. Thinking about noticing feels tighter. There’s evaluation, comparison, a sense of someone doing something.
Does the Observer Exist?
So if the observer is just another thought, does it even exist? Yes and no.
There’s no separate self-entity called “the observer” that exists independently from the stream of experience. The thinker creates that sense—the feeling of a “you” standing apart from thoughts, watching them.
But there is awareness. Obviously. Something is aware of thoughts, or they wouldn’t be experienced at all.
The mistake is reifying awareness into another thing. Making it into an object you can possess or improve or perfect. “I have good awareness.” “I need to develop my awareness.” “My awareness is weak.”
Awareness isn’t yours. It’s not something you have. It’s what you are. Or more accurately, it’s what’s happening.
But even saying “it’s what you are” creates another entity. Another thing to identify with. “I am awareness” is just as much a story as “I am my thoughts.”
You can’t land on any concept that fully captures it, because any concept is still in the territory of thinking. And awareness is prior to that. Underneath it. The space in which it all occurs.
This probably sounds abstract and philosophical. And it is. But it’s also incredibly practical.
Because when you stop trying to be a good observer, when you stop evaluating how aware you are, when you drop the whole project of perfecting your consciousness—what’s left?
Just this. Just what’s here. Thoughts, sensations, awareness of them. No separation. No one doing it right or wrong. Just the happening of experience.
The Practice That Isn’t a Practice
So if trying to watch thoughts creates more thoughts, if trying to be aware becomes another mental activity, what do you actually do?
Nothing. And everything.
You live your life. You notice what you notice. Sometimes you’re lost in thought. Sometimes you’re not. Sometimes you catch yourself mid-story and see it as a story. Sometimes you don’t.
The noticing isn’t something you cultivate. It’s just what happens when you’re not completely absorbed in the thinker’s world.
But here’s what does help: regular contact with the direct experience underneath the story.
Sitting quietly, even for a few minutes. Not to achieve anything. Not to become a better meditator. Just to let the thinker spin down a bit. To give it less to do.
When you’re not feeding it with screens, with constant stimulation, with problems to solve and narratives to maintain—it settles. Not perfectly. Not forever. But temporarily.
And in that settling, you might notice: you’re okay. Right now, without fixing anything, without understanding anything, without being anywhere other than here—you’re okay.
The thinker will immediately jump in. “But I need to—” “What about—” “This won’t last—”
And that’s fine. Let it. You don’t need to stop it. You don’t need to be so aware that no thoughts arise. You just need to see it doing its thing, clearly enough that you’re not completely fused with it.
That’s all. No perfect observation. No pure awareness. Just slightly less lost in the story, slightly more here.
And that small shift changes everything. Not because it solves your problems. But because it reveals that most of your problems are narrative, not actual. They exist in the thinker’s version of reality, not in direct experience.
In direct experience, right now, unless something is actively hurting—you’re just here. Aware. Breathing. Present.
The watching mind doesn’t need to watch better. It just needs to notice that it’s already watching. It always has been.
The observer isn’t something you become. It’s what you already are. And the observed is just more of that same awareness, taking different forms.
No separation. No achievement. Just this strange loop of consciousness experiencing itself, mistaking itself for a separate observer, then seeing through that, then forgetting again.
Over and over.
And that’s okay too.
Chapter 5: The Self-Improvement Trap
There’s a whole industry built on the idea that you’re not enough yet. But you could be. With the right book, course, practice, habit, mindset, routine. With enough work on yourself, you can become the person you’re supposed to be.
Better. More productive. More mindful. More authentic. More confident. More disciplined. More present. More grateful. More successful. More enlightened.
The message is always the same: you’re broken, but fixable. You’re incomplete, but you can become whole. You just need to do the work.
And so you do. You read the books. You try the practices. You set the intentions. You track your habits. You meditate, journal, exercise, optimize, iterate.
And maybe some of it helps. Maybe you do feel better, clearer, more capable. For a while.
But then the baseline resets. The improvements become normal. And you’re back to feeling like something’s missing. Like you’re still not quite there yet. Like there’s more work to do.
Because here’s the trap: the one doing the improving is the same one that feels inadequate in the first place. The self trying to improve the self. The thinker trying to fix the thinker.
And the thinker will never declare the project complete. It can’t. Its entire existence depends on finding problems and solving them. If there’s nothing left to fix, what’s it for?
The Infinite To-Do List
Look at your relationship with self-improvement honestly.
You start meditating because you’re anxious. The meditation helps. You feel calmer. But then you wonder if you’re doing it right. If you’re meditating enough. If you should try a different technique. Now you’re anxious about your meditation practice.
You read a book about being more present. It’s illuminating. You see how much time you spend lost in thought. So you try to be more present. But then you’re constantly monitoring: “Am I present right now? No, I was just thinking. Okay, back to presence. Wait, now I’m thinking about being present…”
You decide to be more authentic. To stop performing for others. To just be yourself. But then you catch yourself performing authenticity. Worrying about whether you’re being genuine enough. Judging yourself for still caring what people think.
Each solution becomes a new problem. Each improvement reveals another inadequacy. The to-do list of self- development never ends—it just gets more sophisticated.
You go from “I need to make more money” to “I need to heal my relationship with money” to “I need to transcend my attachment to money” to “I need to stop making transcending attachment another achievement.”
The territory shifts, but the pattern stays the same. There’s a you, and that you is somehow wrong or incomplete, and if you just do the right work, you’ll finally be okay.
Spiritual Materialism
There’s a term for this: spiritual materialism. When you take the spiritual path itself and turn it into another achievement project. Another way to build a better self.
You collect practices like merit badges. Meditation. Breathwork. Shadow work. Plant medicine. Retreats. Workshops. You’re not just living—you’re optimizing your consciousness.
You pride yourself on being aware. On doing the inner work. On being further along the path than people who are still caught in materialism and ego. You’ve transcended all that.
Except you haven’t. You’ve just found a more subtle form of it. Now your ego identifies as the spiritual person. The awakened one. The one who’s done the work.
And that identity needs maintenance. You need to keep meditating, keep practicing, keep growing. Not because it serves you, but because it’s who you are. If you stop, who are you then? Just another person who thought they figured it out but didn’t.
This isn’t to say practices are useless. They’re not. Meditation can absolutely create space. Therapy can help you see patterns. Exercise changes your neurochemistry. These things matter.
But they become traps when they’re in service of the self-improvement project. When they’re things you’re doing to become someone better than who you are now.
Because who you are now is the problem, remember? That’s the founding assumption. And as long as that assumption is in place, no amount of improvement will ever be enough.
The “Just Be Yourself” Paradox
One of the cruelest pieces of advice is “just be yourself.”
It sounds liberating. Stop performing. Stop trying to be someone you’re not. Just relax into who you actually are.
But who is that? If you’ve spent your whole life adapting to what others want, managing impressions, trying to be acceptable—how do you even know who “yourself” is?
So you try to figure it out. You do personality tests. You journal. You ask yourself what you really want, what you really think, who you really are underneath all the conditioning.
And maybe you discover some things. Some preferences, some values, some version of yourself that feels more genuine than the performance you’ve been giving.
But then you have to maintain that. You have to be that authentic version consistently. And now “being yourself” is another role you’re performing. Another standard you’re measuring yourself against.
You catch yourself people-pleasing again. You judge yourself for it. “I’m not being authentic. I’m falling back into old patterns. I need to be more genuine.”
And now you’re performing authenticity. Trying to be the kind of person who doesn’t try to be any kind of person.
The thinker has simply adopted a new identity: the authentic self. And it will protect and maintain that identity just as fiercely as it protected and maintained all the previous ones.
Letting Go of Letting Go
This same pattern shows up with the concept of letting go.
You hear that holding on creates suffering. That you need to let go of attachment, let go of control, let go of outcomes. Just release your grip and be free.
So you try. You try to let go of your anxiety about money. Your need for approval. Your desire for things to be different than they are.
But trying to let go is still grasping. Now you’re grasping for the state of non-grasping. You’re attached to becoming non-attached.
And when you can’t do it—when you still care about money, still want approval, still wish things were different —you feel like you’ve failed. You’re not spiritual enough. Not evolved enough. Not free enough.
The thinker has turned letting go into another item on the self-improvement checklist. Something you’re supposed to achieve. And the more you try to achieve it, the more tangled up you get.
Because you can’t let go by trying. That’s still effort. Still control. Still the thinker running the show.
Letting go happens when conditions allow it. When the grip naturally loosens. When you stop feeding the story that makes the grip necessary in the first place.
But you can’t make that happen through willpower. You can’t force yourself to relax. You can’t achieve effortlessness through effort.
The Problem That Isn’t a Problem
Here’s what all of this reveals: the self that needs improvement is an illusion.
Not in some mystical sense. But in the practical sense that the “self” you’re trying to fix is just a story. A collection of thoughts claiming to be an entity. The thinker’s narrative about who you are and what’s wrong with you.
In direct experience, there’s no solid self to improve. There’s just experience—thoughts, sensations, perceptions, emotions—arising and passing based on conditions.
When you’re hungry, “you” are irritable. When you’re well-fed and rested, “you” are patient. When you’re praised, “you” are confident. When you’re criticized, “you” are defensive.
The self isn’t a fixed thing that has certain qualities. It’s a pattern that shifts with circumstances. And the thinker creates continuity by claiming ownership of all these different states. “I was irritable. I was patient. I was confident. I was defensive.”
But there’s no consistent “I” underneath those states. Just the states themselves, and the narrative that links them together into a story of a person.
So when you try to improve yourself, you’re trying to improve a story. You’re editing the narrative. Creating a better version of the character.
And that can work, in a limited way. You can change habits, learn skills, develop capacities. The character in the story can evolve.
But the deeper dissatisfaction doesn’t come from the character being inadequate. It comes from believing the character is real. From identifying with the story so completely that you think you are it.
So What’s the Alternative?
If self-improvement is a trap, if being yourself is another performance, if letting go can’t be achieved—then what?
Give up? Stop trying to change anything? Just accept being anxious, broke, trapped in patterns you hate?
No. That’s another story. The story of the enlightened person who’s beyond trying, beyond caring, beyond the world’s concerns.
The alternative is simpler and harder: see the process clearly without adding another layer to it. You want to change. Okay. That wanting is here. No need to make it wrong or try to transcend it.
You’re working on yourself. Fine. Notice that. Notice how the thinker turns it into an identity. Notice when you’re measuring yourself against an ideal.
You catch yourself performing, even performing authenticity. Sure. That’s what the thinker does. It performs. That’s not a flaw to fix. It’s just what’s happening.
The shift isn’t from self-improvement to no self-improvement. It’s from being identified with the project to seeing it as a project. From “I need to fix myself” to “there’s the thought that I need to fix myself.”
You can still meditate, still go to therapy, still work on habits. But without the underlying belief that you’re broken. Without the conviction that these things will finally make you adequate.
They might help. They might not. Either way, you’re already complete. Not in the sense that you’re perfect or finished. But in the sense that there’s no separate self that’s incomplete in the first place.
The experience of incompleteness is just another thought. Arising and passing based on conditions.
The End of Seeking
The self-improvement trap only ends when you see that there’s no self to improve.
Not as a belief. Not as a concept you add to your understanding. But as a direct seeing.
When you look for the one who’s inadequate, you can’t find it. There are thoughts about inadequacy. Feelings of not being enough. Stories about needing to be better. But no actual entity at the center of it all.
Just experience, happening. The thinker claiming ownership. And awareness of the whole process.
Once you see this clearly—not once, but over and over, because you’ll forget—the urgency drops. The improvement project doesn’t stop completely. You still function, still grow, still change. But there’s less grip. Less conviction that your worth depends on becoming someone other than who you are right now.
And right now, you’re just this. Not good or bad. Not adequate or inadequate. Not complete or incomplete. Just here. Aware. Breathing. Being.
The thinker will immediately object. “But I need to—” “What about—” “This doesn’t solve—”
And that’s fine. Let it object. That’s its job.
But underneath the objection, underneath the story of the self that needs fixing, underneath the whole improvement project—what’s actually here?
Usually: just the simple fact of being. Ordinary. Unimpressive. Completely enough.
Not because you achieved it. But because it was never absent in the first place.
The trap isn’t self-improvement. The trap is believing that the self exists in a way that could be improved.
Once you see through that, you’re free. Not free from changing, from growing, from working on things. But free from the belief that your basic okayness depends on any of it.
And that changes everything.
Chapter 6: Rich vs Free
There’s this idea that you have to choose.
Either you pursue wealth, comfort, material success—and sacrifice your freedom, your peace, your soul. Or you choose the spiritual path—renounce attachment to material things, live simply, and find true freedom.
The world or enlightenment. Money or consciousness. Rich or free. This is bullshit.
It’s a false choice created by people who’ve never been actually poor, or by people who are so traumatized by wealth that they’ve made poverty into a virtue.
Let’s be clear: being broke doesn’t make you free. It makes you stressed, limited, dependent on others’ approval for your survival. There’s nothing enlightened about worrying whether you can afford to eat this week.
And being wealthy doesn’t make you enslaved. It can. But it doesn’t have to. Having money and being trapped by money are different things.
The real question isn’t rich versus free. It’s whether you can have both. Whether you can experience material abundance without being owned by it. Whether you can enjoy the delicacy of life without grasping desperately at it.
The Poverty Cope
Let’s talk about the spiritual romanticization of poverty.
“Money doesn’t buy happiness.” “The best things in life are free.” “Blessed are the poor.” “Attachment to material wealth is the root of suffering.”
All of this sounds noble until you’re actually broke. Then it sounds like a cope. A story people tell themselves to feel better about not having what they want.
Yes, money doesn’t buy happiness. But lack of money absolutely buys unhappiness. It buys stress, restriction, dependence, and the constant mental drain of trying to survive.
Yes, some of the best things are free. But most things aren’t. Healthcare isn’t free. Housing isn’t free. Time isn’t free—someone has to pay for it.
Yes, attachment creates suffering. But so does deprivation. Living in scarcity, constantly worried about survival —that’s not freedom. That’s a different kind of suffering.
The monks in their monasteries, the spiritual teachers preaching detachment from worldly things—most of them have their material needs handled. Either the monastery provides for them, or they make money from teaching, or they come from wealth in the first place.
It’s easy to be detached from money when you’re not desperate for it.
What Richness Actually Means
When I say I want to be rich, I don’t mean I want a yacht and a mansion and a sports car. Though honestly, I wouldn’t say no.
What I mean is: I want abundance. I want the experience of life feeling rich.
I want good food. Not every meal from a Michelin-starred restaurant, but the ability to buy fresh ingredients, to eat well, to not have to choose the cheapest option because that’s all I can afford.
I want space. A place to live that doesn’t make me feel cramped and anxious. A place that feels good to be in.
I want time. To not have to work a job I hate just to survive. To have the option to do work that matters to me, even if it pays less.
I want ease. To not be constantly calculating, constantly stressed about whether I can afford something, constantly anxious about one unexpected expense destroying everything.
I want to be generous. To help people I care about when they need it. To contribute to things I believe in. To not have to say no because I’m barely surviving myself.
This is richness. Not obscene wealth. Just the ability to live fully, to experience the texture and delicacy of being alive without constant financial stress narrowing everything down to survival.
And there’s nothing unspiritual about wanting this. It’s not shallow or materialistic. It’s human.
The Wealth Trap
But here’s the thing: you can have money and still be completely trapped.
There are people with millions who are anxious about losing it. Who can’t enjoy what they have because they’re obsessed with getting more. Who define themselves by their net worth and feel worthless when the market drops.
There are people with comfortable incomes who spend every penny trying to impress others. Who buy things they don’t need to maintain an image. Who are slaves to consumption, constantly chasing the next purchase that will finally make them feel complete.
There are people with financial security who are terrified of losing it. Who make every decision based on protecting their wealth. Who’ve built a comfortable cage and now can’t leave because the cage is all they know.
So yes, wealth can be a trap. But it’s not the money itself that’s the trap. It’s the relationship to it. The belief that your value is your net worth. The conviction that more is always better. The fear that losing it would destroy you.
It’s possible to be financially poor and mentally free. It’s also possible to be financially rich and mentally imprisoned. And vice versa for both.
The question is: can you be both rich and free?
Having Without Grasping
This is where it gets subtle.
You can want money. You can work toward financial security. You can enjoy material comfort. None of this is a problem.
The problem is when you believe your okayness depends on it. When you’re convinced that until you have enough money, you can’t relax. Can’t be happy. Can’t be free.
That’s grasping. That’s the thinker telling you that your current state is inadequate and only the future state—the one where you’re financially secure—will be acceptable.
But notice what happens when you believe this. You get money. The thinker briefly relaxes. Then it finds a new threshold. “I need this much to be really secure.” You reach that. It moves again. “But what about retirement? What about emergencies? What if the economy crashes?”
The goal keeps shifting because the thinker isn’t actually looking for a number. It’s looking for permanent security. And that doesn’t exist. Not in money. Not anywhere.
But you can have money without grasping at it. You can work toward financial security without making it your worth. You can enjoy material things without being enslaved by the need for them.
This isn’t detachment. It’s not pretending you don’t care about money. It’s caring about it appropriately. Working with it skillfully. Using it as a tool rather than serving it as a master.
The Freedom That Includes Everything
Most spiritual teaching presents freedom as freedom from. From desire. From attachment. From the material world. From the body, the senses, the messy business of being human.
That’s one version of freedom. The ascetic’s freedom. And for some people, it works. Renounce everything, simplify radically, and find peace in the absence of complication.
But there’s another kind of freedom. Freedom in. Freedom that includes desire, includes the material world, includes the full texture of being human—and isn’t bound by any of it.
This is what makes the path I’ve been following different. It doesn’t ask you to transcend the world. It asks you to fully experience it without being enslaved by the experience.
You can desire money and see that the desiring is just a pattern of mind. You can enjoy luxury and notice that the enjoyment arises and passes based on conditions. You can have preferences without making them demands.
You can be rich—or be working toward richness—and still be free. Because the richness is in the experience, not in the acquisition. In the texture, the delicacy, the fullness of life. And that’s available whether you have money or not.
The difference is: when you have money, you have more options. More ability to create experiences. More resources to help others. More time and space to explore consciousness.
But the consciousness itself isn’t dependent on the money. The freedom isn’t purchased. It’s revealed when you stop making your okayness conditional on external circumstances.
Security Is an Illusion
Here’s what you have to understand: there is no such thing as real security.
You can have money in the bank, and the bank can fail. You can have investments, and the market can crash. You can have a career, and the industry can disappear. You can have health, and it can vanish overnight.
Everything is impermanent. Everything is contingent on conditions. Nothing is guaranteed.
The thinker hates this. It wants permanence. It wants control. It wants to arrange circumstances such that you’re finally, completely, permanently safe.
And it makes sense why. Survival is the core program. The thinker is trying to keep you alive, keep you secure, keep you from harm.
But the security it’s seeking doesn’t exist. And the pursuit of it creates the opposite of freedom. It creates anxiety, restriction, constant vigilance against threats that might not even materialize.
Real freedom isn’t having enough money that you never have to worry. It’s being okay even when you’re worried. Even when circumstances change. Even when you lose what you thought you needed.
That doesn’t mean you don’t try to create security. Of course you do. You work, you save, you plan. But you do it without the belief that your entire well-being depends on succeeding.
You hold it lightly. You know it’s provisional. You know it can all change. And you’re okay with that, because your okayness isn’t in the circumstances. It’s in how you relate to them.
Rich in Experience
Here’s what I actually want when I say I want to be rich: I want to experience richness.
Not just money in the bank. Rich experiences. Rich relationships. Rich presence to the texture of life.
I want to taste food and actually taste it. To feel the sun and actually feel it. To listen to music and be absorbed by it. To look at something beautiful and let it move through me.
I want to feel generous. To have enough that I can give freely. To not be so caught in scarcity that I have to hoard everything.
I want to create. To have the resources and time to make things, explore ideas, follow curiosity wherever it leads.
I want to be present to the people I care about. To not be so stressed about survival that I’m only half-there.
Some of this requires money. A lot of it doesn’t. But all of it requires freedom from the thinker’s constant evaluation of whether you have enough, whether you’re enough, whether this moment is enough.
And that freedom is available right now. Not once you’re rich. Not once you’re financially secure. Now.
Because richness isn’t a circumstance. It’s a quality of attention. It’s the ability to be here fully, to let experience be as vivid and textured and real as it actually is, without the thinker’s constant commentary narrowing it down to whether it’s good enough.
Both And
So can you be rich and free?
Yes. But not in the way the thinker imagines.
The thinker thinks: “Once I have enough money, I’ll be free from money worries, and that will be freedom.”
But that’s still making freedom conditional. Still putting it in the future. Still depending on circumstances.
Real freedom is now. Whether you have money or not. Whether you ever get what you want or not.
And from that freedom, you can work toward richness without desperation. You can enjoy material comfort without grasping. You can have preferences without making them requirements.
You can want both. Material abundance and inner freedom. And you can have both, if you understand that they’re not opposed.
The opposition is only in the mind. In the belief that you can’t be free until you’re rich, or that you can’t be rich without losing your freedom.
Drop that belief, and you’re already free. The richness—material or otherwise—is just what you do with that freedom.
Not to complete yourself. Not to finally be okay. But because you already are, and now you’re just playing with what’s possible.
Chapter 7: Other People’s Voices
Pay attention to the voice in your head for a moment. The one judging you. Telling you you’re not good enough, you’re behind, you’re failing, you’re doing it wrong.
Whose voice is it, really?
Not literally—obviously it’s your voice, in your head. But where did it learn to talk that way? Where did it get its script?
If you listen closely, you’ll probably recognize it. It’s your father’s disapproval. Your mother’s anxiety. Your teacher’s impatience. Your ex’s criticism. Your friend’s dismissive comment. Society’s expectations. Your culture’s values. Your industry’s standards.
It’s a chorus of other people’s voices that you’ve internalized so completely you think they’re your own thoughts.
And here’s the strange part: most of these people aren’t even thinking about you. Half of them are probably dead. The other half are too busy worrying about what you think of them to actually be judging you.
But the voices persist. Playing on repeat. Creating a constant background anxiety about whether you’re acceptable, whether you’re measuring up, whether people think you’re a fraud or a failure or just fundamentally inadequate.
The Internalized Judge
You know that feeling when you’re about to do something—post something online, speak up in a meeting, wear something different, try something new—and immediately there’s this hesitation? This sense that people will judge you?
That’s the internalized judge. And if you examine it closely, it’s usually not based on what anyone has actually said. It’s based on what you imagine they might think.
You’re creating an imaginary audience, putting words in their mouths, and then feeling anxious about those imaginary judgments.
“They’ll think I’m showing off.”
“They’ll think I’m weird.”
“They’ll think I’m not qualified.”
“They’ll think I’m trying too hard.” “They’ll think I’m not trying hard enough.”
Who is “they”? Usually, it’s nobody specific. Just a vague sense of judgment floating in the air.
And when someone does actually judge you? Often it’s not as harsh as the voice you’ve already been using on yourself. The actual criticism is milder than the pre-emptive self-flagellation you’ve been doing to avoid it.
Where the Voices Come From
Most of what you think about yourself isn’t original. It’s inherited.
Your parents had opinions about who you should be, what mattered, what was acceptable. Some of this they said explicitly. Most of it was implied—through approval and disapproval, attention and neglect, what they celebrated and what they ignored.
You absorbed it. Not consciously. Just by being a kid who needed love and approval to survive. You learned what got you connection and what got you rejected. And you internalized those lessons as truths about yourself.
“I’m too much.” “I’m not enough.” “I need to work harder.” “I can’t trust people.” “I’m only valuable if I achieve.” “My needs don’t matter.” “I have to be perfect.”
These aren’t neutral observations. They’re survival strategies that hardened into identity.
Then school added its layer. The social hierarchy. The performance metrics. The constant evaluation. You learned that you’re ranked, compared, measured against others. That there’s a right way to be, and if you’re not it, you’re lacking.
Then culture, media, advertising. Showing you images of what success looks like, what beauty looks like, what a good life looks like. And the implicit message: you’re not there yet. You need to buy this, look like this, achieve this to be acceptable.
Then your peers, your partners, your industry. Each adding their standards, their judgments, their expectations.
And somewhere in all of this, you lost track of what you actually think. Of what you actually want. Of who you’d be if all these voices shut up for five minutes.
The Exhaustion of Performance
Living with these internalized voices means constantly performing.
You’re not just having a conversation. You’re monitoring how you’re coming across. Are you saying the right thing? Are they judging you? Did that joke land? Are you being too much or not enough?
You’re not just doing your work. You’re worried about what your boss thinks, what your colleagues think, whether you’re impressing the right people, whether you’re falling behind compared to that person who seems to have their shit together.
You’re not just posting something online. You’re anticipating reactions. Will people like it? Will they think you’re stupid? Will they judge you for caring about something, or judge you for not caring enough?
Even alone, the performance continues. You’re still imagining the audience. Still wondering what they’d think if they could see you now.
It’s exhausting.
Because you can never get it right. The voices have contradictory demands. Be confident but not arrogant. Be humble but not weak. Be authentic but not too weird. Be successful but not materialistic. Care about things but don’t care what people think.
There’s no way to satisfy all of them. So you’re always failing by someone’s standard. Always falling short of some imaginary ideal.
Can You Stop Caring?
The obvious solution seems to be: just stop caring what people think. Easier said than done.
Because you’re wired to care. You’re a social animal. Your ancestors who didn’t care about the group’s opinion got exiled and died. The ones who paid attention to social cues, who adjusted their behavior to fit in, who cared about their reputation—they survived.
So caring what people think isn’t a bug. It’s a feature. It’s how you navigate complex social environments, maintain relationships, coordinate with others.
The problem isn’t caring. The problem is caring about everyone, caring about imaginary opinions, and caring more about what strangers think than what you actually want.
You don’t need to stop caring. You need to care more selectively.
There are probably five to ten people whose opinions actually matter to you. People who know you, who want the best for you, whose judgment is informed by actually seeing you clearly.
What they think? Yeah, that’s worth considering. Not obeying blindly, but taking seriously.
Everyone else? They’re mostly projecting their own issues onto you anyway. Their judgment says more about them than it does about you.
And the imaginary judgments—the ones you’re making up in your head about what people might think? Those are just the internalized voices doing their thing. You can notice them without believing them.
The Difference Between Shame and Feedback
Here’s something useful: the difference between shame and actual feedback.
Shame is the voice that says: “You are wrong. You are bad. You are inadequate.”
It’s global, personal, and crushing. It makes you want to hide, to disappear, to never try again.
Feedback is specific and actionable: “That approach didn’t work. This could be improved. Here’s what to adjust.”
It’s about behavior, not identity. It informs without destroying.
Most of the voices in your head deal in shame, not feedback. They’re not trying to help you improve. They’re trying to keep you small, safe, acceptable, not standing out.
When you can tell the difference, you can actually learn from real feedback without internalizing it as evidence that you’re fundamentally flawed.
Someone criticizes your work? That’s feedback. You can use it.
The voice in your head says you’re a fraud? That’s shame. You can ignore it.
The Liberation of Indifference
There’s a certain kind of freedom in genuinely not giving a fuck what most people think.
Not in the performative “I don’t care” way, where you’re actually trying very hard to prove you don’t care. But in the real way, where you just… don’t.
This happens sometimes by accident. You’re so absorbed in something that you forget to monitor yourself. You say what you actually think instead of what you think you should say. You dress for comfort instead of impression. You pursue something weird because it genuinely interests you.
And either people judge you or they don’t. And you realize: it doesn’t actually matter. Their opinion doesn’t change the reality of your experience. It doesn’t make you less or more than you are.
The judgment exists in their mind, not in yours. Unless you pick it up and carry it around.
This isn’t easy to maintain. The habit of caring runs deep. But in moments when you forget to care, there’s this lightness. This sense of just being here, doing what you’re doing, without the constant second-guessing.
Whose Life Are You Living?
Here’s a question worth sitting with: If none of the voices were there, what would you actually want?
Not what you should want. Not what would impress people. Not what would make your parents proud or your peers envious. Just what you, without all the conditioning, would genuinely choose.
Most people can’t answer this easily. Because they’ve been listening to the voices for so long that they don’t know what their own voice sounds like anymore.
You think you want the prestigious job, but maybe you just want the approval it brings. You think you want the perfect body, but maybe you just want to stop being judged. You think you want to be successful, but maybe you just want to stop feeling inadequate.
Strip away the voices, and what’s left?
Maybe something simpler. Maybe something weirder. Maybe something that doesn’t make sense to anyone but you.
But it’s yours. Not inherited. Not performed. Just yours.
The Voices Never Fully Go Away
I should be honest: you’re probably not going to completely silence the internalized voices. They’re grooved too deep. They’re part of how your mind learned to navigate the world.
But you can change your relationship to them.
You can notice when the judgment is happening and recognize: “Oh, that’s the voice. That’s not reality. That’s just the pattern running.”
You can question whose opinion you’re actually worried about. Is it someone who matters? Or is it an imaginary audience you’re creating?
You can distinguish between shame and feedback. Take the useful information, discard the identity attack.
You can practice saying what you actually think, doing what you actually want, and discovering that most of the catastrophic judgment you feared… doesn’t happen. And when it does, it’s survivable.
You can slowly, gradually learn to trust your own sense of what’s right for you more than the chorus telling you who you should be.
This doesn’t make you immune to others’ opinions. You’re still human. You’ll still feel the sting of criticism, still want approval, still care what certain people think.
But there’s a difference between caring and being controlled. Between considering someone’s perspective and being enslaved by it.
The voices will always be there, offering their commentary. But you don’t have to believe them. You don’t have to obey them. You don’t have to let them determine your worth.
They’re just voices. Patterns of thought. Echoes of the past.
And you—whatever you are underneath all those voices—you’re something else entirely. Something that exists whether they approve or not.
Chapter 8: Raw Human Truth
Let’s drop the performance for a minute. All of it.
The spiritual seeker persona. The good person act. The evolved, aware, conscious human who’s doing the work and growing and becoming their best self.
Let’s just look at what’s actually here.
You’re selfish sometimes. You want things for yourself even when it means others don’t get them. You feel a little satisfaction when someone you’re jealous of fails. You lie to avoid conflict. You manipulate to get what you want. You’re lazy. You know what you should do and you don’t do it. You judge people while pretending you don’t. You gossip. You compare yourself to others and either feel superior or inferior. You’re greedy. You want more even when you have enough. You lust after people you shouldn’t. You resent people who have what you want. You hold grudges. You pretend to care about things you don’t actually care about. You don’t care about things you pretend to care about.
This is human. All of it.
And before you start with the “but I’m working on these things” or “I’m aware of these patterns” or “I’m better than I used to be”—stop.
That’s just another layer of performance. Another way the thinker maintains the story that you’re a good person who just has some flaws to work on.
What if you’re not good or bad? What if you’re just… this? A biological organism with drives, fears, conditioning, and a thin layer of rationalization on top trying to make it all coherent and morally acceptable?
The Morality Trap
Every culture has rules about what’s good and bad, right and wrong, acceptable and shameful. And these rules are completely arbitrary.
In some cultures, eating pork is fine. In others, it’s forbidden. In some, showing skin is normal. In others, it’s scandalous. In some, ambition is virtue. In others, it’s vice. In some, sex before marriage is expected. In others, it’s sin.
The rules change based on geography, time period, religion, social class. What’s moral in one context is immoral in another.
And yet people in every culture are convinced their moral framework is the right one. The true one. The one that reflects how things actually are.
But it doesn’t. It just reflects what that particular group decided would keep society functional and maintain the current power structure.
You absorbed your culture’s moral framework as a child. You didn’t choose it. You didn’t evaluate whether it made sense. You just internalized it because that’s what children do. They learn what’s rewarded and what’s punished, what brings approval and what brings shame.
And now you walk around with this moral operating system running in the background, constantly evaluating yourself and others.
Good, bad. Right, wrong. Should, shouldn’t.
But it’s arbitrary. Constructed. Cultural.
There’s no cosmic law that says you’re bad for wanting money, or good for being humble, or wrong for being angry, or right for being compassionate.
These are just stories. Stories that serve a social function, sure. But stories nonetheless.
What’s Actually Here
Strip away the moral framework. Strip away the cultural conditioning. Strip away the story of who you’re supposed to be.
What’s left?
A human animal. With a body that wants food, warmth, sex, safety, comfort. With emotions that arise based on circumstances—fear when threatened, pleasure when satisfied, frustration when blocked, sadness when loss occurs.
With a mind that creates narratives, that compares and judges and plans and remembers and imagines. That generates desires and aversions constantly.
With social drives—wanting connection, wanting status, wanting to belong, wanting to be seen and understood. None of this is good or bad. It’s just what’s here. The raw material of human experience.
You get angry. That’s just energy arising. You get jealous. That’s just the mind comparing and finding itself lacking. You want things you can’t have. That’s just desire meeting reality.
The problem isn’t the experience. The problem is the layer of judgment on top of it. “I shouldn’t be angry.” “Jealousy is ugly.” “Wanting is attachment and attachment is suffering.”
But the judgment doesn’t stop the experience. It just adds shame to it. Now you’re angry AND ashamed of being angry. Jealous AND disgusted with yourself for being jealous. Wanting AND feeling guilty about wanting.
The judgment creates a war with yourself. And you can’t win that war because you’re both sides of it.
The Shadow You’re Not Supposed to Acknowledge
There’s a whole industry around “shadow work”—integrating the parts of yourself you’ve rejected, owning your darkness, becoming whole.
But even that often becomes another performance. Another way to be the good person who’s done the deep work and integrated their shadow.
Real shadow isn’t something you integrate. It’s just… there. The parts of human experience that you’ve been taught are unacceptable.
You’re violent sometimes. Not physically necessarily, but in your thoughts. You imagine hurting people who’ve wronged you. You fantasize about revenge. You have destructive impulses.
You’re cruel. You enjoy others’ pain sometimes, especially if they’re people you dislike or envy. You laugh at people’s failures. You judge people harshly for things you do yourself.
You’re dishonest. You lie to yourself constantly. You rationalize. You rewrite history to make yourself the hero or the victim. You manipulate your own memory to avoid seeing things you don’t want to see.
You’re weak. You give up when things get hard. You avoid difficulty. You take the easy path even when you know it’s not the right one.
You’re petty. You care about stupid things. You get worked up over slights that don’t matter. You hold onto resentments that serve no purpose.
This isn’t pathology. This is normal. Every human has these impulses. The difference is some people pretend they don’t, and some people are honest about it.
The Relief of Honesty
There’s something liberating about just admitting what’s actually there.
Not as a confession that needs to be absolved. Not as sins to be cleansed. Not as flaws to be improved.
Just as facts. “This is what’s here in human experience.”
When you stop fighting it, stop trying to be better than it, stop performing the good person who’s beyond all these base impulses—there’s relief.
Because the fight was exhausting. Pretending to be someone you’re not, even to yourself, requires constant energy. Maintaining the performance, editing out the unacceptable parts, creating a sanitized version of yourself for public consumption.
What if you just… stopped?
Not stopped caring about your impact on others. Not stopped trying to act skillfully. But stopped pretending you’re something other than a complicated, contradictory, messy human with both noble and ignoble impulses.
You can be generous and selfish. Compassionate and cruel. Honest and deceptive. All in the same day. Sometimes in the same moment.
You’re not one thing. You’re a process, constantly shifting based on conditions. And some of those shifts produce beautiful things. Some produce ugly things. That’s just what humans do.
Working With What’s There
Here’s where this connects to the path I’ve been following.
Most spiritual traditions try to purify you. To make you better. To eliminate the negative qualities and cultivate the positive ones.
But the path I’m talking about doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t try to transcend the raw human truth. It uses it.
Anger isn’t something to overcome. It’s energy. You can work with that energy, channel it, understand it. Or you can suppress it and have it leak out sideways.
Desire isn’t something to eliminate. It’s the engine of life. You can see it clearly, work with it skillfully, or you can pretend you’re beyond it while it runs you from beneath consciousness.
Fear, greed, jealousy, pride—these aren’t obstacles to be removed. They’re part of the landscape. And they contain their own wisdom if you stop treating them as enemies.
This doesn’t mean indulging every impulse. Obviously, you don’t act on every violent thought or cruel urge. You have discernment. You consider consequences.
But you don’t need to wage war on the impulses themselves. You can just see them for what they are: patterns of energy and thought arising based on conditions.
When you see them clearly, without the layer of “this is bad and I’m bad for having it,” they lose their grip. Not because you’ve transcended them, but because you’re not adding fuel by fighting them.
Beyond Good and Evil
Nietzsche wrote about going “beyond good and evil”—not into amorality or nihilism, but into a different relationship with value.
You can have ethics without morality. You can act skillfully without believing in cosmic laws of right and wrong.
You know that hurting people creates suffering. Not because God said so, but because you’ve experienced suffering and you can see it in others. So you try not to create unnecessary suffering.
You know that helping people creates connection and wellbeing. Not because it makes you good, but because it feels better than the isolation of pure selfishness.
You know that lying creates confusion and breaks trust. Not because lying is a sin, but because functional relationships require some degree of honesty.
These aren’t moral absolutes. They’re pragmatic observations about what works and what doesn’t.
And you can hold them while also acknowledging that you’ll fail at them constantly. That you’ll hurt people, help people, lie, tell the truth, be generous, be selfish—all of it, mixed together, because that’s what humans do.
The Universality of It
Here’s what’s interesting: strip away the cultural morality, and the raw human experience is universal.
Everyone wants. Everyone fears. Everyone gets angry, sad, anxious, occasionally clear. Everyone struggles with the thinker’s constant commentary. Everyone is confused most of the time.
This is what connects humans across cultures, across time periods. Not the specific rules about what’s good or bad, but the underlying experience of being conscious, mortal, wanting, confused.
And there’s something… not comforting exactly, but grounding about recognizing this. You’re not uniquely flawed. You’re not failing at being human. You’re just being human, which is inherently messy and contradictory and impossible to get perfectly right.
The person who seems to have it all together? They’re also a mess inside. They’re just better at hiding it, or they’ve convinced themselves their particular mess is acceptable while yours isn’t.
The spiritual teacher, the successful entrepreneur, the perfect parent, the enlightened guru—all of them are working with the same raw human material. The same impulses, the same fears, the same fundamental confusion about what they’re doing here and what it all means.
Some have found ways to work with it more skillfully. Some have just gotten better at performing. But nobody has transcended it completely. And anyone who claims they have is either lying or deluded.
Just This
So here’s the raw human truth: you’re an animal that became conscious enough to question itself, but not conscious enough to fully understand itself.
You’re driven by impulses you didn’t choose. You’re shaped by conditioning you didn’t consent to. You’re playing a game whose rules keep changing, on a planet that’s indifferent to your existence, in a universe that will outlast you by billions of years.
And yet you care deeply. About stupid things and important things and things that are only important because you care about them. You create meaning in a meaningless universe. You generate values that matter to you even if they don’t matter cosmically.
You’re selfish and generous, cruel and kind, honest and deceptive, lazy and industrious, wise and foolish. All of it. Simultaneously. Contradictorily.
And you don’t need to fix this. You don’t need to become someone better, purer, more evolved. You can just see it. All of it. Without the story that you should be something other than what you are.
This is the raw human truth. Not good. Not bad. Just… this. And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.
Chapter 9: Using Everything
There’s a word for the approach I’ve been circling around: tantra.
If you’re from the West, you probably associate tantra with sex. Sacred sexuality, prolonged orgasms, spiritual connection through physical pleasure. And yes, that’s part of it—though a small part that’s been blown up and commercialized.
But the core meaning of tantra is something else entirely. It’s a method of working with reality as it is, rather than trying to transcend it.
Most spiritual paths are about purification. Renunciation. Getting rid of the negative qualities—anger, greed, lust, jealousy—and cultivating the positive ones—compassion, generosity, loving-kindness.
Tantra says: use it all.
Not indulge it all. Not act on every impulse. But work with the raw energy of human experience—all of it—as the path itself.
Anger isn’t an obstacle. It’s intense energy that can be transformed. Desire isn’t something to overcome. It’s the motivation that drives everything. Fear, jealousy, pride—they’re not problems to solve. They’re material to work with.
This is what I’ve been getting at throughout this book. And now I’m naming it directly.
The Difference Between Suppression and Transformation.
Most people deal with difficult emotions in one of two ways: they suppress them or they indulge them.
Suppression: “I shouldn’t be angry. I’m a spiritual person. I need to let this go.” You push it down, pretend it’s not there, smile through gritted teeth. The anger doesn’t go away. It just gets compressed, builds pressure, and eventually explodes or leaks out sideways.
Indulgence: “I’m angry and I’m going to express it!” You yell, you lash out, you justify it as being authentic or honest. The anger gets released temporarily, but you’ve also hurt people, damaged relationships, and reinforced the pattern. Next time you’re triggered, the anger comes back even stronger.
Tantra offers a third option: transformation.
You feel the anger. You don’t suppress it or justify it. You feel it as pure energy in your body. Where is it? Chest? Throat? Jaw? What does it actually feel like, underneath the story about who wronged you and why you’re justified?
When you drop the narrative and feel the raw sensation, something interesting happens. The anger is just… intensity. Heat. Aliveness. Energy moving through your system.
And energy can be worked with. It can be channeled. It can fuel clarity instead of destruction. It can sharpen your awareness instead of clouding it.
The emotion itself isn’t the problem. The problem is being unconscious of it, letting it drive you, or fighting it and creating internal warfare.
Everything as Path
This is the radical part of tantra: nothing is rejected.
You want money? Good. That desire is energy. Use it. Channel it into creating value, into skillful work, into the motivation to build something.
You’re attracted to someone? Fine. That attraction is powerful energy. You can work with it—either by pursuing it skillfully if it’s appropriate, or by feeling the energy of attraction itself without needing to act on it if it’s not.
You’re jealous of someone’s success? Perfect. That jealousy is showing you what you value, what you want, where you feel lacking. You can use that information. You can let the jealousy motivate you, or you can see through the comparison and recognize that their success doesn’t diminish you.
You’re afraid? Fear is razor-sharp awareness of danger. Sometimes the danger is real and the fear is useful. Sometimes the danger is imagined and the fear is just the thinker catastrophizing. Either way, you can work with the energy of it.
The tantric view is that enlightenment—or freedom, or wakefulness, or whatever you want to call it—isn’t somewhere else. It’s not in some purified state where you’ve eliminated all the messy human stuff.
It’s right here, in the middle of the mess. In the anger, the desire, the confusion, the fear. Because all of that is just consciousness taking different forms. And consciousness working with consciousness is the path.
The Richness of Experience
Remember when I said I wanted to experience richness? This is what I meant.
Not just material wealth, though that’s part of it. But the full richness of being alive. The intensity. The texture. The vividness.
Most spiritual paths ask you to mute experience. To detach from it. To observe it from a distance without being affected.
Tantra asks you to dive into it. To feel it fully. To let it be as intense as it is without either clinging to it or pushing it away.
You’re eating something delicious? Taste it completely. Let the pleasure be as pleasurable as it is. You’re in pain? Feel it fully. Let the intensity of it sharpen your awareness.
You’re afraid? Let the fear be felt, completely, without the story. You’re in love? Let the openness of it move through you without grasping at it.
This is richness. Not the diluted, controlled, spiritually acceptable version of experience. The full-spectrum, vivid, alive version.
And here’s what’s strange: when you stop fighting experience, when you stop trying to keep only the good parts and reject the bad parts—it’s all workable. It’s all just energy arising and passing.
The suffering isn’t in the experience itself. It’s in the resistance to it or the grasping at it.
Working With Desire
Let’s get specific about desire, since it’s the thing most spiritual teachings have the most confused relationship with.
Buddhism in general says desire is the root of suffering. If you want things, you suffer when you don’t get them or when you lose them. So the solution is to eliminate desire.
This creates a problem: you desire to be free from desire. You’re still wanting. Just wanting not to want.
Tantra says: desire is life force. It’s what makes you get out of bed. It’s what drives creativity, connection, growth, exploration. Trying to eliminate it is trying to eliminate being alive.
But desire doesn’t have to be desperate. You can want things without being enslaved by the wanting.
You want money. Okay. Work toward it. Use that motivation. But see the wanting as a pattern of energy, not as a truth about your inadequacy. The wanting arises based on conditions—your bank balance, your stress level, your comparison to others. It’s not a permanent feature of who you are.
You can work with the energy of wanting without believing the story that you’ll only be okay once you get what you want.
You want recognition. Fine. That’s a human drive. But recognition is just a feeling that arises when certain conditions are met. It passes. And then you want recognition again.
You can enjoy recognition when it comes, work toward it if that’s meaningful to you, and not be devastated when it doesn’t come. Because you’re not identified with the wanting. You’re just noticing it happening.
This is the difference between having desires and being your desires. Between wanting things and believing you need them to be whole.
The Alchemy of Difficult States
Here’s where tantra gets really interesting: the most difficult states can be the most transformative.
When you’re in the middle of intense anger, or desperate craving, or paralyzing fear—that’s peak intensity. Maximum energy moving through your system.
If you can be present to it without being consumed by it, if you can feel it fully without acting it out or suppressing it—something shifts.
The anger burns through. The energy that was contracted in rage becomes available as clarity, as power, as fierce presence.
The craving reveals what you’re actually hungry for. Usually not the thing itself but some feeling you think the thing will give you. And when you see that clearly, the desperate quality of the craving loosens.
The fear, when you turn toward it instead of running, often dissolves. Or it reveals a real danger that you can then address skillfully instead of just reacting to.
This is alchemy. Not metaphorically. Actually transforming the base material of difficult states into something useful, something awake.
But you can’t do this if you’re fighting the states. If you believe they shouldn’t be there, if you’re ashamed of them, if you’re trying to be the spiritual person who’s beyond such things.
You have to be willing to feel them. To be in them. To let them be as intense as they are while staying present.
This isn’t easy. It goes against every instinct to avoid discomfort. But it’s possible. And it’s the heart of the tantric path.
Poison as Medicine
There’s a traditional image in tantra: the peacock eating poison.
Most birds die if they eat poison. The peacock eats it and it becomes the brilliant colors of its feathers. The poison is transmuted into beauty.
This is the tantric principle applied to consciousness. The “poisons” of human experience—aggression, attachment, ignorance, pride, jealousy—aren’t eliminated. They’re worked with, transformed, transmuted into wakeful qualities.
Aggression becomes clarity, precision, the ability to cut through confusion. Attachment becomes appreciation, connection, the ability to engage fully. Ignorance becomes spaciousness, openness, not-knowing as wisdom. Pride becomes dignity, confidence, self-respect.
Jealousy becomes empathetic joy, the ability to celebrate others.
But this only works if you’re willing to work with the raw material. You can’t transmute poison you’re pretending isn’t there.
This Isn’t a Free Pass to Be an Asshole
Important caveat: “using everything” doesn’t mean doing whatever you want and calling it tantra.
You’re still accountable for your actions. You still consider the impact on others. You still develop discernment about when to act and when not to act.
The difference is in the relationship to the impulse itself.
You feel angry. That’s just energy. You can feel it fully without needing to yell at someone. You can use the clarity that anger brings without needing to destroy things.
You feel attraction. That’s just energy. You can feel it fully without needing to act on it if acting on it would cause harm. Or you can act on it skillfully if it’s appropriate.
The tantra path requires more responsibility, not less. Because you’re not outsourcing your ethics to a set of rules. You’re developing the awareness to see clearly what serves and what doesn’t, what creates connection and what creates harm.
The Path That Includes Life
Most spiritual paths create a division between practice and life.
You meditate in the morning. That’s your spiritual time. Then you go to work, deal with people, pay bills, navigate the world. That’s your regular life. And maybe, if you’re really advanced, you can bring some mindfulness or compassion from your practice into your regular life.
Tantra says: it’s all practice. All of it.
The anger at your boss? Practice. The desire for your colleague? Practice. The anxiety about money? Practice. The pleasure of good food? Practice. The frustration in traffic? Practice.
Not practice in the sense that you’re trying to be perfect or spiritual. But practice in the sense that you’re working with the raw material of experience as it actually shows up.
You’re not waiting for the conditions to be right to practice. You’re using whatever conditions are here.
This is why I’m drawn to this path. Because I don’t want to renounce the world. I want to live in it, fully. I want richness, delicacy, intensity. I want money and freedom and good food and meaningful work.
And I don’t want to see those desires as obstacles to overcome. I want to work with them as the path itself.
The Freedom That Includes Everything
So here’s what this means practically: freedom isn’t freedom from anger, desire, fear, confusion.
It’s freedom to feel all of it without being enslaved by it. Freedom to work with intense states without needing to fix them or indulge them. Freedom to be fully human without waging war on your humanity.
You’re still going to get angry. But you don’t have to be owned by the anger.
You’re still going to want things. But you don’t have to believe your happiness depends on getting them. You’re still going to be afraid. But you don’t have to let fear dictate all your choices.
You’re still going to be confused. But you can be confused with awareness rather than lost in the confusion.
This is what “using everything” actually means. Not that everything is good or acceptable. But that everything is workable. Everything can be brought to the path.
The mess of being human isn’t the obstacle to freedom. It’s the vehicle for it.
And maybe that’s the richest thing of all: nothing needs to be rejected. Nothing needs to be transcended. It can all be here, fully experienced, fully felt.
And you can be free right in the middle of it.
Chapter 10: The Point (or Pointlessness) of Understanding
So here’s the question that keeps coming up: what’s the point of all this?
Understanding the thinker, examining desire, working with emotions, investigating the self—does any of this actually help? Or is it just more mental activity?
More thinking about thinking? More analysis that keeps you in your head instead of actually living?
Maybe the people who don’t do any of this work are better off. They just live. They want things and pursue them. They feel things and express them. They don’t spend hours examining their psyche or questioning their existence.
Are they happier? More free? Less tangled up in themselves?
Maybe all this investigation is just another trap. Another way the thinker keeps itself occupied. Another form of self-absorption disguised as self-awareness.
Maybe the real answer is to just… stop. Stop analyzing. Stop trying to understand. Just be here and do what you do and let that be enough.
The Analysis Paralysis
There’s a real problem with too much understanding.
You start examining your motivations. Why do you want this? What’s driving that? Is this desire authentic or conditioned? Are you acting from clarity or from old patterns?
And then you’re stuck. Because every action has mixed motives. Every choice has multiple layers. Nothing is pure.
You want to help someone. But is it genuine compassion or is it about looking good? Is it empathy or is it your need to be needed? Is it skillful or are you enabling?
You can’t tell. So you analyze more. And while you’re analyzing, the moment passes. The person needed help and you were too busy examining your motivations to actually help.
Or you want to pursue something. A project, a relationship, a goal. But first you need to understand if you really want it or if it’s just the thinker’s story. Is this your authentic desire or society’s programming? Will achieving it actually satisfy you or just create new problems?
And while you’re investigating, you’re not doing anything. You’re just thinking about doing. Which means you’re not gathering any actual data about what works and what doesn’t.
Understanding can become a substitute for living. A way to stay safe, to avoid risk, to maintain the illusion of control. If you just understand enough, you’ll be able to make the perfect choice, take the perfect action, avoid all mistakes.
But that’s not how life works. You can’t think your way to knowing what to do. You have to do things and see what happens.
The People Who Don’t Think About It
You probably know someone who just… lives. They don’t question things much. They want something, they go after it. They feel something, they express it. They don’t spend time examining whether they should want what they want or feel what they feel.
And often, they seem happier than the people who are constantly analyzing themselves.
They’re not paralyzed by options. They’re not tangled up in whether their desires are authentic. They’re not second-guessing every choice or dissecting every emotion.
They just do things. Sometimes those things work out, sometimes they don’t. They adjust and keep moving. Is that better? Is ignorance actually bliss?
Maybe. But probably not in the way you think.
Because what looks like thoughtless action might just be unconscious habit. They’re not choosing freely— they’re running patterns they’ve never examined. They’re driven by conditioning they don’t see. They’re reactive, not responsive.
And when life hits them hard—when their strategy stops working, when they lose what they’ve built their identity around, when the patterns fail—they don’t have any tools to work with it. They just suffer, confused about why things aren’t working anymore.
The examined life and the unexamined life both have their costs.
When Understanding Helps
So when does understanding actually serve you?
When it reveals a pattern you’re caught in. You keep ending up in the same type of relationship, or the same type of conflict, or the same type of self-sabotage. Understanding the pattern gives you choice. You can see it happening and do something different.
When it loosens the grip of a belief. You realize you’ve been operating from an assumption that isn’t true. That you need everyone’s approval, or that you’re fundamentally inadequate, or that you can’t trust anyone. Seeing the belief clearly makes it possible to question it.
When it creates space. You notice the gap between the stimulus and your response. You see the anger arising before you act on it. You feel the craving before you indulge it. That space is where freedom lives.
When it reveals what you actually value. You’ve been pursuing things because you thought you should, or because everyone else is. Understanding shows you what you actually care about, underneath the conditioning.
These are useful. They change how you move through the world.
But notice: the understanding isn’t the point. The shift in how you actually live is the point. Understanding that serves action is useful. Understanding that becomes an end in itself is just more thinking.
The Difference Between Understanding and Experiencing
Here’s a critical distinction: understanding about something is different from direct experience of it.
You can understand intellectually that the self is constructed, that the thinker is just a pattern, that thoughts aren’t truth. You can read about it, think about it, believe it conceptually.
But that understanding is still in the territory of thinking. It’s another idea held by the thinker.
Direct experience is different. It’s when you’re sitting there and you notice: “There are thoughts happening, but there’s no solid self having them. It’s just… happening.” Not as a concept, but as immediate, obvious reality.
Or you’re feeling intense emotion and you notice: “This is just sensation. Energy moving. It’s not actually as solid as the story makes it seem.” And in that noticing, the emotion moves through instead of gripping you.
That’s not understanding. That’s seeing. Experiencing. And it changes things in a way that understanding alone doesn’t.
Most of what I’ve written in this book is understanding. Ideas. Concepts. Maps. They might point to something useful, but they’re not the thing itself.
The thing itself is your direct experience right now. Whatever’s here. And whether you understand it or not doesn’t change what it is.
Just Living
So what about just living? Dropping all the investigation and just being here?
There’s something to that. There are moments when the analysis stops, when you’re just absorbed in what you’re doing. Cooking. Walking. Talking with someone. Creating something. And in those moments, there’s no problem. The thinker isn’t running its usual routines. You’re just here.
And it feels… lighter. Simpler. More real than all the thinking about reality. So why not live there? Why ever engage the analytical mind?
Because sometimes you’re stuck. Sometimes the patterns are causing real suffering and you can’t see your way through. Sometimes you need to understand why you keep doing the thing you don’t want to do. Sometimes the investigation serves.
And sometimes you’re genuinely curious. You want to know how this works, this strange experience of being conscious. Not to achieve anything, but just because it’s interesting.
The problem isn’t the investigation. The problem is when investigation becomes obligation. When you believe you have to understand everything in order to be okay. When “just living” feels irresponsible or unconscious, so you keep analyzing even when it’s not serving you.
The Middle Path
Maybe the answer is: both.
Investigate when it’s useful. Live when investigation isn’t needed.
Don’t make a religion out of either. Don’t believe you have to constantly examine yourself, and don’t believe you have to never examine yourself.
Use understanding when it creates freedom. Drop it when it creates paralysis.
Be present to direct experience. And when you notice you’re caught in a pattern, bring some awareness to it. See what’s happening. Make a different choice if that serves.
But don’t get stuck trying to understand everything before you act. Don’t wait for perfect clarity before you move. Life doesn’t work that way.
You act, you see what happens, you learn, you adjust. Understanding comes from living, not as a prerequisite to it.
The Question Itself
Maybe the most interesting thing is the question: “What’s the point of understanding?” Who’s asking? The thinker, obviously. And what does it want to hear?
It wants to know if all this work is worth it. If there’s a payoff. If understanding leads somewhere better than not understanding.
But that’s the achievement mindset again. The self-improvement project. The belief that if you just do the right things—including understanding the right things—you’ll finally arrive.
What if there’s nowhere to arrive? What if understanding doesn’t get you anywhere, but it’s just… what’s happening? Sometimes you investigate, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t.
The thinker wants to know if it should keep investigating or stop investigating. But that’s another choice to make, another problem to solve.
What if you just notice what’s actually happening? Are you investigating right now? Okay, that’s what’s happening. Are you just living right now? Okay, that’s what’s happening.
Neither needs to be justified. Neither needs to be the right approach. They’re just different modes of being that arise based on conditions.
The Paradox of Seeking
Here’s the deepest paradox: you seek understanding because you want to be free. But the seeking itself is a form of bondage.
You believe that once you understand enough, you’ll be free from confusion, from suffering, from the thinker’s grip. So you keep investigating, keep reading, keep trying to get it.
But getting it is still something the thinker is trying to achieve. It’s still a future state that will be better than this one. Still the belief that you’re not okay now and will be okay then.
And that seeking—that conviction that understanding will deliver freedom—prevents the freedom you’re seeking.
Because freedom isn’t in understanding. It’s in the dropping of the belief that you need to understand in order to be okay.
You’re already free. Not because you understand that intellectually. But because freedom isn’t dependent on circumstances, including the circumstance of your level of understanding.
The investigation can reveal this. Or it can obscure it by becoming another thing you need to perfect.
So What’s the Point?
I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know if there’s a point.
Maybe the investigation of human existence is meaningful. Maybe it reveals something important about consciousness, about being, about the nature of experience.
Or maybe it’s just what some humans do. Some people are curious about how things work—machines, ecosystems, social systems. Some people are curious about consciousness. It’s not better or worse. It’s just a way of being.
Maybe understanding serves you in specific ways at specific times. And maybe sometimes it’s just intellectual masturbation that keeps you from actually living.
Maybe both are true simultaneously.
What I know is: I’m curious. I want to understand how this works, this experience of being aware, wanting, confused, occasionally clear. Not because I think understanding will save me, but because the question itself is alive in me.
And I also know: all the understanding in the world doesn’t replace actually being here. Feeling what’s here. Responding to what’s here. Living whatever this is.
So maybe the point isn’t understanding or not understanding. Maybe it’s being honest about what’s actually happening. Investigating when the investigation is alive. Living when living is what’s called for. And not making either one into the right way.
The thinker wants a conclusion. Wants to know: should I keep investigating or should I just live? And the answer is probably: yes.
Both. Neither. Whatever’s here now.
And that non-answer might be the most honest thing I can say.
Chapter 11: Just Living
You know those moments when you’re not in your head?
You’re cooking and you’re just… cooking. Chopping vegetables, adjusting heat, tasting, adjusting. Your hands know what to do. Your attention is on the food, the process, the smells and textures. There’s no commentary running. No judgment about whether you’re doing it right. No thinking about what else you should be doing.
Or you’re walking and something catches your eye. Light through leaves. The way shadows fall. You stop and just look. For a few seconds, there’s no you looking at it. There’s just the seeing.
Or you’re talking with someone and you’re actually there. Not planning what to say next. Not monitoring how you’re coming across. Not half-thinking about something else. Just present to what they’re saying, responding naturally.
These moments happen. Not because you achieved them. Not because you meditated enough or understood enough. They just… happen. When conditions allow it.
This is what “just living” actually is. Not a state you attain. Not a practice you perfect. Just the absence of the thinker’s interference.
And it’s available all the time. You just keep forgetting.
What Gets in the Way
The thinker gets in the way.
You’re eating something delicious. Immediately: “This is so good. I should come here more often. I wonder what’s in this. I should learn to make this. But I probably won’t. I never follow through. Why am I like that? I should be more disciplined. Actually, maybe I shouldn’t be eating this. I’m trying to eat healthier. But one meal won’t hurt. Or am I just making excuses?”
And now you’re not tasting the food anymore. You’re thinking about the food, about yourself, about your patterns, about what you should be doing instead.
The experience gets filtered through the thinker’s machinery. And by the time it comes out the other side, it’s not direct experience anymore. It’s experience plus commentary plus judgment plus planning plus comparison.
This is what the thinker does. It mediates reality. It stands between you and direct experience, narrating everything, evaluating everything, turning everything into material for the story of you.
And most of the time, you don’t even notice it’s happening. The commentary is so constant that you think it IS experience. You think you are the thinker.
The Difference Between Doing and Thinking About Doing
There’s doing, and there’s thinking about doing.
You’re washing dishes. You can actually wash dishes—feel the water, the soap, the texture of the plates. Or you can think about washing dishes while washing dishes—”I hate this chore. Why do I have to do this? I should get a dishwasher. But that’s wasteful. Am I wasteful? I’m probably wasteful. I should be more mindful. Like that book said. Am I being mindful right now? I’m thinking about being mindful, so probably not…”
Same activity, completely different experience.
When you’re just doing it, there’s no problem. Washing dishes is just washing dishes. It’s not good or bad. It’s not meaningful or meaningless. It’s just what’s happening right now.
When you’re thinking about it, it becomes a problem. Something you have to endure, or optimize, or make meaningful, or transcend.
And this applies to everything. You can have a conversation or think about having a conversation. You can work or think about work. You can feel an emotion or think about feeling the emotion.
The doing is direct. The thinking about doing creates a layer of separation. A sense of you doing something, rather than just the doing itself.
Not-Knowing
Here’s something the thinker hates: not knowing.
You don’t know what will happen tomorrow. You don’t know if this choice will work out. You don’t know if you’re doing the right thing. You don’t know what this feeling means or where it’s coming from or what to do about it.
The thinker rushes in to fill the not-knowing. It generates explanations, predictions, plans. It creates the illusion of understanding, of control.
But the truth is: you mostly don’t know. You’re making it up as you go. Acting on incomplete information, dealing with an unpredictable world, responding to circumstances you didn’t choose.
And when you can be okay with not knowing—when you can act without certainty, respond without having it all figured out—there’s a different quality to living.
Not the paralysis of analysis. Not the recklessness of unconsciousness. Just… responsive movement. Doing what seems right based on what’s here now, knowing it might turn out differently than expected.
The thinker wants solid ground. It wants to know the outcome before taking action. It wants guarantees.
Just living means moving without guarantees. Being okay with uncertainty. Acting from what’s immediately clear rather than waiting for complete understanding.
Ordinary Life as It Is
There’s a tendency to think that “just living” means some elevated state. Some flow state where everything is effortless and blissful and you’re one with everything.
But that’s another story. Another ideal to chase.
Just living is ordinary. Remarkably ordinary.
You’re tired, so you rest. You’re hungry, so you eat. You have something to do, so you do it. You don’t have anything to do, so you don’t do anything.
Simple. Not complicated by the thinker’s narratives about whether you should be tired or what it means that you’re tired or whether you’re resting correctly.
You want something. Okay. You either pursue it or you don’t. Not tangled up in whether you should want it or what it says about you that you want it.
You feel something. Okay. You feel it. Not making it a problem, not making it significant, not using it as evidence for a story about who you are.
This isn’t special. It’s not enlightened. It’s just… uncluttered. Direct. Immediate.
Presence Without Trying
The problem with “being present” as a practice is that it becomes another thing the thinker is doing.
“I should be more present. Am I present right now? No, I’m thinking about being present. Okay, let me just… be here. With the breath. With the moment. Am I doing it right? This doesn’t feel like what the book described. Maybe I’m not present enough…”
Trying to be present keeps you in your head. The trying is thinking. The monitoring is thinking. The evaluation of whether you’re present or not is thinking.
Presence isn’t something you do. It’s what’s already here when you’re not doing anything.
Right now, you’re reading these words. That’s happening. The seeing is happening. The comprehension is happening. All without you trying to make it happen.
That’s presence. Not special. Not earned. Just the basic fact of experience occurring.
The thinker jumps in and claims ownership. “I am reading this. I am understanding this.” But the reading and understanding are just happening. The sense of a “you” doing it is an addition, a story layered on top.
When that story quiets down, there’s just… this. Whatever’s here. Already present. Already whole.
Working, Creating, Engaging
Just living doesn’t mean becoming passive. Not caring about anything. Not doing anything.
You can be fully engaged in work without the thinker’s constant evaluation. You can create something without narrating the process. You can pursue goals without the belief that achieving them will complete you.
The difference is in the quality of attention. Are you here with what you’re doing, or are you thinking about what you’re doing?
Are you writing or are you worried about whether it’s good enough? Are you building something or are you comparing yourself to others who are further along? Are you engaged in the task or are you monitoring yourself engaging in the task?
When you’re just doing it—fully absorbed, present to the actual work—it’s not effortful in the same way. There’s still effort, still challenge, but it’s not heavy. It’s not burdened by all the meta-level thinking about whether you’re doing it right or what it means or what will happen.
You’re just here, doing this, now. And then the next moment, you’re here, doing that.
When the Story Drops
Sometimes the thinker’s story drops away completely.
You’re in danger and suddenly everything is sharp, clear, immediate. No time for thinking. Just response.
Or you’re absorbed in something—music, art, nature, sex, flow state in work—and the sense of being a separate self temporarily dissolves. There’s just the experience, happening.
Or you’re so exhausted that you can’t maintain the story anymore. You just… are. Whatever you are. Too tired to evaluate it, to improve it, to make it mean something.
In those moments, there’s relief. Even when the circumstances are difficult, there’s relief in the absence of the thinker’s weight.
And afterwards, the thinker comes back and says, “I should be in that state more often. How do I get back there? What did I do to make that happen?”
And now it’s another project. Another thing to achieve. The very attempt to recreate it prevents it from happening.
Because it’s not something you do. It’s what’s here when you’re not doing anything. When the conditions don’t support the thinker’s usual activity.
You can’t force those conditions. But you can notice when they’re here. And you can stop adding unnecessary layers of thinking when they’re not.
The Choice That Isn’t a Choice
Can you choose to just live? Or is that another decision the thinker is making?
“I’m going to stop thinking so much and just be present.” That’s still thinking. Still the thinker managing itself. You can’t think your way into just living. The very attempt is thinking.
So what do you do?
Nothing. And everything.
You notice when you’re lost in thought. You notice when you’re here. You don’t make either one a problem.
You engage with life as it shows up. Sometimes that means planning, analyzing, figuring things out. Sometimes it means just being here, responding, doing what’s next.
You don’t make “just living” into another ideal, another state you’re failing to achieve. You just… see what’s actually happening. And sometimes in that seeing, the extra layers of thinking fall away on their own.
Not because you did it right. Just because conditions shifted.
Life Without the Constant Commentary
Imagine life without the thinker’s constant commentary.
You’re just here. Experiencing what’s here. Responding to what’s here. Not from some elevated state of consciousness, but just… naturally. The way a tree grows or water flows.
Things happen. You respond. Sometimes skillfully, sometimes not. You adjust based on what you learn. You move through your days doing what needs doing, wanting what you want, feeling what you feel.
No constant evaluation. No comparison to how you should be. No story about whether you’re progressing or regressing on some spiritual path.
Just this. Just now. Just what’s actually here.
That’s not a destination. It’s not something you finally achieve after enough work.
It’s already here. Right now. In this moment. While you’re reading this.
The seeing is happening. The comprehension is happening. Life is living itself.
And whether you notice that or not, whether you’re tangled up in the thinker’s story or not, it doesn’t change the basic fact: you’re alive. Here. Now.
Maybe that’s enough. Maybe it always was.
Chapter 12: Freedom From vs Freedom In
There are two very different kinds of freedom that get confused with each other.
Freedom from: escaping the things that bind you. Renouncing desire, transcending the body, detaching from outcomes, rising above the messy human experience. This is the monk’s freedom. The ascetic’s freedom. Freedom through elimination.
Freedom in: being fully engaged with life while not being enslaved by it. Experiencing desire without being driven by it. Feeling emotions without being consumed by them. Wanting things without making your okayness depend on getting them. This is freedom through transformation, not transcendence.
Most spiritual teaching points toward the first kind. And it works, in its own way. If you remove yourself from the world, simplify radically, want nothing—you can find a kind of peace.
But that’s not the freedom I’m after. And probably not the one you are either.
Because you don’t want to escape life. You want to live it. Fully. Richly. With all its intensity and complexity and contradiction.
The question is: can you do that and still be free?
The Renunciate’s Path
The traditional path is clear: desire causes suffering, so eliminate desire. Attachment causes pain, so eliminate attachment. The world is suffering, so transcend the world.
Leave society. Live simply. Reduce needs to the bare minimum. Meditate. Renounce pleasure, comfort, ambition. Let go of everything until there’s nothing left to lose, nothing left to want, nothing left to bind you.
And for some people, this works. They find peace in the monastery, in the cave, in the radical simplicity of a life stripped down to essentials.
But notice what this requires: removing yourself from the circumstances that trigger desire and attachment. You can be detached from money when you live in a monastery where all needs are provided. You can be free from ambition when you’ve renounced career and status. You can let go of relationships when you’ve chosen celibacy.
It’s freedom, yes. But it’s freedom through avoidance. Through creating conditions where the things that would trigger suffering aren’t present.
And that’s fine if that’s what you want. If the monastic life genuinely calls to you, if radical renunciation is your path—do it.
But for most people, that’s not realistic. Or desirable. You have relationships, responsibilities, work, engagement with the world. You don’t want to renounce all that. You want to figure out how to be free within it.
Freedom Through Engagement
Here’s the radical proposition: you can be fully in the world—wanting things, pursuing goals, experiencing pleasure and pain—and still be free.
Not free from these experiences. Free in them.
You want money. That desire is here. But you’re not enslaved by it. You work toward financial security without the desperate belief that you can’t be okay until you have it. The wanting doesn’t own you even though it’s present.
You’re in a relationship. You care deeply about this person. But you’re not clinging. You’re not making them responsible for your happiness. You’re not panicking at the thought of losing them. You can love fully while being okay even if things change.
You have ambition. You want to create something, achieve something, be recognized for something. But your worth isn’t dependent on succeeding. You can pursue it wholeheartedly without making it mean everything.
This is freedom in. Not freedom from wanting, caring, striving. Freedom to do all of that without being imprisoned by it.
And this is harder. Much harder.
Because you can’t just remove yourself from the triggers. You’re right in the middle of them. Daily. You have to work with the actual arising of desire, fear, attachment—right there in the moment, in the messiness of real life.
The Difference Between Detachment and Non-Grasping
There’s a subtle but crucial difference here.
Detachment sounds spiritual. “I’m detached from outcomes. I don’t care what happens. I’m beyond all that.”
But often, detachment is just suppression. You care, but you’re pretending not to. You want something, but you’re acting like you don’t. It’s a defense mechanism disguised as enlightenment.
Real detachment—the kind the renunciates practice—is actual non-caring. They’ve genuinely let go. They really don’t care about money, status, pleasure. It’s not performance. They’ve simplified to the point where these things genuinely don’t matter.
But you probably can’t do that while being in the world. You care about your work. You care about your relationships. You care about having resources to live. And pretending you don’t just creates internal conflict.
Non-grasping is different. It’s caring without clinging. Wanting without desperation. Preferring without demanding.
You want your project to succeed. You care about it. You work toward it. But you’re not grasping at the outcome. If it fails, you’ll be disappointed, but you won’t be destroyed. Your whole sense of self doesn’t depend on it.
You love someone. You want them in your life. But you’re not grasping at them. You’re not making them responsible for your okayness. If they leave, you’ll grieve, but you’ll still be fundamentally whole.
This is subtle. It’s not the absence of caring. It’s the presence of caring without the addition of existential need.
Working With the Fire
The renunciate’s path is like putting out the fire. Eliminate desire, eliminate the fuel, eliminate the heat.
The tantric path—the path of freedom in—is like learning to work with fire. The heat is still there. The intensity is still there. But you’re not getting burned.
You can feel strong emotion without being consumed by it. You can have intense desire without being driven by it. You can experience pleasure without clinging to it. You can face pain without being destroyed by it.
The fire of human experience—all that wanting, fearing, loving, hating, striving—isn’t the enemy. It’s energy. Intensity. Life force.
And you can work with it. Use it. Transform it. Without needing to extinguish it.
This is why I’m drawn to this path. Because I don’t want to dampen experience. I want the full spectrum. The richness. The intensity. The delicacy and the roughness and everything in between.
I want to feel deeply, want strongly, engage fully. And I want to do that while being free. Not free from it, but free in it.
The World as Classroom
From the freedom-from perspective, the world is an obstacle. It’s what you need to transcend, escape, rise above.
From the freedom-in perspective, the world is the classroom. It’s where you learn. Where you practice. Where you discover whether you’re actually free or just performing freedom in controlled conditions.
You think you’re patient? Wait until you’re stuck in traffic when you’re already late.
You think you’re generous? Wait until someone asks for something you don’t want to give. You think you’re non-attached? Wait until you lose something you care about.
You think you’re beyond anger? Wait until someone truly wrongs you.
The world tests you. Constantly. And that’s not a bug. That’s the curriculum.
If you can only be free when conditions are peaceful, you’re not really free. You’re just in favorable conditions.
Real freedom is being okay even when conditions aren’t favorable. When you’re triggered. When you’re challenged. When life isn’t going how you want.
And you can’t practice that in a monastery. You have to be in the mess.
The Risk of This Path
Here’s the thing about freedom in: it’s riskier.
The renunciate removes themselves from temptation. From the situations that would trigger grasping. They create conditions where freedom is easier.
But when you’re in the world—with money, relationships, ambition, pleasure—you can fall into grasping at any moment. You can lose the thread. You can get tangled up in wanting, fearing, clinging.
And you will. Repeatedly.
The path of freedom in isn’t about achieving a permanent state of non-grasping. It’s about noticing when you’re grasping, seeing it clearly, and letting it loosen. Over and over.
You get caught. You notice. You loosen. You get caught again.
Not because you’re failing. But because that’s how it works when you’re actually engaged with life rather than protected from it.
The risk is worth it. Because the alternative is a life half-lived. A life where you’re so careful not to get attached that you never fully engage with anything.
What’s Actually Free?
Here’s the deepest question: what is it that’s free?
Not the thinker. The thinker is a pattern of thoughts claiming to be an entity. It can’t be free—it’s just arising based on conditions.
Not the body. The body wants things, needs things. It’s subject to biology, aging, illness. It’s not free in any ultimate sense.
Not your circumstances. Those are constantly changing, mostly beyond your control. You’re not free to make them be whatever you want.
So what’s free?
The awareness that’s aware of all of it. The space in which experience occurs. That’s already free. It’s never bound. It’s never not-free.
Thoughts arise in it. Emotions move through it. The body does what bodies do. All of that happens in awareness. And awareness itself is untouched by any of it.
It’s not something you become aware of through effort. It’s what you already are. The looking itself. The knowing that knows experience.
And that’s already free. Whether you’re a monk or a CEO. Whether you’re renouncing the world or fully engaged with it. Whether you notice it or not.
The question is just: do you recognize it?
Because when you do—even briefly—the whole question of freedom from versus freedom in becomes irrelevant.
You’re free either way. In the monastery or in the marketplace. In solitude or in relationship. In poverty or in wealth.
Not because circumstances don’t matter. They do. But because what you essentially are isn’t determined by circumstances.
Both Paths Valid
I should say: I’m not dismissing the renunciate path. For some people, it’s exactly right. The pull toward simplicity, solitude, radical non-attachment—if that’s genuine, follow it.
But for most people reading this, that’s not the calling. You want to be in the world. You want relationship, work, creative expression, material comfort. You want the full human experience.
And that’s okay. You don’t have to renounce that to be free.
You just have to see clearly. To notice when you’re grasping and when you’re not. To work with the energy of desire without being driven by it. To engage fully without making your okayness dependent on outcomes.
That’s the path of freedom in. Harder. Messier. More vulnerable to getting lost.
But also richer. More alive. More human.
And maybe, in the end, more complete.
Because it includes everything. The transcendent and the mundane. The spiritual and the material. The still and the dynamic.
Nothing rejected. Nothing transcended. Just everything, as it is, experienced fully and freely. That’s the freedom I’m after.
Not freedom from this life.
Freedom to live it.
Chapter 13: Still Wanting
Let me be honest about where this leaves me.
I still want money. I still want financial security. I still want the ability to live comfortably, to not worry about every expense, to have resources to do things that matter to me.
I still want recognition. I still care what certain people think. I still want to be seen as competent, valuable, worth listening to.
I still want ease. I still get anxious. I still worry about the future. I still wish things were easier than they are.
All of this investigation, all of this understanding about the thinker and desire and freedom—none of it has made the wanting go away.
And I used to think that was the point. That if I understood enough, became aware enough, did enough inner work—eventually I’d transcend wanting. I’d be one of those people who genuinely doesn’t need anything. Who’s free from all that.
But that hasn’t happened. And I don’t think it’s going to.
Because wanting is part of being alive. It’s not a bug to fix. It’s built into the system.
The Wanting Continues
You know what happens after you achieve something you wanted?
You feel good. Briefly. There’s satisfaction, relief, maybe even joy. You got the thing. The goal was reached. The desire was fulfilled.
And then… the baseline resets. The wanting shifts to something else.
You got the raise. Great. Now you want the promotion. You got the promotion. Now you want to prove you deserve it. You proved that. Now you want the next level.
You got in shape. Good. Now you want to maintain it. You maintained it. Now you worry about losing it.
You found love. Beautiful. Now you want it to last. It lasts. Now you want it to deepen. It deepens. Now you’re afraid of it ending.
The wanting never stops. The goal posts keep moving. Not because you’re broken or ungrateful or unenlightened. But because that’s how the human organism works.
It’s designed for dissatisfaction. For perpetual wanting. Because dissatisfaction is what kept your ancestors alive. The ones who were content with what they had didn’t strive, didn’t plan, didn’t prepare. They got comfortable and died.
The ones who always wanted more, who were never quite satisfied, who kept pushing—they survived. And you’re descended from them.
So the wanting is genetic. Neurological. Fundamental. And fighting it is exhausting.
What Changed, Then?
So if the wanting hasn’t gone away, what’s the point of all this?
What changed is the relationship to the wanting. Not the wanting itself, but how I hold it.
I still want money. But I can see it as wanting. As a pattern of mind that arises based on conditions—my bank balance, my stress level, my comparison to others. It’s not a truth about my inadequacy. It’s just the mind doing what minds do.
And when I see it that way, there’s space. The wanting is still there, but it’s not as gripping. It doesn’t feel as urgent, as existential, as if everything depends on it.
I can work toward financial security without the desperation. Without the belief that I can’t be okay until I have it. Without making my worth dependent on my net worth.
Same with recognition. I still want it. But I can see the wanting. I can notice when I’m fishing for compliments, when I’m checking to see if people approve, when I’m anxious about judgment.
And in the seeing, there’s less identification with it. It’s not “I need approval”—it’s “there’s the pattern of seeking approval arising.” Subtle difference, but it changes everything.
The wanting is still here. But I’m not quite as tangled in it.
The Paradox of Non-Grasping
Here’s what’s strange: when you’re not grasping at things, you actually enjoy them more.
When you desperately want something, and finally get it, the satisfaction is tinged with fear of losing it. You got what you wanted, but now you have to protect it, maintain it, worry about it.
When you want something but you’re not grasping at it—when you’re working toward it without making everything depend on it—there’s more ease. And if you get it, the enjoyment is cleaner. Less complicated by the need to hold onto it.
Food tastes better when you’re not anxious about whether you should be eating it. Work is more satisfying when you’re not desperate for validation. Relationships are richer when you’re not clinging to them.
The non-grasping doesn’t mean you don’t care. It means you care without the tight fist around it.
And paradoxically, that makes the caring more genuine. Because you’re not using the thing to fill some hole in yourself. You’re just appreciating it for what it is.
Still Failing
I should also be clear: I’m not good at this.
I still get caught in grasping all the time. I still make my okayness dependent on circumstances. I still believe the thinker’s stories about how things need to be different for me to be happy.
I notice it more now. That’s the main difference. I catch myself mid-grasp more often. I see the pattern running and I can sometimes let it loosen.
But I don’t always. Sometimes I’m so tangled in it that I don’t even see it until after the fact. “Oh, I was completely identified with that fear. I actually believed that everything depended on that outcome.”
And then the thinker jumps in: “You should be better at this by now. You’ve done all this work and you’re still getting caught. You’re failing at non-attachment.”
And now I’m attached to being non-attached. The thinker has just found a new performance to maintain.
This is how it goes. You don’t graduate from this. You just see it more clearly, more often. And the seeing itself creates a little space. A little freedom. Not permanently, but in moments.
And moments are enough.
The Permission to Want
Here’s something important: you don’t have to apologize for wanting things.
You don’t have to pretend you’re beyond it. You don’t have to perform the enlightened person who has no desires.
You can want money, comfort, love, recognition, pleasure. You can want your life to be easier. You can want people to like you. You can want to succeed at things.
All of that is human. Normal. Fine.
The only question is: can you see it clearly? Can you work with it without being enslaved by it? Can you pursue what you want without making your fundamental okayness depend on getting it?
And even that—you’re going to fail at it sometimes. You’re going to get caught. You’re going to make outcomes mean everything. You’re going to grasp and cling and desperately need things.
And that’s fine too. That’s human too.
The point isn’t perfection. The point is just seeing it. Over and over. Catching yourself. Loosening the grip when you notice it’s tight. And being okay with getting caught again.
What You Actually Want Underneath
Here’s something worth investigating: what is it you actually want underneath the specific desires?
You want money. But what do you think money will give you? Security? Freedom? Worth? The ability to relax? Proof that you’re not failing at life?
You want recognition. But what do you think recognition will give you? Validation? Proof that you matter? Permission to feel good about yourself? Connection?
You want relationship. But what do you think relationship will give you? An end to loneliness? Someone to complete you? Proof that you’re lovable?
Often, what you think you want isn’t what you actually want. The specific desire is pointing at something deeper.
And the deeper thing—security, worth, okayness, connection—can’t be achieved by getting the thing. Because those are feelings, states of being. And feelings arise based on conditions, then pass.
You can get the money and still feel insecure. Get the recognition and still feel inadequate. Get the relationship and still feel lonely.
Not because you didn’t get enough, but because the feeling you’re after isn’t in the thing. It’s in how you relate to yourself. And that’s not something you can acquire.
The Acceptance of Wanting
So here’s where I’ve landed: I accept that I want things. I accept that the wanting will continue. I accept that I’ll keep pursuing things, achieving some, failing at others, and still wanting more.
And I also accept that underneath all the wanting, I’m fundamentally okay. Not because I’ve transcended wanting, but because the okayness isn’t conditional on getting what I want.
I can want and be okay. I can strive and be okay. I can fail and be okay. I can succeed and be okay.
The okayness is just… here. Prior to circumstances. Prior to outcomes. Prior to the thinker’s evaluation of how I’m doing.
And that doesn’t make the wanting go away. It doesn’t make life simple or easy or free from struggle.
But it means the wanting isn’t so heavy. The striving isn’t so desperate. The whole enterprise of being human is a little lighter.
The Ongoing Process
This isn’t a conclusion. It’s not like I figured it out and now I’m done.
I’m still in it. Still wanting. Still grasping sometimes. Still believing the thinker’s stories about how I need things to be different.
And still seeing it. Still noticing. Still finding moments of space, of freedom, of being okay regardless.
The investigation doesn’t end. The itch doesn’t get permanently scratched. The thinker doesn’t stop thinking.
But there’s a different relationship to it all. Less belief in the stories. Less identification with the thinker. Less conviction that everything depends on getting what you want.
And in that little bit of space—that small shift in perspective—there’s freedom. Not freedom from wanting. Freedom to want without being owned by it.
I still want to be rich. And I still want to be free.
And maybe, just maybe, I can be both.
Not because I achieved it. But because the wanting and the freedom were never actually in conflict. They’re just different aspects of being human. Of being alive. Of being here.
And being here, as it turns out, is enough.
Even while wanting more.
Chapter 14: The Unfinished Investigation
Let me tell you what I actually know: almost nothing.
I don’t know if the thinker can permanently die. I don’t know if there’s a state beyond thought that’s stable and not just temporary. I don’t know if what I’m calling “awareness” is real or just another construct of the brain trying to understand itself.
I don’t know if I’m experiencing genuine freedom or just getting better at rationalizing my continuing entanglement.
I don’t know.
And here’s what’s terrifying: maybe what everyone is actually seeking when they talk about ego-death, enlightenment, the death of the self—maybe that IS death. Literal death. The actual cessation of this particular pattern of consciousness that thinks it’s a person.
Because here’s the thing nobody wants to say out loud: if the thinker dies, if the sense of self completely dissolves—who the fuck is left?
You say “awareness remains” but how do you know? Who’s aware of the awareness? Isn’t that just another layer of the thinker claiming to be something?
The Biological Truth
Let’s be brutally honest about what you are.
You’re a meat computer. A biological organism running on chemical reactions. Electrical impulses in neural networks. Hormones flooding your system. Neurotransmitters firing.
When you feel love, that’s oxytocin and dopamine. When you feel fear, that’s adrenaline and cortisol. When you feel calm after meditation, that’s increased GABA and decreased cortisol. When you have a spiritual experience, that’s your default mode network temporarily shutting down.
The thinker? That’s just the brain’s left hemisphere doing what it does—creating narrative, generating the sense of a continuous self, narrating experience.
The sense that you exist as a separate entity? That’s probably the brain’s way of organizing information for survival. A useful fiction that helped your ancestors not get eaten.
Free will? Probably an illusion. Studies show your brain makes decisions before you’re consciously aware of making them. The thinker just retroactively claims credit.
So what are you actually doing when you investigate consciousness? You’re a pattern of neural activity investigating itself. Neurons firing in a way that creates the illusion of a self examining itself.
And maybe—maybe—all of this “spiritual path” stuff is just the brain entertaining itself. Creating meaning where there is none. Making you feel like you’re progressing toward something when you’re just… existing. Temporarily. Until the biological system breaks down and you stop.
The Death Question
If the thinker completely died, would you still be here?
Or is the thinker all there is? Is the sense of being a continuous self the only thing holding this experience together? Without it, is there just… nothing? Blackness? The same as before you were born?
Some people report permanent shifts. They say the self dissolved and never came back fully. They’re still here, still functioning, but without the constant sense of “me” at the center.
But how do I know that’s true? How do they know? Maybe they’re just different now. Maybe their brain reorganized and they’re running a new pattern. Maybe what they’re calling “no-self” is just a different kind of self—one that identifies as awareness instead of as the thinker.
Or maybe they’re full of shit. Maybe they’re performing enlightenment. Maybe the thinker is just more subtle now, hiding in spiritual language.
I don’t know. Nobody knows. Because you can’t verify someone else’s internal experience.
And here’s the terrifying part: maybe the dissolution of self IS death. Maybe that’s why enlightenment is described as dying before you die. Because you are dying. The pattern that you think you are is dissolving. And what’s left might be nothing. Or it might be something, but it won’t be you.
So when people seek ego-death, are they actually seeking their own annihilation? Are they so desperate to escape the thinker’s suffering that they’re willing to cease existing?
And is that courage or suicide?
We Don’t Know
Here’s what I can say with certainty: we don’t know.
We don’t know if consciousness continues without the self. We don’t know if awareness is fundamental or emergent from matter. We don’t know if the experiences reported in deep meditation are genuine insights into reality or just different brain states. We don’t know if enlightenment is real or a myth. We don’t know if there’s anything beyond this biological organism experiencing itself.
The materialists say consciousness is just the brain. When the brain dies, consciousness ends. You are your neurons. When they stop firing, you stop existing.
The spiritualists say consciousness is fundamental. The brain is just a receiver. When it dies, consciousness continues, returns to source, reincarnates, whatever.
Both are unfalsifiable beliefs. Neither can be proven. We won’t know until we die, and then we won’t be able to report back.
So all of this—the investigation, the practices, the path—is happening in profound uncertainty. You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know where it leads. You don’t know if any of it matters.
The Chemical Control
You think you’re in control?
Change your brain chemistry and your entire experience changes. Get sleep-deprived and you can’t think clearly. Get drunk and your inhibitions disappear. Take an antidepressant and your worldview shifts. Have a brain injury and your personality can completely change.
Meditation might just be a way to manipulate your own neurochemistry. The peace you feel? Lower cortisol. The clarity? Increased alpha waves. The sense of oneness? Decreased activity in the parietal lobe that creates the sense of boundaries.
You’re not transcending the body. You’re just learning to regulate it. And calling that “spiritual awakening.”
Maybe that’s all freedom is. Not some metaphysical liberation, but just better neurochemical regulation. Less stress response. More parasympathetic activation. Better emotional regulation through a well-trained prefrontal cortex.
That’s still valuable. But it’s not what the spiritual traditions promised. It’s not escaping the wheel of suffering. It’s just managing your nervous system better.
The Paradox We’re Stuck In
Here’s the bind: the thinker investigating itself can’t get outside itself to see itself clearly.
Every insight you have is still a thought. Every moment of clarity is still experienced by something that feels like a self. Every bit of understanding is still happening within the framework of the thinker.
You can’t think your way out of thinking. You can’t use the self to escape the self. It’s like trying to see your own eyes without a mirror.
And when you have an experience that feels like “no-self”—a moment where the thinker goes quiet, where there’s just experience without anyone experiencing it—you immediately have a thought about it. “That was it! That was no-self!” And now the thinker has claimed that experience too. Made it into a memory, a story, evidence of progress.
The thinker is so fucking slippery. It can co-opt anything. Even the search for its own dissolution.
So maybe this is it. Maybe you’re stuck in this loop forever. Awareness investigating itself, creating the illusion of progress, but never actually getting anywhere because there’s nowhere to get. Because the investigator and the investigated are the same thing.
Maybe enlightenment is just the thinker’s ultimate fantasy. The belief that there’s an escape, a final resolution, a state where you’re permanently free. And you chase that fantasy forever, never realizing that the chasing is the thinker’s way of staying alive.
What Actually Happens in Moments
Okay, but here’s what I have noticed: there are moments.
Moments when the thinker actually does shut up. When the constant commentary stops. When there’s just… this. Experience happening. No one experiencing it. Just happening.
In those moments, there’s no problem. No seeking. No sense of being a separate self that needs to figure things out or achieve something. Just presence. Just being.
And in those moments—which might last seconds or minutes—there’s a kind of okayness that’s not dependent on anything. Not on circumstances being good. Not on having achieved anything. Just… okayness as the ground of experience itself.
But then the thinker comes back. Immediately. “That was it! I was present! I should do more of that!” And now it’s a memory, a concept, a thing to chase.
So those moments happen. But they don’t stick. They don’t become a permanent state. At least not for me. And probably not for most people, despite what they claim.
The Honest Answer
So here’s the raw truth: I don’t know if you can permanently overcome the thinker. I don’t know if it dies or just quiets down sometimes. I don’t know if what remains is awareness or nothing or just a different pattern of thinking.
I don’t know if the freedom I’m talking about is real or just a story I’m telling myself to cope with the fundamental dissatisfaction of being human.
I don’t know if we’re anything more than biology running its program. Chemicals and electrical impulses creating the illusion of consciousness, of choice, of meaning.
I don’t know if there’s a point to any of this. To investigating, to understanding, to seeking. Maybe it’s all just the organism’s way of passing time before it breaks down and stops.
And I don’t know what death is. If it’s the end of experience or a transition to something else. If the dissolution of the self is liberation or annihilation.
I just don’t know.
What I Do Know
But here’s what I can say: even in the not-knowing, even in the uncertainty, even if this is all just chemicals and delusion—something in me is still curious. Still investigating. Still looking.
Not because I think it will lead somewhere definite. Not because I believe there’s a final answer. But because the looking itself is what’s happening. It’s just what this organism does.
Some organisms build nests. Some hunt. Some migrate. This one investigates consciousness. Not because it’s special. Just because that’s the pattern it’s running.
And in the investigating, there are moments. Of clarity. Of space. Of seeing the thinker as just a pattern rather than the truth of what I am.
Those moments don’t solve anything. They don’t end the seeking. But they reveal something: that the thinker’s stories aren’t as solid as they seem. That the desperate quality of wanting loosens sometimes. That being okay isn’t dependent on figuring everything out.
This book ends here, but the investigation doesn’t.
Because there is no end to it. No final understanding. No permanent state of enlightenment where all questions are answered and you’re done.
There’s just this ongoing process. Noticing. Forgetting. Noticing again. Getting tangled. Seeing through it. Getting tangled again.
The thinker keeps thinking. The wanting keeps wanting. The confusion keeps confusing.
And awareness—whatever that is, whether it’s real or just another brain pattern—keeps being aware.
Not because you’re doing it. But because it’s what’s happening.
And maybe that’s enough. Not knowing. Not being sure. Not having it figured out.
Just being here. In the uncertainty. In the mess. In the fundamental mystery of being conscious at all.
The itch is still there. I’m still scratching at it. Still trying to understand. Still caught in the thinker’s loops.
But sometimes—just sometimes—I notice I’m already okay. Right now. In this moment. Without needing to figure anything out.
And then the thinker jumps in and ruins it. And that’s okay too.
This is what we are. Biological organisms that became conscious enough to question ourselves but not conscious enough to answer those questions.
Wanting to understand. Wanting to be free. Wanting to know what we are and what death is and whether any of this matters.
And we don’t know. We can’t know. Not really.
But we keep looking anyway.
Not because it will deliver what the thinker promises. But because the looking is what’s here.
The investigation is unfinished. It will always be unfinished.
And that—somehow—is the answer.
Not an answer that satisfies. Not an answer that resolves. Just the truth of what’s actually happening. You don’t know. You can’t know. You’re just here, being, wondering, wanting, confused.
And that’s the raw human truth.
That’s all there is.
And it has to be enough.
Because it’s all you’ve got.
Already Gone
But wait. There’s something else.
You’re afraid of the thinker dying because you think that means you die. And maybe it does. But here’s what nobody tells you:
You’re already dead.
Not metaphorically. Actually.
The stars you’re looking at tonight? Most of them are already gone. Exploded. Collapsed. Ceased to exist millions of years ago. What you’re seeing is just the light, still traveling, still arriving, from something that no longer is.
You’re looking at ghosts. Light from dead stars. And you’re a ghost too.
The atoms that make up your body were forged in stars that died billions of years ago. You’re made of stardust —not poetically, literally. You’re the afterimage of explosions so massive they created the elements that became you.
And right now, in this moment, you’re already disappearing. The cells in your body are dying and being replaced. The person you were seven years ago is completely gone—not a single cell remains from that body. The you reading this will be gone in seven more years.
The universe is expanding faster than light can travel. The age of the universe is shorter than its expansion. Galaxies are already beyond our reach, receding into darkness we’ll never cross. We’re in a pocket of time, a brief moment between the big bang and heat death, where matter organized itself into patterns complex enough to look back and ask “what am I?”
And the answer is: an echo. A ripple. A temporary interference pattern in the expansion of space. We are already gone. We’re just thoughts after the big bang, still reverberating, not yet dissipated.
The Mind Arrives Too Late
And here’s something else you need to see: the mind is a tape recorder.
Life is already happening. Right now. The seeing, the breathing, the heart beating, the world unfolding—it’s all occurring in real-time.
But the mind? The thinker? It comes in after the fact.
By the time you have a thought about what’s happening, it already happened. The thought is a recording, a playback, a narration of what just occurred. The mind is always one step behind, analyzing the past and calling it the present.
You reach for a cup. Your hand is already moving before the thought “I’m reaching for the cup” appears. The decision happened. The action is occurring. The thought is just commentary on what’s already in motion.
You feel an emotion. The body responds instantly—tension, heat, tears, laughter. Then, a split second later, the mind labels it: “I’m angry. I’m sad. I’m happy.” But by the time the thought arrives, the emotion is already changing, already moving, already becoming something else.
Life is happening. Spontaneously. Continuously. Without asking permission.
And the mind—your mind, the thinker—is running behind it like a sports commentator, narrating a game that’s already being played.
“I did this. I felt that. I want this. I’m thinking about that.”
No, you didn’t. It happened. And then the mind claimed it as yours. Recorded it. Made it into a story with you as the protagonist.
This is why you can’t think your way into presence. By the time you think “I should be present,” the moment you were trying to be present to is already gone. The thought is analyzing the past.
This is why trying to control your thoughts doesn’t work. By the time you notice a thought and try to stop it, another thought has already arisen. The mind is recording thoughts about thoughts about thoughts, always one beat behind reality.
Life is the live performance. Mind is the recording. And you keep listening to the recording thinking it’s the performance.
So What Then?
If you’re already dead, if this is already over, if we’re just afterimages of something that happened 13.8 billion years ago—
What the fuck are you afraid of?
Why are you holding back? Why are you being careful? Why are you trying to be good, to transcend, to be beyond it all?
You’re already beyond it. You’re already nothing. You’re already space itself, temporarily forgetting what it is, playing at being solid.
So why not taste everything?
The lust you feel—that’s the universe experiencing desire through the temporary pattern called you. Feel it completely.
The food, the pleasure, the sensory richness of being alive in a body—that’s consciousness experiencing texture, taste, sensation. Devour it.
The pain, the heartbreak, the fear—that’s the universe experiencing what it’s like to believe you’re separate, to think you can lose something, to imagine you’re in danger. Feel that too. Fully.
The joy, the moments of clarity, the love—that’s consciousness recognizing itself, temporarily, before forgetting again.
All of it. Taste all of it.
Because this is it. This is the only moment the universe gets to experience being you. And you are already dying. Already gone. Already just light from a dead star.
The Space and the Fullness
Yes, you need space. You need the mind to let go sometimes. You need thoughts to quiet so you can remember what you are underneath them—which is nothing. Space itself. Awareness without content.
Go there. Into the emptiness. Into the silence. Let the thinker die, temporarily, and be the space in which everything arises.
That’s valuable. That’s freedom. That spaciousness, that recognition that you’re not the thoughts, not the thinker, not even the body—just the space in which all of it happens.
But then come back.
Come back and taste everything. Because the space wants to experience form. Emptiness wants to know what it’s like to be something. Awareness wants to feel what it’s like to believe you’re a person with desires and fears and a limited time.
That’s why you’re here. Not to transcend this. Not to escape it. But to experience it fully, knowing it’s already over, knowing you’re already nothing, and tasting it anyway.
Go into space. And come back.
If that’s even possible. If there’s even a difference between the two.
Permission
So here it is. Permission.
Permission to want money, comfort, pleasure, success. Permission to be ambitious, greedy, lustful, selfish. You’re already dead. There’s nothing to protect. Nothing to prove. No cosmic law you’re violating.
Permission to love completely, knowing you’ll lose everyone. To attach, to care, to let people matter even though they’re temporary patterns too, already dissolving. Love them anyway.
Permission to feel everything. The anger, the jealousy, the fear, the desire. You’re not transcending these. You’re the universe experiencing what it’s like to have them. Feel them completely.
Permission to fail, to fuck up, to be flawed. You’re made of dead stars. You’re already broken down into your constituent parts. There’s no perfection to achieve.
Permission to seek, to question, to investigate consciousness even though you’ll never figure it out. This is what you do.
This pattern, this organism, is curious. So be curious. Look. Question. Not because it will deliver anything, but because that’s what’s happening.
Permission to stop seeking. To just live. To forget all of this and eat good food and love people and work on things and not think about consciousness or freedom or whether the thinker is real.
Permission to be fully human. Messy, contradictory, confused, occasionally clear, wanting things, failing at things, succeeding at things, and still wanting more.
Because this is already over. You’re already gone. There’s nothing to be afraid of.
So taste everything life has to offer. The delicacy, the richness, the pain, the pleasure, the intensity of being temporarily solid in an expanding universe.
And maybe sometimes, go into the space. Let the thoughts drop. Remember you’re nothing. Feel the relief of that.
And then come back. If you can. If there’s anywhere to come back to.
Because being nothing is true.
And being this—this temporary pattern of consciousness that wants and fears and loves and dies—is also true. Both. Simultaneously.
You’re space pretending to be solid.
You’re dead stars pretending to be alive.
You’re nothing pretending to be something.
And the pretending is the whole point.
The End That Isn’t an End
The investigation doesn’t end here. It can’t. Because you’re still here, still being, still wanting to understand what this is.
But maybe now, there’s less weight to it. Less belief that figuring it out will save you.
You don’t need saving. You’re already dead. Already safe. Already returned to the source you never left. This is just the dream you’re having in between. The brief moment of form before returning to formlessness. So dream fully. Experience completely. Taste everything.
Be rich. Be free. Be both. Be neither.
Be the itch and the scratching.
Be the thinker and the space in which thinking happens.
Be confused and clear and confused again. Be human.
Because that’s what dead stars do when they briefly organize into patterns complex enough to wonder what they are.
They taste.
They feel.
They love.
They want.
They investigate themselves. They forget they’re already gone. And they live anyway.
So live.
Completely.
While you’re here. Which you’re not. But act like you are. And taste everything.
Afterword: The Boy Who Asked Death
Twenty-five hundred years ago, a boy named Nachiketa stood at Death’s door.
His father, in anger, had sent him there. “I give you to Death,” he said. And Nachiketa went. Not metaphorically. He actually went to Yama’s house—the house of Death itself—and waited.
Death wasn’t home. So Nachiketa waited. Three days. Three nights. No food. No water. Just waiting at Death’s threshold.
When Death finally returned, he was embarrassed. A Brahmin guest had been waiting without hospitality. So he offered Nachiketa three boons—three wishes for anything he desired.
For his first wish, Nachiketa asked that his father be free from anger and worry when he returned. Granted. For his second wish, he asked to learn the sacred fire that leads to heaven. Granted.
But for his third wish, Nachiketa asked the question that no one wants answered but everyone asks: “What happens after death? Does the Self exist after the body dies, or not?”
And Death said no.
“Ask for anything else. Sons who will live a hundred years. Vast lands. Elephants. Gold. Beautiful women. Long life. Power. Pleasure. Ask for all the treasures of the earth, Nachiketa, but don’t ask me this.”
And Nachiketa replied: “These things last only until tomorrow. They wear out the vital powers of life. Even the longest life is short. What use are these to me? I want to know: what happens when this ends?”
The Same Question
This story—the Katha Upanishad—is the oldest recorded dialogue about what we’ve been investigating in this book.
A boy. Death. And the question that won’t go away: What are we? What dies? What doesn’t? Nachiketa’s name in Sanskrit is a word play. Na-ciketa means “not-seeking” or “I do not know.” The boy at
Death’s door is literally named “I Don’t Know.”
And that’s where this whole investigation starts and ends. With not knowing.
You’ve read this entire book. We’ve looked at the thinker, the desires, the trap of self-improvement, the question of freedom. We’ve examined whether understanding matters, whether we can just live, whether richness and freedom are compatible.
And what did we conclude?
We don’t know.
Same as Nachiketa. Same as every human who’s ever asked what they actually are.
The investigation is ancient. The itch is timeless. And the answer Death gives is still the only honest one.
What Death Taught
Yama—Death itself—became Nachiketa’s teacher.
And what did Death teach?
First, the distinction between shreyas and preyas. The good and the pleasant. The lasting and the temporary.
“Two paths present themselves,” Death said. “Most people choose the pleasant—what feels good immediately. Few choose the good—what leads to lasting freedom. You, Nachiketa, have chosen the good.”
But notice: Death doesn’t say reject the pleasant. He says see clearly which is which. Don’t confuse temporary pleasure with lasting fulfillment. Don’t mistake getting what you want with being free.
This is what we’ve been exploring. You can want money, comfort, pleasure. You can pursue them. But don’t believe they’ll complete you. Don’t make your okayness depend on getting them.
That’s preyas vs shreyas. The pleasant vs the good. And the path is learning to engage with both without being enslaved by either.
The Self That Cannot Be Grasped
Then Death revealed the nature of the Self.
“Smaller than the smallest, greater than the greatest, hidden in the heart of every creature.”
“It cannot be known through study of scriptures, nor through intellect, nor through learned discourse. The Self reveals itself only to whom it chooses.”
“Not through speech, not through mind, not through sight can it be grasped.”
This is exactly what we discovered. The thinker investigating itself can’t get outside itself to see itself. Every insight is still a thought. Every understanding is still within the framework of mind.
You can’t think your way to what’s beyond thought. You can’t grasp with the mind what the mind is arising within.
The investigation is necessary. But it won’t deliver what it promises. Because what you’re looking for isn’t an object that can be found. It’s what’s already here, looking.
The Chariot and the Tape Recorder
Death gave Nachiketa a metaphor: the chariot.
“The body is the chariot. The Self is the master. The intellect is the charioteer. The mind is the reins. The senses are the horses. And sense objects are the roads.”
If the charioteer is wise and the reins are firm, the horses go where they should. If not, they run wild and the chariot crashes.
We said the mind is a tape recorder—always arriving late, narrating what already happened. The chariot metaphor says the same thing: the Self is already the master. The mind and senses are just instruments. But we’ve forgotten this and let the instruments run the show.
The horses (senses) chase after objects. The mind (reins) follows them. The intellect (charioteer) gets confused about who’s in charge. And we believe the whole chaotic mess is “me.”
But underneath it all, the Self—what you actually are—is already free. Already the master. Already untouched by any of it.
The problem isn’t the horses or the chariot or even the roads. The problem is forgetting you’re not the chariot. You’re not even the charioteer. You’re the one for whom all of this exists.
The Path Sharp as a Razor
Death warned Nachiketa:
“Arise! Awake! Approach the great teachers and learn. The path is sharp as a razor’s edge—hard to tread and difficult to cross.”
Why is it hard?
Because you can’t do it. The thinker can’t think its way to no-thought. The self can’t improve its way to no-self. The seeker can’t seek its way to finding.
And yet—you have to do it anyway. You have to investigate. You have to look. You have to keep going.
Not because it will deliver. But because that’s what this pattern does. This consciousness that became aware enough to question itself but not aware enough to answer.
Keep building the idols. Keep breaking them. Keep seeking even while knowing seeking won’t work. Keep going beyond, and beyond that, and beyond even that.
The path is sharp as a razor not because it’s morally difficult. But because it’s paradoxical. You have to do what cannot be done. You have to find what cannot be found. You have to grasp what cannot be grasped.
And you have to be okay with failing at all of it.
What Doesn’t Die
After all the teaching, Death revealed the deepest truth:
“This Self is never born, nor does it die. It did not spring from anything, nor did anything spring from it. Unborn, eternal, everlasting, ancient—it is not slain when the body is slain.”
We are already dead. We said that. We’re light from dead stars, echoes of explosions billions of years ago, temporary patterns that think they’re permanent.
But what Death reveals is: what you actually are was never born. So it can’t die.
The body dies. Obviously. The thinker—this pattern of thoughts claiming to be an entity—that dissolves. The story of “me” ends.
But what’s aware of all of it? What’s here right now, reading these words, being aware of being aware? That was never born. That won’t die. That’s what you are.
Not as a comforting belief. As the direct fact. Obvious. Immediate. Already here.
And yet—the thinker can’t grasp it. The mind can’t hold it. Every attempt to understand it turns it into an object, which makes it not-it.
It reveals itself. When it chooses. Through whom it chooses. Not because you earned it or understood enough or practiced correctly.
Just… when conditions allow. When the seeking exhausts itself. When the thinker momentarily forgets to narrate. When you’re so burnt out from trying that you just stop.
And in that stopping—it’s obvious. It was always obvious. You are that. You’ve always been that. And then the thinker comes back and says, “I got it!” and now it’s lost again.
The Burning
(Inspired by the Indian film Tere Ishk Mein – “In Your Love”)
Love always leads toward death.
Don’t run toward liberation.
Burn so intensely in love that liberation itself
falls at your feet and begs: Take me.No one’s pain lessens. Not yours. Not anyone’s.
So burn in the fire of love. Burn completely.
And let that burning be enough.
Nachiketa waited three days at Death’s door. No food. No water. Just waiting. Burning with the question.
And that burning—that intensity of wanting to know—was what qualified him. Not his intelligence. Not his virtue. His willingness to burn completely for the answer.
Nachiketa burned. He waited at Death’s threshold without any guarantee that Death would teach him. He refused all pleasures because the question was more urgent than pleasure.
And that burning—not the answer, but the burning itself—that’s what we’re after.
Not comfortable understanding. Not gradual improvement. Not being good at meditation.
Burning. With the question. With desire. With the itch. With not knowing. With being alive while knowing you’re already dead.
Burn in the investigation. Burn in the wanting. Burn in the not-knowing.
And when you’re completely burnt—when there’s nothing left of the seeker—maybe, just maybe, what remains is what was always here.
Or maybe not.
Maybe you just burn and that’s it. Maybe the investigation never resolves. Maybe we die without ever knowing what we are.
No Difference
But here’s what connects Nachiketa’s story to this book, across twenty-five centuries:
The question is the same.
A boy asking Death what happens when we die. You reading this, wondering what the thinker is, whether it can be overcome, whether any of this matters.
The investigation is the same.
Looking at consciousness trying to understand itself. Noticing the paradox. Seeing that every answer generates more questions. Recognizing that the one looking is what you’re looking for.
The not-knowing is the same.
Nachiketa literally means “I don’t know.” This book ends with “we don’t know.” The ancient seers and the modern seeker—same confession. Same honesty.
And the burning is the same.
Then and now. The intensity of wanting to know what you are. The refusal to settle for pleasant distractions. The willingness to stand at Death’s door and wait.
Not because it will deliver enlightenment. But because the burning itself is what it means to be fully human. Fully alive. Fully here.
Still Here
Nachiketa returned from Death’s house. He lived. He taught what he learned. The fire sacrifice that Yama taught him is still known by his name.
But the deepest teaching wasn’t a technique. It was the same teaching Death gives everyone, whether we listen or not:
You will die. Everything you build will dissolve. Everyone you love will be lost. All of this is already over.
And also:
What you actually are—what’s here, now, aware—that was never born. That won’t die. That’s already free.
Both are true. Simultaneously. Paradoxically.
You’re temporary and eternal. Dying and deathless. Already gone and always here.
And the investigation continues. Not because it solves anything. But because this is what consciousness does when it becomes aware enough to question itself.
Twenty-five hundred years ago, a boy stood at Death’s door asking the same questions you’re asking now. And Death is still answering.
And we’re still not getting it.
And that’s okay.
Because the investigation itself—the burning itself—the willingness to not know while still looking— That might be the only honest way to be human.
Nachiketa went to Death’s house.
You’re already there.
We all are.
So ask the question. Burn with it. Live with the not-knowing. And taste everything while you’re here.
Because this is it. The only moment you get.
And it’s already over.
And it’s always now.
Both.
There is something
We can’t even call it something. It’s not a feeling, not an experience, not a state. But it’s real. Truer than anything the mind can grasp.
The ancient texts were right about this: the more you try to grasp it, the more it slips away. The harder you chase it, the further it recedes. But when you stop grasping, when you let go of trying to get it—it reveals itself. Not to the ordinary mind. The ordinary mind will never touch it.
We must try our best with logic, with reason, with investigation. That’s what this book has been—an honest attempt to understand. But the reality is always beyond subjective and objective. Beyond experience and experiencer. Beyond the one who seeks and what is sought.
It cannot be grasped. Cannot be experienced. Cannot be achieved through any technique, any method, any practice.
Yet it comes.
It experiences itself. Through you, as you, but not because you did anything right. Not because you meditated enough or understood enough or let go enough.
It just… comes. When it comes.
And we must keep going anyway. Keep investigating. Keep seeking. Even knowing that seeking won’t deliver it. Even knowing we’re creating idols only to break them, building concepts only to demolish them, grasping at understanding only to let it go.
Create the idol. Break it. Create it again. Break it again. Go beyond. And then beyond that. And beyond even that.
Not because it gets you anywhere. But because that’s what this pattern does. This consciousness investigating itself, this dead star asking what it is, this temporary form seeking the formless.
Keep going. Not toward anything. Just… going.
And maybe, in the burning itself, something reveals itself. Not to you.
As you.
There’s a voice inside my head
Says I’ll be happy when I’m dead
Or maybe when I’m rich and free
But the voice? Yeah, that’s just me
Thinking about thinking about thoughts
Chasing what can’t be caught
The mind’s a tape recorder, always late
Recording life after it’s played
But we’re already gone
Just light from dead stars
Already dissolved
Into cosmic scars
So why not taste it all?
The sweet, the fall
We’re already gone
So dance through it all
I want money, I want peace
I want the mental noise to cease
But wanting to not want? That’s the trick
The thinker’s just making me sick
Building idols, breaking them down
Seeking freedom, going round and round
The more I grasp, the more it slips
Reality’s laughing at my trips
‘Cause we’re already gone
Just light from dead stars
Already dissolved
Into cosmic scars
So why not taste it all?
The sweet, the fall
We’re already gone
So dance through it all
Love leads to death, they say
So burn completely anyway
No one’s pain gets less
So let the fire do the rest
The space wants to be form
The nothing wants to be born
So here I am, pretending to be
A solid thing in entropy
We’re already gone
Ghosts of ancient light
Already returned
To the cosmic night
So taste everything—
The hurt, the flight
We’re already gone
Make it burn bright
The investigation never ends
The itch just bends and bends
But maybe that’s the whole damn point
Dead stars asking “what’s the point?”
(We’re already gone… we’re already gone…)
