In December 2023, I had a cardiac event that changed everything — not only in the immediate, dramatic sense, but in the quieter months that followed.
But the ride to the ER itself contained the seed of what would come. There was the flash of memory — not a cinematic montage, but a rapid-fire awareness of moments lived and unlived. Then, the visceral panic: What happens to my family? My aged mother, my wife, my two children? Who would hold what I held? Would they be okay?
And then — strangely, astonishingly — peace. A clarity I hadn’t expected. If my story ended that day, they would be okay. The thought didn’t erase love or attachment. It simply erased fear.
Looking back, I now believe that moment — that calm, that spacious awareness — was pure Awareness itself. Not a mood. Not a coping mechanism. Not resignation. But something beyond fear, prior to thought.
In Vedantic¹ terms, it was a glimpse of the Self — not the small self shaped by memory or identity, but the ever-present substratum beneath all experience, all illusion. There is no other explanation I’ve yet found.
The ER physician, noticing me reviewing my EKG, was surprised by my calm. “You seem remarkably composed for someone interpreting his own heart rhythms,” he said. I asked, “Would freaking out help?” He blinked, then laughed. The tension in the room cracked. It was a shared human moment — and perhaps, the first step in the undoing.
What unraveled in the weeks that followed wasn’t just physical certainty. It was professional identity. Mental models. Belief in momentum.
I had spent decades as an engineer, entrepreneur, and software architect — building systems, companies, and solutions. The external world called it success. Internally, I called it forward motion. Until that motion stopped. The momentum stilled.
In the months that followed, I found myself drawn to questions I had long postponed:
- What truly matters?
- How do I want to live the rest of my life?
- What does it mean to live with clarity, purpose, and inner freedom — especially after the structures, identities, and scripts I once relied on have fallen away?
- What does exploration truly mean?
These were no longer abstract questions.
I had achieved some measure of success by most American standards, but coming so abruptly close to the edge made me ask:
What have I been doing? Why had it mattered? Why should it matter now? What is it all about?
In what framework did my life so far make sense?
Was I just an ant toiling mindlessly in the anthill?
Had I missed the boat completely? Or is this all there is?
First Unlearning: I Am Not My Identity
I had built companies, led teams across continents, accumulated the traditional markers of success. I had built and run operations in Latin America, South Asia, Japan, China, and across Europe, in Russia and in the Czech Republic.
So what? Why did it matter?
My identity as a businessman, leader, builder — what did that really mean? Why and how did it matter?
This line of inquiry led to the first unlearning: I am not my identity.
I could not be.
I’ve come to realize that identity is an illusion — constructed through mental models, themselves shaped by the norms and expectations of society, by meaningless ideals.
Ephemeral. Evanescent.
Meaningless when one is on the way to the ER.
Second Unlearning: Growth Lies in Subtraction
Further ongoing inquiry and reflection has brought me the second unlearning: growth is about subtraction, not acquisition. It is less self-improvement and more remembering — re-membering — becoming part again of what’s already there beneath the noise.
What has always been.
Third Unlearning: Control is an Illusion
The third unlearning is particularly powerful because I had come to understand this purely intellectually for a few decades prior to this experience — that control is an illusion.
I now understood that viscerally.
It’s ironic that only in facing death do we come to feel — viscerally — what we had long thought we understood.
After the Unraveling
These are not conclusions.
They are thresholds to traverse — the beginnings of a radically different kind of seeing.
One that builds through unveiling.
One that powers creation through subtraction.
One that remembers.
I’ve begun to write about my experiences, my reflections, and my ongoing inquiries — not to convince, but to clarify and understand.
To practice discernment.
To further explore what lies beneath the surface.
To share my unfolding journey — and above all to learn from fellow travelers walking their own paths through this noisy, beautiful, superficially complicated world.
These essays are not about teaching or building a brand. I am not and do not wish to be a guru.
They are about practice — about sadhana² — and one man’s experience on this path.
Such undoings are not an end.
They are a beginning — perhaps where something truer begins.
While I’ve named these three Unlearnings here, I don’t see them as settled truths.
Each is a doorway I’ve only just stepped through — a threshold, not a conclusion.
In future essays, I hope to explore each of them more deeply:
- The illusion of identity
- The nature of real growth
- The myth of control
If you’re walking a similar path — or simply curious — I’d be honored to have you along for the journey.
Please feel welcome to share your reflections — publicly in the comments or privately via email at: undoing_raaj (at) proton (dot) me
The journey continues…
Footnotes
¹ Vedanta is an ancient Indian philosophical tradition that explores the nature of reality and consciousness. I’ll have more to say on this in future essays.
² Sādhana (Sanskrit: साधना) means “practice” or “discipline.” Literally, it translates as “a means to an end.” It refers to the regular practice and discipline of activities such as meditation, reflection, or study that support growth, clarity, and self-understanding.
With quiet gratitude to Logan Fairbanks and Unsplash —for the image that gestures beyond the mirror of identity, and Mick Haupt on Unsplash for the feature image.