No Self

The most difficult teaching in Buddhism, for me, has always been the concept of no self. You can call it the higher power, the Great Spirit, or being one with God. But this state—being fully present in the unified field—I’ve touched it many times, especially when I’m alone in the woods.

No self is a meditation on impermanence. No fixed identity—nothing we can definitively point to and say, “This is me.” Doesn’t the self, paradoxically, deny its own existence? It challenges me to locate it in any one thing.

So how do I navigate my world? By exercising my highest power. He’s always been a challenge—I call it my inner game. At times, a part of me lives in the ordinary, and a part of me dwells in this extraordinary field of awareness.

I have a tremendous love affair with the wilderness. Being outside, surrounded by trees and silence, feels like coming home.

But I grew up in an ego-driven society, where everyone’s chasing their own reflection. I got caught in the trap of overthinking, of trying to be someone else. I spent a good chunk of my life chasing identities that weren’t mine.

And I’ll tell you something I didn’t learn from any of those places:  Healing doesn’t come from prestige or performance.  

It begins with a homecoming.  Not to a house—but to the self.  That quiet, stubborn center inside us that holds both our exile and our belonging.

We teach from fear, not love.  “Don’t do this. Don’t be that.”  

We bark commands like nervous hounds, and the child’s nervous system—bless its little heart—doesn’t wait for logic. It listens to tone, tension, and touch. Or worse, the absence of it. And it learns to be afraid.

We dress these reactions up in fancy language—“self-protective strategies,” we call them. But the truth is simpler:  The brain wires itself around what feels safe.  Around what’s permitted.  And what’s permitted, more often than not, is a watered-down version of the child’s soul.

Real growth isn’t just about climbing ladders.  It’s about falling through trapdoors.  It’s about vulnerability. When I deconstruct myself, I cultivate a more harmonious one.

Growing up, I wore many masks: a child, a boy, a student, a son—the list goes on. I learned to shut my emotions away in the cellar—my anger, my sensitivity, my true voice.

Now don’t get me wrong. That mask wasn’t a lie. It was just incomplete. It’s who I had to be to make it through childhood without getting tossed out of the tribe.

The real tragedy is that I mistook it for myself. I have vivid memories: a beautiful house, an attractive wife, a great job. And as I sat outside, I felt a hole inside me—empty, despite all the material things. I loved her. She loved me. But we didn’t love ourselves.

So I grew up wanting the playhouse, unsure of who the devil was beneath all the smiling and striving. More pleasing. More achieving. More hiding.

As a child, I swallowed my anger and became “easygoing.” But underneath, there was tension—not born of choice, but of fear.  I lost touch with my inner compass.

I reacted to what I thought others wanted me to be. That’s when the lie crept in. Not spoken—felt.

A belief that expanded my self-doubt.  Whispered in the silence of ordinary moments.

And the lie was this:  As I am, I am not enough to be loved. Not because someone said it plain.  But because love came with conditions.  Be quiet and you’ll be rewarded.  Feel too much and you’ll be punished.  Cry and you’ll be ignored.  Succeed and you’ll be praised.

So I learned: I must become someone else to be safe. I over-adapted myself in relationships, and became a people pleaser.  Feared being a burden like it was a sin.

All of it traced back to that lie—that my worth was conditional.  That’s the root wound.

And healing?  It isn’t just remembering.  It’s reclaiming the pieces of myself I had to leave behind to survive.

Today, I bask in the attention of my higher power.  You can call it flow, awe or the All.  This altered state of being—I cherish it.  And I cultivate my virtue to amplify it. It's like trying to describe the mystery. It's beyond words.