“I’m Not Real”: A Moment in Melbourne

It was a quiet afternoon in Melbourne. I was lying on my bed, half-reading a spiritual book. I wasn’t that into it, just flicking through when I came across a passage that split me open.

It was a paragraph about the phenomena of the mind.

Right there, a question arose:

If the mind is only phenomena… then that means… I’m not real.

It hit me like a sledgehammer.

Everything went still.

I felt a little dizzy.

This whole idea of “me” of a separate self isn’t real. It’s false.

The entire world, as I knew it, existed only because of thought.

It was the strangest feeling.

Hard to describe in words.

I wasn’t the mind.

I wasn’t the “I” I’d always believed myself to be.

It was like “I” was just an object, something being seen.

And whatever the truth was… it wasn’t that.