I think that my writing is at its best when I address, as directly as possible, what is alive in me, which includes where I struggle. My writing becomes a way of publicly reflecting on things. Knowing that you would read this incentivized me to make it as clear and truthful as possible. In the process of producing this article, I have read it many times. That process has helped me to make more sense of my story. I hope for a beneficial byproduct: that it may help you too.
In the summer of 2001, finding myself with what many would consider an ideal life, I realized that material success had not quenched my suffering in the way I had assumed it would. This started a search for something that I called “enlightenment,” something that I construed as an end to personal suffering. I was particularly interested in ridding myself of what I had labeled “anxiety.”
This was not my first push for the truth. When I was roughly eight years old, I picked up a book on meditation and started reading it. Immediately, it was recognized that “this is way too complicated. It’s much simpler than that!” Around that time, I also had a very strong conviction that if I could build a device that enabled one eye to look directly into the other eye, then a state of ecstatic bliss would be entered. Somehow, even then, I seem to have known what I would consciously discover nineteen years later.
