I remember when I used to watch the news, all I would see would be negativity left and right. This person was killed, this country has went to shambles, people are losing jobs and etc. Things like that. Just BS. Not helpful, not insightful not much of anything other than just negativity polluting you. So f**k the news and never watch it.

At 15, I began meditating, but I could barely sit still for more than 30 seconds. The stillness and loving openness I had as a child had been replaced by ambition, hardness, and constant drive. All I cared about was making money and performing well in the gym. Meditation somehow entered my life only as another “productivity hack.” I kept doing it regularly, but at first I treated it purely as a focus exercise. Then, a few weeks later, I randomly watched a YouTube video with a friend: “Alan Watts: Dream.” She found it stupid. I instinctively felt drawn to what he said. That led me to explore more of Alan Watts, and through him I discovered a completely different perspective on meditation. At 17, I bought The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. That book truly changed everything. I only understood the “awakened” state theoretically, but it immediately made profound sense. I continued meditating, and at 20 I had my first major unity experience — ego death, satori, whatever name you give it. I felt pure love, pure oneness. For the first time, I understood from direct experience what I had previously grasped only through concepts. I understood Jesus. I understood Buddha Everything was pure love. I wanted to love everything. It suddenly seemed absurd how I had been wasting my time. I wanted only to live completely free of illusion i wanted to love, to create, to express myself authentically. In that state, the vision for my life felt like one continuous flow. Then the experience faded. Instead of integrating that insight and creating powerfully from unconditional love, the exact opposite happened. I seriously considered killing myself. I had seen through everything: the illusion of my identity and the meaning I had once hoped for. For a whole year, one sentence looped in my mind: “I am the light and the moth that searches for hope within it.” But the light had gone out. Life just happened to me for about a year until I met a girl at university who had just returned from three years of traveling.