About

Who Are You?

A simple question without a simple answer.

Your mind is a private bubble – an invisible, fluid, arbitrary view of reality, built from childhood conditioning, reinforced by culture, running almost entirely on autopilot. This bubble is made of assumptions, beliefs, emotions, blind spots, and habits that shape your sense of self.

Self-Investigation is the practice of taking this bubble apart – of exposing the fabric of your mind to discover who you are (and who you are not).

Why This Matters

For you: The more you see your own bubble, the more you discover perspective beyond what you randomly inherited. You become less manipulable and more free.

For everyone: The more we understand ourselves, the better we can understand each other and cooperatively shape society.

Free Guide

Understand the gist of Self-Investigation in about 30 minutes: read a systematic guide. Written by our community. __________

Explore the Guide

Community

Join others exploring Self-Investigation and its relationship to society. This includes a discussion forum, book club, and zoom conversations.

Explore the Community

FAQ

Is this meditation? …psychology? …philosophy?

Yes – and also neuroscience, contemplative traditions, psychedelic research, group discussions, and more. Self-Investigation isn’t confined to one discipline. The question “Who am I?” has been explored through many lenses, and each reveals something useful.

Is this self-help?

This isn’t about fixing yourself or achieving a particular state. It’s about seeing clearly what’s already there – the invisible workings of your life. This applies to everyone. The investigation itself is the point.

Do I need to believe anything specific?

No. Self-Investigation questions all beliefs, including the ones about who you think you are. We explore many perspectives not as ultimate truths but as tools for investigation.

What inspires this?

“I asked my son Mark what he thought life was all about, and he said, ‘We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.’ I think that says it best.”
Kurt Vonnegut

Where do I start?

Begin with the Guide. It walks you through the basics in a way that’s experiential rather than theoretical. Ten minutes will give you a taste of what this is about.

Contributors

Jesse Starks
Jesse is an engineer, retired executive, runner, and bad chess player. He spent a couple decades building internet and financial systems, but his first love is exploring the mind, which evolved into this project. He believes the question “Who am I?”, when earnestly asked, is one of the most powerful experiences in the world. Anyone who looks will eventually realize the answer isn’t obvious, and be surprised what they find.

Josh Wagner
Josh is an undergraduate at Duke University studying neuroscience. He found the question “Who am I?” as a military kid, moving and adapting to new social environments. He has explored many means of answering this question, pulling from philosophy, spirituality, art, and the sciences. In his free time he enjoys fishing, writing, and basketball. If anyone would like to discuss their own journey with “Self-Investigation” or hobbies, he also loves to “chew the fat,” so please reach out!

Lance Stewart
Lance is an aspiring homesteader. He grew up in a strong religious setting, but as the years went by, he began to notice cracks and contradictions in this worldview. This ignited an extensive exploration of the mind, meditation, nonduality, history, science, and more. While he found a sort of resolution for himself, he remains endlessly curious about these topics and how they shape society.