So What, Nobody Likes You

There are eight billion people on this planet right now. Eight billion nervous systems. Eight billion sets of fears, hungers, grudges, longings, and opinions. Eight billion people waking up this morning with something to say, somewhere to be, someone to impress or avoid or forgive or forget. Eight billion people who will never know your name.

So what?

Seriously. So what? Who can keep track of any of it? Not even the most powerful algorithm on earth truly knows you. Not a single surveillance system, social graph, or recommendation engine has the slightest access to what moves through you in the quiet moments ~ the ones between the scrolling and the doing, when something vast opens up and you briefly, startlingly, feel the whole of existence pressing against the inside of your chest like it needs somewhere to go. Think about that. All these systems supposedly mapping your every desire, your next purchase, your political leanings... and they can't touch the moment when you're washing dishes and suddenly the light hits the soap bubbles just right and for three seconds you feel connected to everything that ever was. They miss the split second when you're stuck in traffic and catch your own eye in the rearview mirror and think, "What the hell am I actually doing with this one life?" The machines track your clicks, sure. But they'll never catch the way your breath changes when you realize you've been holding it for the past hour.

That's not data. That's not a profile. That's not a follower count. That is you ... the real you ... brushing up against something so enormous that language loses its footing. You know that feeling when you're standing at the edge of the ocean at 3 AM and suddenly realize you're basically a speck of dust with anxiety? That's it. That's the moment when all your clever social media strategies and personal branding bullshit just... evaporates. Because whatever this thing is ~ this vast, indifferent universe ~ it doesn't give a damn about your LinkedIn optimization or how many people double-tap your vacation photos. It's bigger than your need to be seen, bigger than your fear of being invisible. And honestly? That's terrifying and liberating at the same time.

Here's the radical thing nobody wants to admit: the loneliness you feel in a crowd of eight billion is not a flaw in the system. It is an invitation. The most sophisticated, carefully calibrated, cosmically generous invitation you will ever receive. Think about that for a second ~ we spend our whole lives running from this feeling, medicating it, filling it with Netflix and shopping and endless scrolling. But what if loneliness isn't the problem? What if it's the answer trying to get your attention? That empty space inside isn't begging to be filled with more people, more validation, more bullshit. It's pointing you toward something way more important. It's saying: "Hey, you don't know who you are when nobody's watching." And that's terrifying. Because most of us have been performing so long, we forgot there's someone underneath the act.

The Universe Within You Is Larger Than All of This

Close your eyes for a moment - you can do it later, after you finish reading ... and try to locate the edges of your own awareness. Go ahead. Find the border where you end and something else begins. Seriously. Take a real shot at it. You'll notice something weird happens when you actually try this - the harder you look for that boundary, the more it seems to dissolve under scrutiny. It's like trying to grab smoke. The moment you think you've found where "you" stops - at your skin, maybe, or at the edge of your thoughts - that line starts getting fuzzy as hell. Are you with me? Your awareness doesn't have clean borders the way your body does. It bleeds into everything around it, mixing with sounds, sensations, even the space you're sitting in right now.

You can't.

And that's not a poetic trick. That's not a spiritual sleight of hand. That is the actual nature of what you are. Vedantic sages called it Brahman - the ground of being itself, the one undivided consciousness in which all worlds, all births, all deaths, all moments arise and dissolve like waves that have never been separate from the ocean they pretend to be. Look, I know how this sounds. Trust me. I used to roll my eyes at this stuff too. But here's the thing ~ you can actually verify this for yourself, right now, without joining a cult or sitting cross-legged for twenty years. Just notice what's aware of your thoughts. What's aware of the feeling of being liked or disliked? That awareness... it doesn't give a shit about your social status. It's the same awareness that was here when you were five years old getting picked last for kickball, and it'll be the same awareness if you become the most beloved person on earth. Seriously. The waves change, but the ocean? The ocean just is.

You are that. Not symbolically. Not metaphorically. Brahman is not a concept you aspire toward. It is what you already are before the mind layers its commentary on top of the experience. This isn't some spiritual participation trophy where you get to feel special about your "true nature." You ARE the damn thing. Right now. While reading this. The awareness looking through your eyes ~ that's it. But here's the kicker: the moment you try to grab it, label it, or make it into some kind of spiritual achievement, you've already missed it. Your mind jumps in like an overeager tour guide, explaining what you're experiencing instead of just letting you BE what you are. Think about that. The very thing trying to "get" enlightenment is the obstacle to recognizing what's already here.

The inner universe isn't smaller than the outer one. It isn't a copy or a metaphor. It is the original. The eight billion people, the spinning galaxies, the dark matter threading between everything visible - all of it arises within the same awareness you've been carting around your whole life, mistaking for a limited and slightly embarrassed self. Think about that. You've been walking around convinced you're some separate little creature peering out at a big scary world through the windows of your skull. But what if the skull is imaginary? What if the separation is the dream, and this boundless awareness - the one noticing these words right now - is what's actually running the whole cosmic show? You're not in the universe. The universe is in you. Always has been. The scientists measuring distant quasars, the mystics sitting in caves, even the assholes who cut you off in traffic ~ they're all movements within the same aware space you mistake for "just me."

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When a teacher or a text points you inward, they are not pointing you away from reality. They are pointing you toward the only place reality actually lives. Think about that. Every single thing you've ever experienced - every taste, every touch, every moment of joy or terror - happened inside your awareness. Not outside it. The tree you see? That's your nervous system translating light waves. The anger you feel? That's consciousness knowing itself as anger. Even this moment, reading these words... where is that happening? In your head? In your body? Or in that spacious awareness that somehow contains both your head and your body? We spend our whole lives chasing shadows on the cave wall when the light source has been right here all along. Wild, right?

Anything Is Possible When You Stop Negotiating With Smallness

Imagine ~ truly imagine - what becomes available when you stop measuring your worth by who acknowledges you. When you stop auditing the ledger of who liked your post, who returned your call, who remembered your birthday, who recognized your gifts. Seriously. Think about all that mental energy you burn tracking social scorecards. All those quiet moments of calculating whether you matter based on external validation. It's exhausting, right? But here's the thing - when you drop that shit, when you really let go of needing others to confirm your value, something wild opens up. You start making decisions from your actual desires instead of from what might impress people. You create because you want to create, not because you're fishing for approval. Know what I mean? That constant background hum of "am I enough?" finally goes quiet, and you can hear what you actually think for once.

Not because those things don't matter. Not because human connection is trivial. But because the source of genuine connection, the ability to truly meet another person, to love without agenda, to receive without bracing ... that source is not located in the other person. It is located in the depth of your own surrender to what is eternally present in you. Think about that. Every time you're reaching for approval, hunting for the right words, trying to be more interesting or funnier or whatever ~ you're actually moving away from the very thing that creates real intimacy. The desperate need to be liked is like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom. You can pour all the charm and performance you want into it, but you'll never feel full. Know what I mean? The connection you're starving for is already here, sitting in the stillness underneath all that scrambling. But you have to stop running toward people long enough to find it.

When you make contact with that depth, something amazing becomes possible. You can meet another person not from neediness but from overflow. Not from the contracted, anxious question of will they like me? but from the spacious, generous reality of I already am love - what would I like to offer here? It's wild how different this feels in your body. The tight chest opens. Your breathing deepens. Instead of scanning their face for approval signals like some desperate radar system, you're actually present with them. You see them, not just what they might think of you. And here's the thing ~ when you stop trying to get love and start giving it, people feel that shift immediately. They lean in. They relax. Because finally, someone isn't trying to extract something from them.

The eternal muse ... that creative intelligence that poets have always known, that musicians describe as music playing itself through them, that mystics call grace - does not live in inspiration boards or morning routines or creative strategies. It lives at the intersection of stillness and openness. It lives exactly where Kriya takes you. Think about that. All these productivity gurus selling you systems and frameworks, when what you actually need is to get the hell out of your own way. The muse doesn't give a shit about your vision board or your 5am routine. It wants space. Emptiness. That weird place where you're alert but not grabbing, present but not performing. You know what I mean? It's like trying to catch a I remember a day in an ashram years ago when Amma’s embrace broke through a wall inside me I didn’t even know was there. It wasn’t some airy peace that followed. No. It was the jagged, raw grip of my nervous system releasing a lifetime of holding tight, of guarding wounds too old to name. My breath caught, my body shook, and for a long moment, I just let the depth of being known in my bones completely unspool. One of my clients once came in crushed by grief so deep it felt like drowning in a silent sea. We worked with breath and shaking, a deliberate invitation to the body to carry what the mind refused to face. Watching her nervous system unclench in those sessions taught me that humans are wired to heal when given the chance. Not with words or promises ... but through the honest mess of feeling what we refuse to numb. butterfly by chasing it around the yard versus sitting still and letting it land on your shoulder. Kriya creates that stillness, that receptive awareness where the real work can finally happen through you instead of from you.

Kriya and the Architecture of Surrender

Kriya yoga is not a performance. It is not a technique you do to impress your practice or signal your seriousness to anyone. It is a systematic technology for removing the static ~ the accumulated noise of unprocessed experience, habitual contraction, the sediment of years of pretending - so that what you actually are can be directly recognized. Think about that. Most spiritual practices become another form of self-improvement theater, another way to construct a better version of yourself. But kriya doesn't give a shit about your spiritual resume. It's not interested in making you more enlightened or peaceful or whatever the hell you think awakening looks like. It's designed to strip away the layers of conditioning that keep you performing even for yourself... the internal commentary, the constant adjustment, the subtle effort to be someone other than what's already here. When the static clears, what remains isn't an achievement. It's what was always present before you started trying to become anything at all.

When the breath moves through the spine with intention and devotion, something ancient wakes up. The prana doesn't just move through the physical channels. It moves through time. It clears things that happened before you had language for them - stuff from when you were three years old and the world felt massive and terrifying. Your body remembers everything, even when your mind has conveniently forgotten. It opens chambers in the consciousness that most people will spend entire lifetimes keeping firmly shut because the light in there feels like too much. Think about that. We're literally afraid of our own illumination. The breath doesn't give a shit about your carefully constructed personality or the story you tell yourself about who you are. It goes deeper than that bullshit. It finds the raw material underneath all your defenses and says, "Hey, remember this?" And suddenly you're crying for no reason you can explain to anyone.

It is too much for the small self. The small self has very good reasons for staying small ~ it was built for negotiating the world of eight billion people, for keeping score, for protecting itself from the particular humiliations that come with being seen and found wanting. Think about that. Your ego isn't some spiritual mistake you need to fix. It's a survival mechanism that learned early: play it safe, don't stick your neck out, because people will absolutely cut your head off if you give them the chance. The small self remembers every time you got laughed at in third grade, every job rejection, every romantic humiliation. It's doing its job. But here's the thing ~ that same protective mechanism that kept you alive in high school is now strangling the life out of what you could become. The small self doesn't want you to write that book or start that business or tell someone you love them, because what if they say no? What if you fail? What if everyone sees you're just pretending to know what you're doing? Seriously. The small self would rather you stay miserable and safe than risk being magnificent and rejected.

A weighted blanket can feel like a hug from the universe, especially on nights when the mind will not stop. *(paid link)* Look, I'm not talking about some magical cure here. But when your brain is running that same shitty conversation on repeat at 2 AM, when you're convinced everyone secretly thinks you're a fraud... that gentle pressure does something. It's like having someone hold you without the complexity of actual human contact. No need to explain why you're spiraling. The blanket just sits there, patient as hell, pressing down on all that restless energy until your nervous system finally gets the memo that it's safe to let go.

But Brahman doesn't negotiate. Brahman doesn't need protection. Brahman is prior to the wound, prior to the story, prior to the elaborate architecture of avoidance you spent years constructing. It was there before your mother didn't understand you. Before your father criticized everything you did. Before that teacher humiliated you in third grade and you decided the world wasn't safe. Brahman doesn't give a shit about your psychological furniture ~ all those carefully arranged defenses and compensations and ways of being that keep you feeling somewhat okay in a world that seems designed to hurt you. It's not moved by your strategies. It doesn't applaud your spiritual bypassing or your perfectly picked social media presence. Think about that. The thing you actually are has zero investment in the person you think you need to be.

Kriya is how you come home to that. Not once, dramatically, at a retreat. But again and again, morning after morning, breath after breath, in the unglamorous, sacred ordinariness of a committed practice. Look, I get it ~ retreats feel like spiritual steroids. You sit for ten days straight and think you've cracked some cosmic code. Then you get back to your apartment with the leaky faucet and the neighbor's dog barking at 6 AM, and suddenly that enlightenment feels about as real as a Netflix documentary. That's exactly why the daily grind matters more than the mountaintop moments. Kriya doesn't give a shit about your peak experiences. It cares about whether you show up when your back hurts, when you're pissed at your boss, when the last thing you want to do is sit still and breathe. That's where the real work happens. In the boring stuff.

And what happens when you do? The eternal muse shows up. Not as inspiration from outside. Here is the thing most people miss. But as recognition ... this has always been here. The creativity, the clarity, the love, the capacity to see another person clearly and hold them in the light of what they truly are ~ it was never missing. You were just looking for it in the wrong direction. Think about that. All those years chasing approval, hunting for the right words, the perfect moment, the ideal conditions. Bullshit. The well was always full. You were just digging in someone else's backyard, convinced your own ground was barren. But when you stop performing for an audience that doesn't give a damn anyway, when you quit trying to be liked by people who probably don't even like themselves ~ that's when you discover what was always yours. Wild, right? The muse isn't some external force you have to court or seduce. It's the part of you that remembers who you actually are.

The Extravagance of Being Born Human

There are other dimensions. Many of them. If you have sat in deep meditation, you have likely brushed the edges of at least a few - realms where the density of physical form loosens, where time moves differently, where beings exist in states of exquisite light and amazing subtlety. These are real. The mystics of every tradition have mapped them. The bardos. The lokas. The astral planes. The causal realms. Look, I don't give a damn if that sounds woo-woo to you. I've been there. Felt the shift when consciousness suddenly finds itself somewhere else entirely - somewhere that makes this heavy world feel like swimming in molasses. Time gets weird. Space gets fluid. And the beings you encounter? They're not fuzzy hallucinations born from too much incense. They operate on frequencies so refined that our meat-suit awareness can barely register them without years of training. Think about that. Every culture that ever bothered to go deep came back with similar maps of these spaces.

And they are beautiful. Genuinely beautiful. There are dimensions where suffering, as we know it here, is simply not a feature of the world. Where the friction of physical embodiment, the difficulty of navigating dense matter and resistant circumstance, where none of that is present. Existence in those realms is - by some measures ~ far more pleasant than this one. I've glimpsed these places in deep states, and honestly? They're fucking gorgeous. Everything flows. No struggle with gravity, no wrestling with stubborn reality that won't bend to your will. Think about that for a second ~ imagine never having to push against anything that pushes back. Never getting stuck in traffic, never dealing with a broken washing machine, never watching your body age or hurt or fail you. Pure consciousness dancing with pure consciousness, all light and ease and endless possibility. Are you with me? It's like living inside the most beautiful dream where everything works exactly as it should.

But here is what those realms do not have:

They do not have a body that aches and heals. They do not have the specific miracle of tasting something delicious, of skin against skin, of the sound of rain on a window at 4 in the morning when you cannot sleep and the world feels both enormous and intimate. They do not have grief - the kind that cracks you open and shows you how much love was inside the cracking. The kind that teaches you things about yourself you never wanted to learn but needed to know. Think about that. They do not have the particular beauty of a human being who has suffered and chosen not to be defined by it. They don't know what it's like to get back up after life knocks the wind out of you, to find your legs shaking but still holding your weight. They've never felt that quiet pride that comes from surviving your own breaking point and discovering you're tougher than you thought. That's yours alone.

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They do not have the chance to earn expansion through friction.

This dimension ... dense, difficult, overwhelming, occasionally devastating ... is a refinery. The pressure here is not a bug. It is the entire point. You don't get this kind of accelerated transformation in the lighter realms. You don't get the breakthrough that can only come after the breakdown. You don't get the specific, irreplaceable alchemy of a human life fully lived. Think about it ~ every spiritual tradition worth its salt acknowledges this. The mystics didn't achieve union by floating around in bliss bubbles. They got crushed first. Repeatedly. The coal doesn't become a diamond by being gently massaged. It gets buried under tons of rock and squeezed until its molecular structure surrenders to something harder, clearer, more brilliant. That's what's happening to you right now, whether you signed up for it or not. The friction isn't evidence you're doing it wrong. The friction IS the work.

Being born here, in this body, on this planet, in this astonishing and terrible and magnificent time ... this is not a punishment or an accident. This is the grand lottery. the premium experience. the dimension where Brahman, the infinite and formless, chose to know itself through eyes that can cry and hands that can build and hearts that can break completely open and then ... somehow, improbably, stubbornly ... keep loving anyway. Think about that. The universe literally created pain and joy, loneliness and connection, death and birth ... all so it could experience what it feels like to be confused, to wonder if anyone gives a shit, to lie awake at 3 AM questioning everything. And you? You're the cosmic experiment in progress. Not broken. Not behind. Just the universe learning what it's like to be human ... messy, scared, hopeful, and alive as hell.

The Intensity Is the Gift

The intensity of physical existence is not separate from its value. It is the value.

Other dimensions may offer peace more readily. But they do not offer transformation at this velocity. They do not offer the particular sweetness that follows genuine darkness ... not the performed sweetness of having avoided the dark, but the real sweetness, the kind that has been tested and verified and has held its ground. Think about that. The sweetness you get from sidestepping pain? That's cotton candy spirituality ~ dissolves the moment real pressure hits. But the sweetness that comes after you've been through hell and somehow didn't break? That shit has weight to it. It has substance. You can taste the difference between earned peace and borrowed peace, between wisdom that came cheap and wisdom that cost you everything you thought you knew about yourself.

When a human being works through their trauma, not around it - when someone comes to genuinely forgive what felt unforgivable, or finds the capacity to be present in their body after years of dissociation, or discovers that the grief they were most afraid of turns out to be endurable, survivable, and eventually a source of amazing compassion ... this is not ordinary. What we're looking at is cosmically rare. Most people will spend entire lifetimes avoiding the very thing that could liberate them. They'll medicate it, spiritualize it, rationalize it. Anything but face it. But when someone actually does the work? When they walk straight into the fire and come out the other side still breathing? That's not just personal healing - that's an act of service to the entire species. What we're looking at is the kind of evolution that reverberates beyond this dimension, beyond this lifetime, beyond this planet. Think about that. One person's willingness to feel what they don't want to feel changes the frequency of everything around them.

The intensity here is cleansing in a way that lighter realms cannot offer. Certain formations, certain karmic knots, certain deeply entrenched patterns of separation ... they can only be resolved through this kind of pressure. The forge of physical incarnation does work that simply cannot be replicated in subtler planes. Think about that. In the astral realms, you can float around in your preferred fantasy all damn day. But here? Here you get smacked in the face by reality every morning. Your boss is an asshole. Your body hurts. People disappoint you. And that's exactly the point ~ this friction is doing surgery on parts of your being that would never get touched in some blissful dimension where everything flows like honey. You chose this. The soul that animates you chose the weight of this, because it knew what the weight was capable of producing. It signed up for the full catastrophe, knowing that only through getting ground down by the millstone of ordinary human existence could certain ancient tangles finally get worked loose.

Submerged in Light

Which brings us back to you. Back to the eight billion people who don't know your name. Back to the social dynamics, the loneliness, the sense of being unseen, the exhausting performance of being a person in a world that often seems designed to remind you of your smallness. Think about that for a second. You wake up every morning and put on this whole show ~ checking your phone for validation, curating your image, measuring yourself against strangers on the internet who are also performing their own desperate little dances for attention. It's fucking exhausting. And here's the kicker: most of the time, nobody's even watching. They're too busy performing their own shows, worrying about their own audiences that also aren't really there. We're all just actors on empty stages, sweating under imaginary spotlights.

None of that has changed. But perhaps it looks different from here.

Because here is what is also true: you are walking around in a dimension that is saturated - absolutely saturated ... with divine cosmic energy. Brahman doesn't stop at the edges of the physical. The same ground of being that underlies the subtlest causal realms is the ground of this table, this chair, this body, this moment. The light is not somewhere else. The light is not available only to those with the most disciplined practice or the most impeccable lineage or the most elevated experiences. Look around right now. That crappy fluorescent bulb overhead? That's it shining. The worn carpet under your feet? Same stuff. Your neighbor's annoying dog barking at 3am? Pure consciousness expressing itself through canine irritation. I'm serious here ~ the sacred isn't hiding in some monastery or ashram waiting for you to get your shit together. It's right here in your messy kitchen, in your broken relationships, in your bank account stress. The divine is so ordinary it's almost insulting. Almost like the universe is laughing at us for looking everywhere except exactly where we already are.

Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now remains one of the most important spiritual books of our time. *(paid link)* Look, I know that sounds like spiritual marketing bullshit, but hear me out. This book cuts through decades of mystical fluff and gets to something real ~ the simple fact that your thoughts are beating the hell out of you every single day. Seriously. Think about it. Right now, as you're reading this, there's probably some mental soundtrack running commentary about your life, your problems, what you should be doing instead. Tolle doesn't dress it up in fancy robes or ancient Sanskrit. He just points at the obvious: you're not your thoughts, and the present moment is the only place where actual life happens. Most spiritual teachers want to give you more practices, more techniques, more shit to do. Tolle says the opposite ~ stop doing so damn much and just be here. Wild, right?

The light is here. Submerged in matter, yes ... but present. Pressing through. Available to direct perception when the layers of noise thin out enough for you to feel it. It's not some mystical bullshit either ~ it's as real as your heartbeat, as immediate as the breath moving through you right now. Think about that. The same intelligence that spins galaxies is operating in the cells of your body, in the electrical firing of your neurons, in the way your wounds heal without you having to think about it. Most people miss this completely because they're too busy arguing with their thoughts or chasing the next dopamine hit. But when you get quiet enough, even for a few seconds, you can sense it. This presence. This aliveness that doesn't depend on your mood or your circumstances or whether people like you.

Kriya is one door. Devotion is another. So is genuine kindness. So is grief that has been honored rather than buried. So is creative work done in service rather than in performance. So is the moment you stop asking whether anyone has noticed and simply give yourself fully to whatever is in front of you. That last one hits different though, doesn't it? I mean really ~ when was the last time you did something without that weird mental sidebar running about who's watching, who's judging, who gives a shit? Most of us are so busy performing our lives that we forget to actually live them. But there's this strange freedom that comes when you finally drop the act. When you water your plants not because it looks good on Instagram but because they're thirsty. When you help someone not because it builds your reputation but because they need help. Wild how the thing we're most afraid of ~ being unnoticed ~ turns out to be exactly what we need to find what we're actually looking for.

When you make that turn ~ from outward seeking to inward recognition ~ the eternal muse doesn't knock politely. It floods. The creative intelligence that underlies everything you have ever admired, everything that has ever moved you, everything that has made you feel, in some unmistakable and wordless way, that existence is worth it ... that intelligence recognizes itself in you. And it has been waiting. Seriously. Not waiting like some cosmic doorman checking your credentials. Waiting like recognition waits ~ patient, inevitable, already complete. You think you've been chasing inspiration all this time? Bullshit. Inspiration has been chasing you, wearing the mask of every song that stopped you cold, every painting that made you forget to breathe, every moment when the world cracked open just enough to let the light leak through. Know what I mean? That wasn't external beauty calling to you. That was your own creative essence recognizing itself in another form, saying "Remember this. Remember what you are."

The Ledger No One Is Keeping

Nobody likes you? Good. Maybe that's the pressure point that cracks the door open.

Because you were never here to be universally liked. This is where it gets interesting. You were never here to be tracked and measured and judged on metrics that shift with every cultural wind. You were here to participate in something so much more interesting than approval ... the direct, lived, irreplaceable experience of a human consciousness discovering its own depth, mining its own darkness for light, offering that light to the small number of people who were actually meant to receive it. Think about that. Your job isn't to be palatable to everyone ~ it's to be fucking authentic to the one consciousness you actually inhabit. The people who are supposed to get you? They'll find you through the static of all that noise. The ones who aren't meant to connect with your particular frequency will keep scrolling, and that's perfect. That's the system working exactly as designed. You're not a product to be optimized for mass consumption. You're a specific note in a vast symphony, meant to harmonize with certain other notes and create beautiful discord with others.

Eight billion people. None of them can keep track of all of it. None of them should have to. The work was never universal. The work was always particular, intimate, specific ~ one human heart turning toward its own source, and finding there not emptiness but the luminous, inexhaustible, world-generating presence that was never not there.

Brahman looking at Brahman. Light recognizing light.

That's what you are. That's what this is.

So what, nobody likes you? You contain the universe. Start there.