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Self-Investigation.org

My Story

My Story: A Startling Discovery

One morning in 2015, I came to an insane realization.

My beliefs and assumptions about the world were terribly faulty. I always knew what it meant to be ignorant. I knew how much I didn’t know. Yet somehow, I still spent nearly 30 years drastically underestimating how my perception of the world was different from other people.

I immediately thought of the Truman Show – the moment Truman realizes he’s been living in a bubble of deception. For the first time, he feels the limits of his reality with his bare hand, and is dumbfounded by how he’s been fooled. He finds an door and exits his bubble. He enters a larger world of truth.

Who was responsible for my wall of deception? Nobody… it was my own conditioned mind, showing me a private version of the world, with private feelings, desires, assumptions, dreams, and beliefs. I realized we all exist in such a limited place.

I grabbed a pen and paper to symbolize how I felt.

I was misled by my own perception. This was my first glimpse.

Can I Escape?

I’d been living inside this bubble my entire life. What could I do about it?

I buried myself in books about consciousness, cognitive science, history, and philosophy. I realized nothing would ever “cure” me, or anyone, of this fundamental blindness. I started calling it “Brain Constraint”. It offered great solace to learn about brain constraint – to know poets and philosophers had been talking about it for centuries. It gave comfort to learn about who I was as a biological system, and how my brain and mind worked. By learning about myself in this way, I was learning about all of us. But there was also something mysterious about consciousness that nobody could explain. Known as the “hard problem“.

How could I keep exploring?

Meditation

In early 2020, I started a meditation practice. I meditated for 10 or 20 minutes 4-5 times per week. I would observe the thoughts and feelings flying around in my head, and write them in a small journal, until everything went silent. Then I would just sit.

After a few months, this really calmed my mind and removed unnecessary worry from my life. But there was something deeper going on. The more I sat in silence, the more I started to wonder who I really was. My usual biography seemed less and less relevant. I felt like a presence, not a person. My daily life still went on… friends, family, job, activities, but I related to it differently.

Who, or what, was I? At my core?

Psychedelics

In May 2021 I tried psychedelics. I spent years being cautiously curious about them – hearing numerous respected people regard them as transformative. I decided to try a low, non-hallucinogenic dose.

I was blown away by this remarkable assurance that “Everything Is OK”. No matter what I had ever worried about, no matter what highs and lows I had experienced prior, the feeling that “Everything Is OK” was unlike anything I’d ever felt. This feeling is still with me.

How could I explain this? I was unsatisfied with typical psychedelic lore. It motivated me to further study the science. I eventually made contact with neuroscientist Roland Griffiths, and boarded a train to Johns Hopkins University to have conversations with his team. I then found additional conversations, books, and academic research papers.

It was more evidence of this bubble…

Psychedelics, like meditation, softens our bubble. Our usual feelings and attitudes are briefly suspended and we notice a difference. In other words, like Truman, we discover arbitrary walls in our own mind, and moving beyond them can feel revolutionary. The value is less some fleeting mental state – but more an irrevocable awareness of how our perceptions works.

The Strangest Good Day of My Life

On a regular December evening in 2021, I came to another startling realization. I didn’t need anything more to be happy. Life is as great now as it’s ever going to be. Nothing that happens or doesn’t happen from here has impact on my ultimate satisfaction with life. Certainly, I will continue experiencing highs and lows. Certainly I will continue caring and doing meaningful things with great enthusiasm. But that doesn’t change my acceptance of everything as it is.

I had never felt such peace.

Making sense of this took time. I initially found similar insight within Buddhism, but then discovered this same insight much more broadly. Once again, my “insane realization” seemed to match what other people were talking about. This was a “thing”.

Our Disturbing World

In March 2023, despite all these successive feelings of personal relief, I remained unsettled by how seemingly chaotic, mindless, and hostile humanity was. It disturbed me how our species is set on antagonizing and exploiting itself, for no good reason.

In a flash, I had another insane realization. No matter what ugliness humanity shows, it is undeniable to say we are all part of something massive and incomprehensible. It is not us vs the universe. It is not us vs humanity, or factions of humanity vs other factions. It is all one big thing. We are as much part this “one big thing” as we are individuals.

While this doesn’t make anything less disturbing, nor solve our problems, it is simply reminder we have no idea what’s going on. Everything happening – good and bad – is in accordance with the laws of this vast mystery. The best we can do is go with life’s flow (wu wei), influence where we are able, and not hang on too tight. Our short lives seem wildly insignificant in the scheme of things… best not worry too much.

There is more mystery to our existence than we can possibly understand.

Acceptance

The most important milestone of all:

Whatever happens happens. I’m good. This existence is mind-boggling. I don’t worry about my needs, wishes, or fulfillment, because I realize there is no problem with any of it. I came into the world with zero problems, I will leave it the same way. What happens before and after this lifetime is anybody’s guess. And that’s the best it can be – a guess. Whatever I endure along the way – all the highs – and all the lows – so be it. I’ll do what good I can while I’m here, and try to do no harm. I’ll be grateful for every drop of experience.

If I am left with one wish, it’s to connect with other people and share this astonishment. I believe greater appreciation for these things would make the world a better place. I believe it would be possible to cooperate on brighter horizons, if only we could relate to each other in this fundamental way.

Seeking Solidarity

We are literally a living mystery. Funny how our perception and self-narrative obscures this…

Who the hell wants to explore this?

And when I say “this” – what I do I mean exactly? Books? Meditation? Science? Philosophy? Psychedelics? None of them exactly. Rather, the thing that underlies all of it – the mystery at the core of our existence, and the process of uncovering it.

Self-Investigation.

This journey is life changing. It feels remiss to live without properly wondering who we are – in the most fundamental sense – and recognizing how we are all connected in this way. It puts life into perspective. It reveals what’s important.

Self-Investigation.org

Years ago I shared these “insane realizations” on a personal blog. Eventually I found a network in scattered places – books, forums, stories, related to various topics.

It became obvious what connected us:

We are all fundamentally curious about ourselves. It’s simply a matter of waking up to it.

We created Self-Invesigation.org to support this. It relies on the most trustworthy resources we know – the rigor of science, the careful speculation of philosophy, the lessons of history, and the stories of as many people as possible.

This is motivated by sincere interest, curiosity, and desire to form a community around something important.

I hope by sharing my story, people can discover it within themselves.

Start exploring below. Please, reach out with any questions.

Sincerely,

Jesse

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