A turn of attention

As a child, I was naturally spiritual.

I didn’t think of it in philosophical terms. I simply believed—deeply and intuitively—that my inner world mattered. I believed that the conversations I had in my mind with my Devata were not imaginary, but real, and that they had the power to shape my external reality. That belief wasn’t taught to me. It was just there. It was instinctive, obvious.

At some point, I lost touch with it.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, my understanding of reality narrowed. Life started to feel like something to manage rather than live. I was focused on schedules, expectations, and getting through the next thing. Meaning slowly moved outside of me—into targets, milestones, and what I was supposed to be chasing.

I learned how to function in that world. I studied, worked, built a career, and moved along the paths laid out in front of me. I did what was required, met expectations, and stayed afloat. But there was little inner investment. I wasn’t deeply motivated to excel, nor particularly interested in competing. I was capable, but inwardly disengaged—riding along rather than choosing direction.

Over time, this began to show.

Effort increased, but it didn’t translate into clarity or satisfaction. Life felt functional, not flourishing—moving, but without a strong sense of forwardness. This period coincided with personal strain: relationship challenges, financial uncertainty, and the isolating stillness of the COVID years. Being locked down, both externally and internally, forced reflection.

I began thinking more deeply about human struggle—not in theory, but in daily life. About why people who follow the rules, work hard, and “do everything right” still feel tired, anxious, or quietly dissatisfied. About why effort doesn’t always lead to peace. At the same time, the dissonance of mainstream narratives became harder to ignore. The stories we’re told about success, health, happiness, and “normal life” felt increasingly disconnected from lived reality.

Then came a more concrete disruption.

After buying a house and having a child, I lost my job. It was a moment that could have pulled all my attention outward—toward fear, urgency, and survival. Instead, something unexpected happened. My attention turned inward. Not in avoidance, but in inquiry.

That was the turning point.

Not a dramatic awakening, but a persistent sense that continuing in the same way—thinking the same thoughts, accepting the same assumptions, chasing the same metrics—was no longer honest. Something deeper was asking to be examined, and for the first time in a long while, I was willing to listen.

From inherited paths to chosen direction

As I did, I noticed how much of what we’re told to accept as “truth” is inherited, not examined. The more I sought, the more certain narratives—illusions, really—began to fall away. Social media stopped feeling harmless. The career rat race felt empty when disconnected from purpose. Mainstream narratives about what’s “good for us”—in health, lifestyle, even happiness—began to feel incomplete, sometimes dishonest.

I began to see how definitions of success, productivity, and happiness are often shaped not to deepen connection, but to keep us distracted, busy, and moving—away from something more fundamental. I started questioning everyday assumptions. Debating ideas I once accepted automatically. Paying attention to what felt true rather than what was popular or rewarded. In doing so, I found myself shedding layers of borrowed certainty.

What surprised me was that this wasn’t driven by rebellion. This wasn’t about rejecting the world. It was about seeing it more clearly.

The way I was thinking, questioning, and orienting my life began to concern people around me. Some felt I was withdrawing. Others worried I was becoming impractical, unstable, or losing my way. There were conversations meant to help, interventions meant to bring me “back,” and moments where I was quietly treated as though something had gone wrong.

That was one of the harder parts of this shift. Not disagreement, but misunderstanding—especially from people I cared about. Choosing to listen inwardly often looked, from the outside, like detachment or denial.

It forced me to confront a difficult question: how do you stay honest to what feels true when it unsettles the expectations of those closest to you?

Behind all of this, one question kept sharpening.

What is my purpose?

The answer didn’t arrive as a grand statement. It clarified slowly, through reflection and lived experience. What mattered wasn’t achievement for its own sake, but direction—using what I have in a way that feels honest and useful beyond just myself.

To live by my truth, even when it doesn’t fit neatly into inherited systems.

That clarity changed how I related to everything. Everything else began to reorganize.

Productivity stopped being about output and started being about alignment. I became more attentive to how consciousness and awareness itself shapes experience—how what we notice, ignore, or assume quietly directs our lives, whether we acknowledge it or not.

I stopped measuring my life primarily by external markers of success and started evaluating it by integrity and contribution. Productivity became less about output and more about intention. I became more attentive to how awareness itself shapes experience—how what we notice, ignore, or assume quietly directs our lives, whether we acknowledge it or not.

I began asking different questions. Does meeting societal benchmarks really matter if the work has no lasting impact?

Am I building something that serves only me, or something that contributes meaningfully beyond me? What responsibility do I carry—not only to myself and my family, but to my community, country and future generations?

These questions reshaped how I direct my energy—and what I choose to build with it.

- I’m building e4D as an exploration of ethical, conscious, and responsible systems.
- I’m writing a book to document this journey honestly, without pretending to have arrived.
- I’m exploring sustainable food chains—first for my family, and then with the intent to scale—because food, land, and health are not abstract ideas. They are foundational.

These are not disconnected efforts. They are expressions of the same underlying commitment.

More will come. This path is still unfolding.

I’m not here to persuade or prescribe. I’m here to explore, live and create consciously.

If this way of seeing resonates —if you sense that the world we’ve inherited deserves deeper examination, and that your life could be oriented toward something more meaningful—then you may find something here worth engaging with.

This is not about certainty. It’s about alignment. This is not about having answers.

It’s about asking better questions—and being willing to live into them.