have you ever lost yourself?
In music. In the ocean.
In someone's eyes.
For a second, you forgot
you were even there —
and it may have been
the most alive
you have ever felt.
The feeling of being a separate self —
sealed behind your eyes,
a little island of you
in an ocean of not-you —
is not a fixed fact.
It is produced —
a network in the brain,
humming all day
to keep that edge in place.
and it can be turned down.
feel the line around you —
where you end
and the world begins.
in certain moments,
that line softens.
the wall thins.
inside and outside
begin to mix.
until there is no edge at all —
one field,
and no one apart from it.
It happens more than you'd think.
In flow, when you vanish into the work.
In awe, when the night sky
shrinks you to a grateful speck.
In deep stillness. In grief. In love.
Sometimes with medicine,
under careful hands.
The boundary thins,
and people reach for the same word:
oneness.
And here is the key:
it is not a malfunction.
Quiet the self-making network
and the separate "you" fades —
but awareness does not.
Something is still here,
wide awake, often flooded with peace.
the self was optional.
the awareness was not.
the self is not a fact.
it is a setting —
and it can be turned down.
all the way down —
the separate 'you' gone,
and yet awareness remains,
everywhere.
So the self is not
who you are.
It is a costume
that awareness puts on —
useful, beautiful,
worth taking good care of —
but it can be set down.
You have taken it off before,
for a few seconds,
and called it the best moment
of your life.
Even the edge is made of sparks.
A small network of them, firing all day,
insisting: you are separate.
you are in here. the world is out there.
Quiet those few sparks
and the insisting stops —
but the light they were flashing in
does not go out.
You are not the edge.
You are not the small, bounded thing
sealed behind it.
You are the openness
in which the edge appears —
and, now and then,
dissolves.
And what remains
when the self is set down —
is the last thing
we have to show you.