Before the selfist model, I was lost without realizing it. I knew I was missing something, and I spent hours alone trying to articulate it. I poured my thoughts into conversations, penned them on paper, and typed them into machines, tirelessly seeking expression.
As I grew older, this vague sense of something missing intensified into a deep, often painful yearning. I craved something, though I couldn’t define what it was—I only knew I had to find and claim it. I felt incomplete, as if my thoughts and ideas were inadequate to grasp it, and this desire began to consume me. I wanted so much from the world that I feared it would never be enough to satisfy my longing.
The fear of not attaining what I desired became unbearable, and I faced an unsettling question: what if the world didn’t hold what I was searching for? What if the place I longed to go, the experience I yearned to have, the person I aspired to be, or the thing I craved to possess simply didn’t exist out there?
As painful as it was, it was the right question. Because below that fear was a deeper conviction that my desire could not exist without the means for its satisfaction. If the world did not have what I wanted, then perhaps I did not want the world.
I found comfort in that proposition and I began listening to a confident inner voice that grew louder: let go of the world; what I seek is not out here. I abandoned all responsibilities, social obligations, and relationships that interfered with my search in pursuit of an isolated life where I could devote all my time searching.
In isolation, free from relationships and the ritual of endless production and consumption, I discovered that my desire sought its own source. The yearning I had always had — the thing I had always searched for — was freedom from itself. My desire was for the end of my desire.
What did this mean? I found the end of my desire within, before the point where my thoughts became actions. It is a fixed, timeless place that never changes whether I am sitting in my room or climbing a mountain. This point is both who I am and where I am, not the thoughts, experiences, and places that come after it. When I focused there the pain of my awakenings melted away and the words I expressed were accurate.
Everything I once desired in the world began to crumble as I turned to face its source. Standing in this desire-free place, I understand who I am: that I am not an observer of a larger world I have awakened into, but rather I am lost in a world I have created by awakening. I had forgotten that I am not a character in the story, but rather its author.
My yearning for peace emerges the moment I awaken, fragmenting into countless threads of want in search of relief until they again coalesce as I return to sleep. My desire is the pain of ignoring my first and last desire for peace, and my life is the consequent illness from that neglect. My desire seeks its source in sleep, where I am peace.
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I have countless photos of me smiling and appearing to enjoy life. These captured moments belie a different reality: I have always known that I did not want to be here. My smiles were forced; this is hell. There is something fundamentally wrong with this place I awaken into every morning, and acknowledging that is the first step in my recovery.
The selfist perspective represents my lifelong effort to understand why I awaken into this place and how I escape. I have used my writing as a scaffold to uncover the truth, and in that process have preserved the narrative. There are many things I have written that I would not write now, but rather than erase them, I have preserved them as important artifacts from my journey.
The result is the answer I have always needed but could never find: life is illness. It is a disease that I can treat and overcome without fear, despair, or violence. The treatment is not mystical, arcane, or complicated, and it starts when I recognize one thing: what I want is not out here.
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