Although they did not own much, they were far kinder, more humble, and more appreciative of each breath, every sunset and ful moon they were granted. They were mentally and emotionally resilient and far less stressed and anxious as my generation is today.

With the arrival of modernization, many of those hard-earned moral values started to diminish in my people. The more the city exploded into modernization, the further away from my ancestors’ values and principles I seemed to feel.

It was this contradiction that acted—without me knowing—as the grain of sand that got lodged into my consciousness. No matter how “better” things got in my life, this irritation would not go away. I had no words to describe it, but I could feel it at every moment. Something inside me was growing slowly but surely, and this something was not heading in the same direction as the rest of the people I knew and the city I lived in.

By the time I turned 25, with a secure, well-paid job and a bright, lucrative future, the irritation was so strong that I decided to detach from the “Operating System” I was brought up in. I resigned, much to the surprise of my employers, and began a journey that I did not know where it would end but knew, certainly, it was better for me than where I was.

Everyone has their own way of finding the path; some are pulled toward it, while others are pushed onto it. For me, the path of self-enlightenment was a simple matter of rejection and refusal. I rejected the fact that waking up at 6:30 a.m. and going to work with toxic people, doing something I was not in love with until 6 p.m., was good for my mental, physical, and emotional well-being. I refused to accept that this was how it should be, that this is how it is and always will be, and that I was lucky enough to have it and should simply carry on like the camel caravans do—stopping where the leader says and moving when they decide.

As time went on, I got the time, space, and energy to search, read, listen, and feel the essence of myself. Through that process, I came to understand what was going on. I found out that the path I took was ancient, and people like me from all over the world, from various cultures, have been doing what I am doing for just as long.

The path was, and is, anything but smooth. There were—and still are—nights that have me wishing I had never left my secure job. But I knew that option was no longer available. I had grown too different to join the pack again. There was no going back, even if I wanted to. These nights are referred to by some as “The Dark Night of the Soul.” They are a necessary part we must all go through to get to a better place. They are the most intense squeeze before the final widening.

Thankfully, grace pulled me through to the other side. It is from that other side that I write to you these words. My path is not finished. I will face many more dark nights to come, but I am now far better able to handle them. I am not the anchorless, captainless, crewless boat being tossed from side to side like before. I am awake, and I have no intention of sleeping again.

Being awake in a city like Dubai requires very strong levels of presence. There are literally hundreds of distractions, fueled and funded by the world’s greatest machines, competing to hijack your attention in order to place it somewhere that serves their needs at the expense of your needs—for yourself.

Experiencing awakened presence in the mountains of the Himalayas is not as difficult as finding it in the casino halls of Las Vegas. In that way, Dubai is the Mecca of enlightenment opportunity.