Dear Brian,
what a good story your life writes you. The catharsis you caused yourself is quite an impressive achievement. You've arrived at the bottom, you've dared to bend out of safety and you've felt the full pain that this loss of identity has inflicted on you. I think you have to hit the total ground before you are aware of the culturally conditioned influence (which has been there since there have been people trading with each other).

When you feel really dirty, when you recognize the madness that drove you and to which you never gave real faith, is an important step taken. What others do or leave should not be more important than what your integrity and wisdom tells you.

There are people who do not dare to leave the security of prosperity and if they do not have an awakening experience of what they must have, if before the belief in wealth was so strong, they may never experience it. Then there are those who do not believe so much in becoming rich and famous in the first place. How beautiful it is that we are all quite different, even if it does not look like it on the surface.

One can free oneself from goals and desires and yet still unerringly follow the path of one's life. I feel grateful to those who reveal their stories (like you do here) and to those who teach me to reveal to me a different kind of reality that is at least a thousand times better than any status quo. I think we all sniff the lie in the prayer wheel of financial success. You can almost tell people how exhausting they find it to continue to believe in it. But it is probably every single task to walk the road. One cannot walk for the other.

To answer your question: I am looking for a peaceful mind. I'm looking for inspiration. I find it in people and teachings that mean something to me. I learn. I am still looking for ways not to constantly hold my mistakes against myself and blame others for their mistakes. This is a lifelong practice and learning and never stops.

Earlier I gave a funny analogy of Alan Watts to someone in the commentary. I think it's so good that I'm copying it in here for you:

The watching or the observing self behind our thoughts and feelings is itself a thought

When the police enter a house in which there are thiefs, the thiefs go up from the ground floor to the first floor. When the police arives at the first floor, the thiefs have gone up the second and so up to the third floor and finally out to the roof.

When the ego is about to be unmasked, it immediatly identifies with the higher self.

You do such good writings. I am missing to hear from you more often. And then I forget to visit your blog, only to finally come here and see that I am again a little late. :)

Sincerely,
Erika