Embarking on the Journey

Dissatisfaction has a way of sneaking up on you.

It doesn’t arrive loudly. It seeps in, quietly, between the moments when life seems perfectly fine. It doesn’t say, "Something's wrong." It just makes you pause—mid-conversation, mid-achievement, mid-breath—and wonder:

Is this all there is?

That feeling is uncomfortable, but it isn’t random.

It’s the first tug of something deeper—a pull toward the part of ourselves that senses there’s more than the surface we’ve been living on.

And as much as we try to brush it aside, it always comes back.

Because dissatisfaction is the doorway.

It’s life’s way of waking us up from the rhythm of habit. Of reminding us that desire isn’t the enemy—it’s us.

Desire moves everything.

It moves us to wake up, to chase goals, to seek connection. It's why we love, why we work, why we ache.

And for a long time, I didn’t notice how much desire was shaping me.

I thought I was choosing my path. But when I stepped back and really looked, I saw that everything I'd pursued—every decision, every ambition—was simply me following a desire for something I thought would complete me.

And I was always sure that the next thing would be it.

But even when I received what I wanted—whether it was a new experience, a new success, or a new version of myself—the satisfaction would last just long enough to feel real. Then it would dissolve. And a new desire would appear.

Same chase.

Same fleeting fulfilment.

And at some point, I had to ask:

What am I really chasing?

That question opened a door because I stopped looking at the objects of my desire and started paying attention to the desire itself, to me.

And when I did, there I was—an observer—that had been there the whole time. Watching.

Noticing.

Quietly witnessing the endless cycle.

This part didn’t want more. It didn’t calculate outcomes or plan the next step.

It just… watched.

And when I let myself settle into that awareness, I understood.

I have no idea who I am, nor what I am .

Identity!

The thing we cling to, the masks we put on.

It’s how we navigate the world—labels, roles, opinions. A story we tell ourselves to feel anchored in a shifting reality.

And for most of my life, I'd mistaken that story for the truth.

But, sitting with the emptiness beneath it, the illusion quickly crumbles.

Because identity, no matter how solid it seems, is built from external reflections. It's a shell we build from the world around us.

But authenticity?

That’s something entirely different, and it's where we have the ability to truly crash through the crisis of the identity.

Authenticity isn’t something we declare—it’s what arises within us, and how we choose to move with it.

And as that truth landed, I realised something:

The shape and form of my desire for self-discovery

wasn’t anchored in presence—it was running me in circles, quietly rooted in self-grasping.

The questions I kept asking had become their own trap:

Who am I?

What am I meant to understand?

And the observer within whispering—You’re asking the same questions…for the same answer.

My mind rebelled at this stage.

Telling me: Don't let go.

If you stop chasing understanding, you’ll be lost.

Without knowing who you are, how will you survive?

But thats your ego, tricking you back into the trap.

It's not a big leap for us to quickly come into agreement that our ego's thrive on certainty, even when that certainty suffocates us. That it's easier for us to cling to a familiar identity, than risk the unknown truth of who we are.

But, when we do, we finally embark on the real journey.

Not to build a better identity.

Not to accumulate knowledge or insight.

But to shift the direction of our desire.

From seeking for ourselves to something knowing, beyond ourselves.

I resisted that shift with everything in me, we are all made to be that way.

Because 'beyond myself,' what does that even mean?

Recently I experienced a moment with someone. It was a moment where the walls between us dissolved. It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't euphoric.

It just felt....Like I'd momentarily stepped out of the endless loop of self-reference and into something larger, quieter, human connection.

That moment showed me what I'd been missing:

It’s the experience of giving without calculation.

Of trusting that meaning doesn't live in what we accumulate or what we know, but in how we show up for each other—not to fix, not to control, but to simply be with.

And that kind of connection requires an inner inversion.

Because the ego insists: Take, define, protect.

But the heart knows: Give, release, connect.

And this shift—from self-directed desire to other-directed presence—is where the journey is.

The journey isn’t linear.

It loops and bends and doubles back on itself.

Because every time we think we’ve grasped the truth, life introduces a new layer of resistance—

Because desire isn’t random.

It’s life, gently pulling you toward the truth:

That we don't find meaning alone.

We discover it when we dare to step beyond ourselves, even when the ego begs us to turn away.

Bradley J Cleary