Why you can't just "be here now"

The heartbreak of being human

Why are you the way you are?

Why is it so hard to change your patterns?

Why does it feel so unnatural to “simply be”?

And what can you do to become free?

If you are curious about these questions, I want to offer a framework that can help you see the roots of your patterns more clearly — and ask the right questions.

A few months ago, I received a day-long teaching from a senior teacher of the Diamond Approach, a contemporary mystical school I’ve previously written about. The school offers a profound metaphysical system that blends Eastern philosophies with Western psychology. Think Buddhism meets Jung meets IFS meets indigenous wisdom.

The teaching blew me away: it tied everything I’d learned through plant medicine, inner work, and somatics into a simple, comprehensive framework (and then some).

This wisdom is not easily accessible, which is why I feel compelled to share it with you. This particular teacher had never held a public teaching (in 25 years!). He came up with this narrative the night before in an attempt to offer an entry-level overview, so I’m fairly sure it cannot be found anywhere online.

Below is my best attempt to share his brilliant overview. We asked him who this path is for, and he said for those that are in the pursuit truth. Which you can imagine was music to my ears.

So if you are in pursuit of truth and freedom, this is for you. May it give you the clarity and guidance that it gave me when I received it. Awareness is truly a gift.

The story begins at the very beginning: When we are little babies.

When we come into the world, we don’t have a unique sense of self. As babies, we feel but don’t interpret. We don’t recognize ourselves in the mirror until month 18-25.¹ Our “narrative self” only starts to form when memory develops, around age 2-3.²

We live entirely in direct experience, absorbed in sensation. There are no borders between us and the world. Psychologists call this the “delusion of oneness”, except, of course, it is not an illusion but the non-dual nature of reality.

The baby comes into the world and lives in direct unity with it. There is no separate sense of self — only a moment-to-moment, embodied aliveness.

As babies we live in this reality because that which separates us from it (our sense of self) has not been formed yet. That’s why the journey of awakening is a journey of remembering. We once knew non-duality intimately. We lived it.

As newborns, we openly express our needs as if our livelihood depends on it, because it does. It’s a beautiful, moment-to-moment existence — until our needs aren’t met.

Which will inevitably happen in one way or another because two (imperfect) parents cannot possibly (and perfectly) meet all of the needs of one child.

There are two core reasons for this.

First, today’s isolated nuclear-family model goes against our evolutionary design. In indigenous cultures, infant caregiving was shared across 4–12 regular caregivers, sometimes even 20 or more throughout the broader community.³ Anthropologists call this alloparenting. Baby’s were constantly held for skin-to-skin contact and uninterrupted affection and care.

Today, we rely at best on two adults, which usually have competing work priorities. If we’re lucky, help such as nannies or dedicated grandparents is involved.

The second problem is that the two adults raising us grow up with unmet needs themselves, which prevents them from staying in loving awareness when we reflect back their own lack and rejection. Adults parent the ‘borderless baby’ with firm borders: their ego structure is set. This ultimately forces structures on the baby.

Every time our needs aren’t met, we feel the pain of rejection. In response to this rejection, we dull our sensitivity. We reject the moment because sensing it becomes too difficult. As a result, we dissociate and leave ourselves. Out of the body and into the mind.

This interrupts the process. The emotional energy gets trapped in our system. The border around us firms as we build belief systems that help make sense of the rejection. Which usually happens in a way that protects the caretaker, which is necessary to maintain safety in the eyes of the child. It is because of survival drive that we assume something is wrong with us when our needs aren’t met.

When the child’s needs aren’t met, it dissociates from direct experience and develops mental patterns to protect itself from the pain of rejection. The border around the child firms. By age 7, the sense of self has fully formed.

By age 7, our sense of self is mostly formed. That’s why our patterns remain the same old patterns, we don’t really develop new ones later in life. Everything originates in those developmental years between ages 3-7.

After childhood, the only remaining function of the ego is its own survival.

This is the heartbreak of being a human: We come into this world whole and precious, open to the world in its entirety, living in direct experience and unity with it. Until the world rejects us and we dissociate from the immediacy of the present moment.

This is also precisely why mediation can be so challenging. ‘Be here now’ is the ultimate threat to the ego. The ego is never here, now. The ego developed because it was not safe to be here, now. There is nothing more threatening to the ego than the experience of presence and peace. Our thoughts are constructs designed to keep themselves alive. These patterns are deep and instinctual.

If we truly understood how deeply our mental structures are bound together by survival drive, we would never have any judgement again — for ourselves or others. Force cannot dissolve these structures. Trying to change ourselves often backfires because it is fundamentally rooted in rejection.

But here is the truth: our preciousness has never left us. Perfection has never left us. We have within us that preciousness, that innocence, that miracle of a newborn baby.

And we can return to it.

At the root, the ego is a defense mechanism our soul developed to not feel lack. The ego is not the enemy as it holds incredible intelligence: it reveals which needs have not been met. The ego is our map to freedom.

Talk therapy usually only helps make the ego structure more resilient. We manage the symptoms but rarely alleviate the underlying pain of walking around with firm borders, disconnected from our essence.

Rejecting the ego also doesn’t work, it just strengthens it. Since all ego structures are the result of a lack of love, there is only medicine that can cure the heartbreak: love.

Freedom emerges when we meet ourselves with unconditional love, acceptance and curiosity. Through inquiry, we can lovingly investigate our truth. Partswork can help illuminate the inherent ‘goodness’ of our defense mechanisms. Psychedelic journeys can dissolve our ego temporarily and give us a glimpse into our essence: pure, loving, innocent and precious. Somatic therapy can help us expand our capacity to stay in sensation when every instinct is begging us to dissociate into thought.

The goal is not to dissolve our ego permanently (which is not possible). It’s to become less identified with it. We are not trying to change the structure but to meet it with love and curiosity so it can open up to something new.

It is an honest, open dance between story and sensation.

The magic happens when we expand our capacity to fully feel the charge of our suppressed emotions — our fear, our anger, our grief. If we find the source and learn to stay with the energetic imprint of the sensation without mental interruption, it dissolves. We complete the emotional cycle. We become more ‘open’ — quite literally, our borders become more porous. We feel more connected.

We do not need to recluse ourselves to do this work. It actually prevents us from it. This is a path for those who want to bring their spiritual path into their every day life.

Awakening happens in direct relationship with the world around us. We need to rub against the world to see where we leave ourselves. I thought I’d made such progress in my healing journey a few years in, until I allowed myself the never-ending ceremony of an intimate relationship. That’s when the rubbing got real. So did the growth.

Any opening is wonderful and threatening. But the more we dip into this, the more we stay with ourselves in the moments we want to leave, the more we inch towards freedom. Freedom in knowing ourselves deeply, in living beyond our beliefs, in expressing our joy, our aliveness, our creativity. Freedom to meet the moment through our senses exactly as it appears — unbound by the judgements of the mind.

The best part is that all this energy that’s been bound up in our system for the majority of our life doesn’t leave us when freed — it becomes available in the form of life force. This is the alchemy of awakening.

The more we learn to stay with ourselves in the very moments we want to escape, the more we open. The borders loosen. We feel the world again.

When we experience this freedom on the individual soul level, we naturally become drawn to serve the greater consciousness. We have become children again, ready to play with life. Ready to leap into the unknown, faithful that that which we belong to will catch us.

“You don’t get more light by focusing on the light, but by focusing what resist the light and meeting that with love.” — Vince Draddy

An invitation to reflect:

What are the moments in which it becomes too painful to stay in your senses? Which emotions urge you to escape the present moment? What is the underlying need those emotions express? And how might you meet those needs within yourself?

Where to learn more:

The main pathways to receive these teachings are through Almaas’ books or through retreats and groups led by the hundreds of teachers of the Ridhwan school.

I also wrote about the school’s teachings around personal essence here:

The anatomy of the human essence

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Artwork by Phillip Igumnov

1. The development of self-recognition: A Review

2. Narrative identity, Dan P. McAdams and Kate C. McLean

3. Hunter-gatherer childhoods in the Congo Basin