People are addicted to themselves.

'Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it's dark.' — Zen proverb


As long as your thoughts revolve around yourself you have understood nothing.

You might have a lot in years or experience, but what you have lived was of little consequence.

The majority of people have nothing better to think about than themselves.
They spend their lives projecting themselves into every bit of the past, present and future. Like any addiction, it is a
vicious circle that ends up destroying the individual's life.


This is the disease of the self-conscious mind: Create a story about your experience and think of yourself as the actor in
that story.

Proceed to think about, analyze, and judge that perception of yourself (which you yourself created) as if it were
yourself.


This divides the human mind into being simultaneously that which perceives and part of what is perceived.

This is an impossibility, and such a simple contradiction that even a child can see it.

And children do; they wonder why their parents react the way they do.

They see no obvious reason in reality, for they have yet to experience the existence of the inner reality; the story the
person is telling themselves about themselves.


Everywhere the words 'I', 'me', 'mine' - a battle of stories, an internal conflict that continues unchecked, unconsciously,
unabated.

The more you think about yourself, the less room there is to think about life, and the less life there is.

People suffer primarily because of internal contradictions; conflicting stories about themselves, or stories contradicting
reality (as is inevitably the case).

Suffering is simply the external manifestation of internal conflict.


Love is the (temporary) answer because it alleviates the burden of self.

When we experience it, we gladly find our attention and interest on life itself, not our own obsessive fictions.

It is, sadly, temporary because people for the most part cannot maintain a loving state — the old addictions return, and
when they do, they begin again to conflict with each other.

The most curious aspect of this disease is that is is unnecessary.

One can go about their daily existence perfectly fine without having to reference their experience (actual or mental) to a
secondary, imagined point of reference that is construed to be 'the self'.

That point of reference already exists - You are here.

The story also exists. You are it.

It goes on without 'you'. Just stop thinking for a moment and observe, as if you stopped existing.

Reality goes on perfectly fine without you having to project an idea of yourself onto it. It is unnecessary.

This is the meaning of the Zen proverb 'Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself.'

The wonderful thing is that once you catch your mind in the old habit of creating a self, and drop it, you are instantly
freed to engage with life, reality and the moment as it occurs.

In that sense only can you then feel, and be, your 'true self'.

Shunryu Suzuki had this wonderful quote "The world is its own magic". And it truly is.

But if you are addicted to a fantasy and have conditioned the mind to be divided and to neurotically have to refer to it,
you stand to miss it.

And that may be said to be what ultimate suffering is : missing life.
The only thing that's truly you, and truly yours.


“Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply
throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.” — Henry Miller