“First, some humble pie is required. I have stress and suffering, so I am not speaking as someone who has transcended stress and suffering. So I speak as another fellow person with stress and suffering that is still dealing with it on a daily basis.
Given that humble pie, then I will say this. I think a lot of, and I'll make it personal, so I think a lot of my problems, my stress, a lot of my suffering is because I believe allusions. To the extent that I believe that I need to become something at all, you need to be better than I am in any way, need to prove anything to anybody else, that's an illusion.
I'm already the infinite. I don't need to prove anything. I'm making everything is already, so I don't need to get anywhere.
I don't need to accomplish anything. I don't need to succeed at anything to become what I need to become. I'm already that.
“So I don't, so the suffering comes from me forgetting who I am. I don't need to, I don't actually need to impress anybody, accomplish anything, because everything that I'm saying, I'm already making this all up. This is already me.
I've already done all this. What more do I need to do?
I am transcendent.
I'm completely transcendent of this thing. And my suffering is not recognizing that. My suffering is entirely being caught in my avatar.
This is just my avatar. It's not me. So my suffering is because I made this avatar, I let myself on purpose be identified with the avatar, knowing that I would be suffering because of that, and knowing that I needed to wake up.
So I'm suffering because I'm identified with the avatar, but I put myself in that place because I really wanted to look at the world through this avatar. That's why I'm suffering. But eventually I wake up and I look and I see the avatar for what it is, and I realized that everything I was trying to do to prove that I was worthwhile and I was better than you or not as bad as you think I am or things like that, all of that was just, you know, all the pain and suffering was because of an illusion.
But I needed to do that. I needed to look at myself from that perspective for a while, in part to find out who I am by finding out who I'm not. I'm not that, just that avatar.”
From The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett: Top Psychologist & Scientist (Donald Hoffman): Science Has the Answer to Why Seeing True Reality Would Kill You!, Jul 31, 2025
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