This evidence suggests if we return to seeing our distress and our joy as something we share with a network of people all around us, we will feel different.

You are constantly monitoring yourself. Your ego will shriek like an alarm you can’t shut off.

I started to see depression and anxiety as like cover versions of the same song by different bands.

you are at a fork in the road now. You can try to muffle the signal. That will lead you to many wasted years when the pain will persist. Or you can listen to the signal and let it guide you—away from the things that are hurting and draining you, and toward the things that will meet your true needs.

Oh, I’ve got to work more, because my self depends on my status and my achievement. You internalize that. It’s a kind of form of internalized oppression.”

You can have everything a person could possibly need by the standards of our culture—but those standards can badly misjudge what a human actually needs in order to have a good or even a tolerable life.

“The more you think happiness is a social thing, the better off you are,” Brett explained to me, summarizing

It wasn’t just a bad event that caused depression—it was also long-term sources of stress.

But what both deep meditation and psychedelic experiences teach us is the ability to see how much of that self—that ego—is constructed.