Story is told about oneself. Story is the imprisonment. When there is awareness of this imprisonment, one seeks to break free. The process of breaking free is the search for liberation. Usually, the story is told about oneself by others. This story limits who we can be. To break free of the limit is liberation. One experiences what one thinks is liberation through gaining control of storytelling. One now controls the telling of the story. One chooses what kind of story one tells about oneself. This might feel liberating, but it is only a change of prisons. Imprisonment is the nature of any story.

The reaction to loneliness is the desire for companionship. A companion is to be depended upon. This companion can be a person, a group, or an idea. Dependence creates a sense of comfort. In comfort, the mind is slack, lazy, inattentive. An inattentive mind has no vitality. The deadweight of life is the reliance on comfort.

Narcissism necessarily leads to isolation. Narcissism is the worship of the self. The self takes many forms. It can be the body, the appearance, the intellect, the impression of oneself. It could also be something much bigger, such as a country, an organization, an ideology, a belief, a faith, and so on. The self identifies with something and worships that thing. This is narcissism. When the self worships a thing, that thing becomes valuable. Because of value, the thing becomes protected by the self. The process of protection is the process of challenge and response. One is then always protecting the thing in response to external challenges. Protection is in nature isolating, because protection means to push away, kill, or distance anything that challenges what it protects.

Sex is not love. Sex has become satisfaction. In sex, if one is only seeking orgasm, or any other particular way of satisfaction through pain, obedience, control, and violence, love is not possible. The search for satisfaction in sex calls for cruelty and manipulation. Sex is used to tie each other down. It is used like a product in the market. Sex has become a mechanism for control and domination. This domination can be very direct or indirect. It could manifest in violent physical behavior of control, or subtle psychological influence, such as gaslighting and guilt-tripping.

Depression is a weight. Depression is the sensation of not being enough, of lacking, of pressure, of burden. Depression drags and weighs down the brain. Depression happens when one demands. The demand for life to be something always leads to depression, because that demand creates the weight and burden which the mind must bear. The weight is expectation. One expects life to be successful, beautiful, peaceful, joyous, and so on. Any such expectation will create misery for the mind, because frustration is born with expectation. Frustration is inevitable for a mind that expects. The mind experiences satisfaction through the release of the burden. However, it only releases the burden when it decides that expectation is met. The mind can release the burden always. It refuses to release because it thinks the expectation is not met yet. In this process of bearing the burden of expectation, the mind is gradually weighed down, becomes sluggish and frustrated, and depression is this very process.

Dependence makes the mind prone to deception, because the mind is blinded by its desire to depend. Dependence in relationship is the soil for manipulation, control, and abuse. Those who are aware that others depend on them psychologically can then use this dependence as leverage. When they do use dependence as leverage, abuse in ways of sex, money, emotion, and so on happens. Those who seek dependence in relationship are usually the victims of abuse. This causes pain, and the reaction to this pain is to reinforce dependence, because the mind thinks it is the severance of dependence which causes pain. On the contrary, the severance of dependence is the freedom from pain. The unwillingness to let go is the cause of pain.

The mind divides pleasure from pain. From one's own life, one can observe the changes in one's pleasure and pain. What used to be painful can now be pleasurable, and vice versa. Pleasure and pain are both sensations. Sensations are named, sorted, categorized, and one such scheme of categorization is pleasure and pain. When one is caught in this division, struggle is inevitable. Conflict is the way of pleasure and pain. Conflict is not only in the personal domain, but also in the social. One can also observe in the world, that the pursuit of pleasure is the cause of pain, not only in oneself, but also in others. This is the wheel of desire. This is the death and rebirth of sensations. In reality, there is no death, nor is there rebirth.

Addiction is attachment. Addiction is the repetitive seeking out of a certain sensation. This sensation can be sexual, intellectual, emotional, and so on. Thought is sensation, although we don't tend to think of it as such. There is the sensation of hearing, touching, seeing, tasting, smelling, and thinking. All that which the mind is aware of is sensation. Addiction is the search for something the mind has experienced before, repetitively. Addiction comes from a sense of emptiness. To escape this emptiness, one fills one's psyche with different sensations. Yet, any sensation is passing, transient, so satisfaction is never accomplished. That is why addiction is a vicious cycle. Addiction is self-fulfilling. Addiction believes that satisfaction through sensation is the only way to joy. It is unaware of the fact that it enforces itself. It is ignorant to the fact that no sensation can be fulfilling. This also means, the emptiness is not there actually, but created by craving, by addiction itself.

Identification with anything is the beginning of confusion. Identity is based on the opposites. To be a man, there must be the woman. To be of one country, there must be another country. To be human, there must be the non-human. All these identities can only exist in this field of the opposites. There can be many degrees, levels, gradients, but they are all fundamentally the same as the opposites. One must exist for the other to exist as well.