What If This Is It?

The question I hear, often enough to make it familiar, is not so much a question as a pressure. A wish. A dissonance. “If I understand that suffering is inevitable,” the reader says, “why do I still keep seeking?” There’s already been an encounter with one or another version of nonduality. There’s already been disillusionment. And yet, like a man who knows he’s dreaming but still runs from the tiger, there is seeking—maybe subtler now, spiritualized, aestheticized—but seeking just the same.

I think the answer is simple, although it cuts. We keep seeking because we’re still not willing to be what we are.

When I say that, I don’t mean we ought to stop trying to make life more bearable. If my pillow is too flat, I reach for another. If I have a toothache, I go to the dentist. If I have some money, I might save it for old age rather than spend it all on pleasures today. All of that is fine. That’s called being a mammal. My donkey swats flies with her tail. I swat them with my hand. Same idea.

No, the kind of seeking I mean is deeper than comfort. It’s the seeking that begins not from pain, but from self-discontent. I’m not how I wish I were. Something feels off. I look at myself, or at life, and the verdict comes down: not good enough. Then begins the restless dance—trying to fix what cannot be fixed, trying to manage the mind like a puppet show, trying to create a future that won’t sting, that won’t slip through my fingers, that won’t make me cry.

You can call this “psychological suffering” if you want, but I think that phrase already starts to anesthetize it. What we’re really talking about is wanting something to be different. That’s all. And that’s everything.

When we say, “I want to suffer less,” what we usually mean is “I want to feel different than I do.” We say we want peace, or acceptance, or stillness, but we don’t want it as it is—we want it as a relief from what we are now. It’s a trick. A sweet one, even understandable, but a trick nonetheless.

The harder truth—the one that makes the gurus squirm—is that the present moment is unalterable. It may shift in five seconds or five minutes, but right now is exactly what it is. If you have a thought, it’s too late to unthink it. If you’re sad, you’re sad. If you feel old, or scared, or broken, then that’s what’s happening. You didn’t choose it. You didn’t invent it. But there it is.

And here’s the part that’s so hard to admit: you are that. Not separate from the thoughts, not the little man inside your head watching them scroll past. The thoughts, the feelings, the ache of self-questioning—that’s you. Or more precisely, there is no “you” apart from them. There’s no hidden operator behind the scenes. No permanent observer. Only the flow itself.

So when you ask, “But can’t I still try to reduce my suffering?” I have to say yes—of course you can try. But watch closely. Very often, the trying itself becomes the suffering. The desire to escape becomes the new trap. You get the girlfriend you longed for and now you’re fighting all the time. You find a belief that consoles you, and then a doubt creeps in and rots it from the inside. Once you’ve tasted the fruit of knowledge, you can’t return to innocent belief. That escape hatch slams shut.

And yet, most of what is sold as spiritual insight is just that—an escape plan. “You are not the doer.” “The Self is pure awareness.” “You are already Brahman.” Perhaps. But if you don’t feel that, what good does the statement do? It becomes just another idea floating in the thought bubble above your head, following you wherever you go.

People will say that this view is bleak. But I don’t see it that way. What I find—what I live—is a kind of strange liberation. Not from suffering, but from the illusion that I should be other than I am. That life should be otherwise. That anything is missing.

I like to get a coffee to go and sit in the park. I watch people, I take photographs. Sometimes my heart opens. Sometimes I think about death. Sometimes I feel nothing. It’s not always pleasant, but it’s mine. Or rather—it is me.

There is no story arc. There’s no promised land. The self is not a riddle to solve, or a staircase to climb. It’s a moment-to-moment happening, fragile and unrepeatable. If you can bear that—just that—then something begins to quiet. Not because you found an answer, but because you’re no longer demanding one.

This isn’t advice. I’m not claiming any of this can be taught or imitated. I’m just describing what I see. And I think you see it too. You can’t go back to the valley of innocent belief once you’ve climbed even partway up the hill. You may keep seeking for a while out of habit. You may try to believe in something again. But the shadow of doubt is there, and that shadow is not a mistake. It’s the mark of intelligence.

And in the end, I’d rather have uncomfortable thoughts than not be here at all.

That’s life.