The Real Cause of Suffering
You are not broken. You are living inside a simulation you built yourself — and it is running your life.
Everyone lives in a simulation. Not a metaphor — a neurological fact.
The world we experience is not reality. It is a construction the brain builds from memory, projected onto the present moment. The human in front of you becomes your friend, your enemy, your emotions, a story build from memories. What we call “the world” is mostly something we invented.
I know this because I have experienced both sides of it. Sometimes I wake up from the simulation — and the world in those moments is completely different. Clearer. Quieter. More alive. The fear that normally hums beneath everything simply disappears, replaced by something I can only call deep inner peace.
That contrast — between the constructed world and direct experience — became the question that shaped my life.
THE SELF YOU INVENTED
Here is a simple experiment. Imagine going to the cinema tomorrow. You can probably see yourself there — your friends beside you, the mood of the evening, the anticipation of the film. You feel something just by thinking it.
Now notice: we do this constantly. Career ambitions, social plans, feared conversations, imagined futures. We construct a version of yourself moving through time — planning pleasure while avoiding pain — and we begin to identify with that image. It feels like me. My inner self. The real Me.
But it is a projection built from memory. A mental simulation of a person who does not yet exist, populated by emotions from experiences that are already over.
And here is where it becomes dangerous: once I believe that simulated self is real, I need to protect it. Not from actual physical danger — but from any thought that threatens its imagined future. That is the engine behind psychological suffering.
Thoughts generally appear uncontrolled in consciousness. I cannot predict what I will think in one hour from now, or tomorrow, or next week. Thoughts appear and I react — trying to keep what feels good and solve what feels painful. The battleground for endless struggle is set.
TWO NETWORKS, ONE BRAIN
Neuroscience has a name for what is happening. The brain operates across two competing large brain networks.
Task Positive Network (TPN)
The experience of reality. Senses the body and immediate environment. No past. No future. Pure present-moment response — the same awareness shared with every other animal.
Default Mode Network (DMN)
The memory of conscious experience — past events projected into imagined futures. Makes, up to 80% of our total brain activity. Connected to neither senses nor muscles. This is where the simulation runs.
When you are fully absorbed in an experience — in a conversation, a physical challenge, a creative flow — the TPN is dominant. The DMN quiets. There is no “you” observing from outside. Just the experience itself.
But the moment the experience ends, the DMN re-engages. It processes what happened. It compares it to past events. It projects forward, asking: how do I ensure more of the good, and less of the bad?
This is not a malfunction. It is the brain doing exactly what it evolved to do.
HOW MEMORY BECOMES SUFFERING
Consider an extreme situation, a soldier in a war zone. In the field, the brain responds to immediate danger — adrenaline, heightened senses, pure present-time survival. That is the TPN at full capacity.
After the battle, the DMN begins processing the experience. And here is the mechanism that matters: in replaying the memory, the brain reactivates the same physical response. The amygdala fires again. Fear floods the body. Not because the danger is present, but because the memory of it, is.
The soldier is now afraid of the memory itself. They begin monitoring their surroundings for patterns that resemble the past threat. The loop runs continuously, burning energy, narrowing perception, keeping the nervous system locked in a state of emergency. We call this PTSD — but it is the same mechanism, in a milder form, behind most of the anxiety and depression we live with every day.
The feeling is always happening now. But it is a response to a future or past that exists only in imagination.
This is how the simulation creates real suffering. Memories are recordings of a living body. When the brain replays them, the body responds as though the event is happening again.
I think about moving my arm — it moves.
I think about something scary — I fear.
I think about being hurt — I suffer.
Imagination, nervous system and body are not separate systems. They are one.
WHEN THE SIMULATION COLLAPSES
The most compelling evidence for this model comes from what happens when the DMN breaks down.
In deep meditation states, in psychedelic therapy, and in near-death experiences, the DMN goes quiet. Psychedelic and meditation research in particular have replicated this consistently:
Time dissolves
The sense of self disappears — and with it, mental health disorders
Consciousness and intelligence expand — because thought is made of memories, and memories are not conscious. The more we think, the less aware we become.
A felt sense of oneness and deep inner peace emerges
These are not poetic descriptions. They are measurable brain states using devices such as MRI, MEG or EEG.
Consciousness does not disappear when the self disappears. If anything, it expands. The quieter the simulation, the more vividly we experience what is actually happening here and now.
SO WHI ISN’T EVERYONE MEDITATING OR TAKING PSYCHEDELICS?
The evidence for mindfulness-based approaches is solid. Clinical research consistently shows meaningful results for anxiety and depression — reduced rumination, lower cortisol, measurable changes in DMN activity. Meditation works.
But it works slowly and being 5.000 years old with many variations has proven unsuccessful as a means to wake up from the simulation. It has a fatal flaw that will be uncovered in the next chapter.
Psychedelic therapy points in a similar direction — disrupting the DMN, dissolving the self-loop, producing dramatic short-term shifts in perspective. But it carries its own serious obstacles: intense and sometimes destabilising side effects, the unpredictability of the experience, and the DMN is a prediction machine. It learns to anticipate the drug’s effects, builds tolerance, and gradually reasserts control.
Both paths reach toward the right destination. Neither can unlock sustained inner peace.