A lot of exhaustion isn’t from what life asks of you. It’s from what you ask of yourself: the constant effort of holding a position, maintaining a boundary, keeping a self together.
There’s a quieter possibility hidden in plain sight. If the inside–outside split relaxes, the whole job description of “me” begins to dissolve.
And when the work of being someone specific drops—even briefly—attention comes back online. Energy returns. The restless “I have to” mind loses its urgency.
That simplicity can feel almost unbelievable. And yet it’s available all day long, in ordinary moments, when you stop managing the story of you.
No Outside, No Inside: No Place to Be Trapped
When you see that there is no outside, you will simultaneously see that there is no inside.
[Possible clarification needed: “no outside/no inside” is used as a direct-experience pointer; confirm it’s not meant as a philosophical claim about the physical world.]
When there’s no outside and no inside, then there’s nowhere that you’re trapped. There’s nowhere you have to be. There’s nothing you have to maintain. There’s no position to hold.
So what happens when you’re freed of the effort required to hold a position? What happens when you’re free of the effort required to maintain a sense of ego boundaries? What happens when you’re freed from the responsibility of having to hold a separate self together?
Think of how much bandwidth of experience is freed. Think of how much energy is freed up. Think about how much potential is freed up when you don’t have to hold a position of separation.
You don’t have to be someone specific.
You Can Stop, Right Here, All Day Long
This may sound kooky, mystical, or superhuman—like the ability to accomplish something extraordinary—but it’s not at all, because we’re doing it all the time.
You have opportunities endlessly all day long to just stop.
Stop trying to be who you think you need to be. Stop trying to convince others that you are who you think you need to be.
What a relief.
Maybe you could laugh at yourself. Maybe you could laugh at those crazy thoughts that move through the mind—those silly thoughts, those stereotyped thoughts—seeing they’re not about anybody, never were.
Can you imagine that kind of freedom? Can you imagine that kind of vulnerability? Risk-free vulnerability?
[Possible clarification needed: “risk-free vulnerability” appears to mean vulnerability without self-protection strategies, not that life has no practical risks.]
Simplicity. Playfulness. Spontaneity that’s just natural—that you don’t have to do.
If you’re doing it, it’s not spontaneity. It feels effortful.
This is effortless.
Out of the Business of Managing the Self
It comes back to not needing to hold an ego boundary—a sense that I am apart from everything, apart from the world, apart from others.
So I need to manage their views of me, their opinions. I need to manage them. Or manage my appearance so I get better attention, more attention.
Could you imagine being out of the business of directing attention to yourself?
Could you imagine being out of the business of avoiding attention—which is just a reaction formation from the first one?
Could you imagine being out of the business of trying to get people to love you?
Do you think that would be lonely? Maybe it would be intimate.
Maybe the only way to really feel love in the way you want it is to stop trying to get it from out there somewhere—because there is no out there.
As long as you think there’s an out there, you’re going to think there’s an in here. As long as you think there’s an in here, you’re going to feel separate and isolated.
Can you just settle down?
Settle Down: A Zen Teacher’s Direct Instruction
I was listening to a teisho—a talk by a Zen master—my own Zen teacher, many years ago.
He was giving this teisho. I don’t even know what it was about, but everybody was in the room sitting in zazen posture, all in neat lines down the sides of the zendo, as is always the case.
It was particularly full that day. There were people from outside who weren’t part of the center, who were just coming in to listen to the talk.
Back then we all wore robes. So there were people who came in—you could tell who they were because they weren’t wearing robes, and you’d never seen them. They’d never been in a Zen setting but wanted to listen.
The new people were sitting kind of in the center. They were on cushions and little mats, in rows facing each other.
My Zen teacher started giving the talk, and about two or three minutes into it, there was one guy in the center—new guy—so fidgety.
When you go into the Zen room, the temple or meditation area, you see everybody sitting very still. You’re taught: when the bell rings, sit still, don’t move.
And you can feel it. Everybody sitting still makes you sit still.
So it sticks out like a sore thumb if somebody doesn’t get that at all.
This guy was fidgeting physically—very obviously—moving, readjusting his posture. He looked so fidgety. Totally not hearing what my Zen teacher was saying.
And of course everyone in the room was aware of it. This went on for three or four minutes.
Finally my Zen teacher looked right at him—he was like ten feet away—and he just said: “Settle down.”
The dude stopped in his tracks. He did not expect that. He was so in his own world of trying to get himself comfortable—totally filtering out what was being said.
He just froze.
Then my Zen teacher said it again, in a nicer voice: “Settle down.”
And he said: “You have to learn to be calm. You have to learn to be calm and quiet through and through, or you’ll never hear anything.”
(He’s not just talking about the teisho. He’s talking about his whole life.)
[Possible clarification needed: this is preserved as emphatic teaching language; confirm you want the absolutist phrasing (“you’ll never hear anything”) kept exactly as-is.]
The guy was dead still for the rest of the talk. Didn’t move at all.
What a gift my teacher gave him—even though he probably embarrassed him.
The Restless Project of “Me”: Comfort-Seeking as a Way of Life
If you’re endlessly trying to make yourself comfortable, self-absorbed in your body positioning, you could feel it in him: a kind of restlessness.
And the guy didn’t know he didn’t have to do that. He didn’t realize he didn’t have to be restless.
Just like your mind: you don’t realize your mind doesn’t have to be as restless as it is.
And it doesn’t still itself by trying to restrain it, because that’s just more restlessness, in a way.
It stills itself by seeing through the belief:
I have to figure something out.
I have to get somewhere.
Fix the problem.
Find the solution.
On and on and on.
I have to. I have to. I have to.
I need to attend to this. I need to fix this. I need to sort this out.
That feeling—restlessness. Mental restlessness.
You don’t need it.
Certainly right now, you don’t need it to the degree you think you do.
Be Still, or You’ll Never Hear Anything
So just be still, or you’ll never hear anything.
You may never even really see anything. You’ll never really feel anything—not really.
Be still.