As you grew older, you became more and more proficient at influencing the world around you. You earned money, gained status, and developed a solid sense of identity. But along with this came suffering and a yearning to go somewhere beyond this physical world. At some point, you may have asked, as I did, “What is this really all about?”
The problem with the physical world is that it is easy to for get what lies under the surface of things. When you were that in fant exploring the world, you had just come into the world with a purpose. But the world of form distracted you, and you forgot, for a moment, who you really were.
It has often been observed that there are two selves within the human being. There is the self who is present in the surrounding world—interacting, doing, making, having—and then there is the sell watching the self. The false self is a mask we wear for the world, a manufactured product of the ego.