Am I Broken? – Part Two — Everything is Mental

In the deeper analysis of experience offered by the Buddhist Abhidhamma and other contemplative traditions, a striking truth emerges: everything we experience is mental. Even the material world, as we know it, is known only through mental representations — sights, sounds, sensations, and thoughts arising within consciousness.

Understanding this shifts the focus from the outer world to the processes of mind itself. The feelings of being “broken” are not independent facts; they are mental events — conditioned, impermanent, and impersonal. They arise according to causes and conditions and dissolve in the same way.

The mind constructs narratives of deficiency: “I am unworthy,” “I am failing,” “I am damaged.” Yet these narratives are themselves thoughts — patterns of mental energy, no more substantial than passing clouds. When we observe them with awareness, we see that they lack any inherent reality. They come and go. They are not the self.

This insight does not negate our suffering but transforms our relationship to it. We no longer identify so completely with painful states. Instead, we watch them arise and pass, recognising their transient nature. In doing so, we soften the compulsion to fix, judge, or despair over them.

The radical shift is not in repairing a broken self but in realising that what we thought was the self is simply an ever-shifting process of mental formations. There is nothing broken — only misunderstanding. With insight, even pain becomes workable, and peace becomes accessible within the very heart of difficulty.

“Mind is chief; mind is master.”
— The Dhammapada