We’ve put the cart before the horse. We chase money and results and forget what any of it is for. It’s all for experience. That’s the only thing we actually have. It’s all we can know. It’s the only thing worth putting our attention on. And it ought to be the thing we organise our world around.
Experience is all. Felt experience. Not thought.
It is also all you need. You don’t need a philosophy. You don’t need a religion. You don’t need anyone to tell you what to do. No doctrine, no authority, no map. Just turn inward, slow down, put your attention on your experience, on your felt sense, and do what it tells you.
That’s it.
What enriches your experience? What deepens it? What improves the tone of it? Just being present for it is already a big step, and a reward in itself. Improving your connection to your inner world makes experience richer on its own.
Then, follow the felt sense as a compass. Do what feels right and you’ll end up where you need to be.
It’s like the difference between going for a Big Mac and going for a walk. When you’re really present for how those two things feel, the difference is not small.
The same compass works at every scale.
Imagine if the experience of the worker was central. What would our work environments look like? If maximum output wasn’t the point, but our experience of doing the work was, what could we change? If maximising profit wasn’t the focus, but the experience of the customer was, where would that lead?
If school focused on the experience of learning and developing, how would it look? What would we keep? What would we drop? What would children spend their days doing?
If the economy focused on our experience instead of GDP, how would it be different? What would we measure? What would we stop measuring? What would we make more of, and what would we just stop making?
Have a feel yourself. Don’t take my word for it. Just check what it would feel like and see what’s there.
Vipassana, tantra, yoga, tai-chi, Buddhism. These are aids to finding the compass. Ways to make the inward move. They aren’t prescriptions. And once you know how to read the compass and what it brings, you don’t really need them anymore.
Change the compass and the rest follows.