I’m Mono, and this is the first blog post on Being with Mono (English version). Right now, I’m translating a book I originally wrote in Persian — and after each section is translated, I’ll share it here, either in full or in part. In this way, we can walk the path of this book together, one step at a time. And when the final version is ready, it will be published here too. What follows is a part of the introduction, titled:
“Mono — You Are Not the ‘I’.”
Mono, you are not “I.”
Until Age 18
I was born in June 1987, in the last alley of a small and remote town. Right across from our home was the town’s morgue and cemetery — a place that, strangely enough, later became our childhood playground.
My father was an English teacher. My mother was a homemaker. I have two brothers:
The middle one, three years older than me, moved to the U.S. years ago and now works in science and research.
The eldest, eight years older, still lives in our childhood home and spends most of his time on movies and sports.
Books and intellectual life had a special place in our home. My mother spent much of the money she received for herself on books. And from my father’s side, we inherited a fairly large family library. These created the soil where my love for reading began — even before I started school.
I remember the books in our house: The collected works of Hafez, Saadi, Attar, and Shams Tabrizi, volumes of religious texts, stories in Persian and English, Children’s science books, Jules Verne’s adventures, and writers like Sadegh Hedayat, Sadegh Chubak, and Samad Behrangi.
One book I bought in middle school — Eight Books by Sohrab Sepehri — became part of my life for years. I would read his poems, then try to explain them (in my own confused way) to my classmates during literature class.
We also had books on meditation, hypnosis, spirituality, and Eastern mysticism — mostly from my mother.
At twelve, I found a yoga book at home and tried to copy the poses from its pictures. Of course, what I did had nothing to do with actual yoga — but it wasn’t so bad either. Eventually, I could stand on my hands and do the scorpion pose. Back then I thought yoga was a path to becoming a fakir — a way to gain strange powers.
I began meditating around the same time — or at least, what I thought was meditation. (I recently found my daily schedule from age 15, and it said: 15 minutes meditation every day. I was shocked. I tried to remember what “meditation” meant to me in 2002… but I couldn’t recall.)
Around that age, I briefly studied out-of-body experiences under a teacher, but it didn’t lead to much.
Now, 25 years later, my understanding of yoga, meditation, and OBE has completely changed — But I still admire the curiosity of that 12-year-old version of me.
The first 18 years of my life were spent this way: Reading. Studying in elite public school for gifted students. Listening to music and playing instruments. Thinking. Watching films. Playing computer games. And sometimes… doing sports.
Education and Work
In 2005, I moved to Isfahan for university and started studying biomedical engineering. That same year, I watched The Secret — a film that, in hindsight, I see as delusional — but at the time, it captivated me completely.
I was full of ambition, with a restless mind and bold dreams.
In my first year, I launched my first business. It lasted two months and failed. That was my first experience of professional failure.
The years went by, but my desire to invent and experiment never faded. I was constantly chasing a way to become famous, popular, and wealthy. I wanted to influence others. I wanted to be impressive.
After graduation, I was accepted by Boston University in the U.S. because of a few inventions I’d created. But due to mandatory military service, I couldn’t go — and spent a long time in depression.
After getting my military exemption, I worked for two months calibrating patient monitors in a hospital. But that job didn’t suit me. I quit, and drifted into a series of short-term jobs; cashier at a pizza place, sales assistant and stockroom helper at a shoe store.
During this time, I kept dreaming. I launched more small startups — though I didn’t even know the word “startup” back then. All of them failed.
But I didn’t stop. From 2010 to 2019, I entered the startup world more seriously. I founded over 10 different ventures across various fields — often alone, with minimal capital. Most failed. But three of them succeeded — and reached impressive milestones. One of my ideas won “Most Innovative Global Educational Startup” from UNESCO. Another was named “Startup of the Year” in Iran. I was interviewed by media like The Guardian, Le Monde, and The Wall Street Journal. It gave me a strange feeling of global recognition.
I thought I had made it. I saw myself on top of the world.
Those ten years were full of extreme emotional swings — from deep depression to manic excitement.
Yet throughout this time, I never stopped reading, writing, thinking, meditating, and occasionally attending philosophy workshops. All of those habits had been part of me since childhood — and they quietly continued in the background.
But deep down, something had shifted. In 2019, I made a radical decision: I quit the startup world entirely. I bought a piano and told myself: “I want to pursue music.”
I had played setar since I was 12, and electric guitar since age 22. But I’d never pursued music professionally. So, I trained alone at home for a year. Then I went to Armenia and took the entrance exam for the Komitas State Conservatory of Music. I was accepted in the Contemporary Composition program. I was older than most students, and less musically experienced. But I managed. Two years later, due to the Russia-Ukraine war and the resulting inflation in Armenia, I had to return to Iran.
I spent the next two years living at my parents’ home. I took the IELTS and GRE exams. I got accepted for a Master’s in Entrepreneurship at the University of Florida. But the U.S. embassy refused my visa. So, I stayed.
Looking back, that’s the short version of my work and education path. Thirteen startups. Nine failed. Four succeeded to some degree. Today, I hold no shares in any of them. Fifteen years of building, failing, rebuilding — from scratch, over and over again.
The Fracture
As I mentioned earlier, I was introduced to self-awareness and inner exploration from a very young age — and I never stopped. Not even during my worst failures. Not even in the deepest depressions. I always knew something was missing. Something wasn’t right.
And at the same time, I had worked and studied hard for years — a path that had lifted me high and thrown me to the ground many times.
During one of those highs, when I felt like I had become “someone,” like I finally had an identity — something strange happened.
Back then, I was experiencing popularity, success, recognition, and money — all at once. Of course, not in a grand way, but enough to feel satisfied. On the surface, life seemed to be on track. I took smiling selfies and wrote deep, clever captions for them on social media. Many of those words I still believe in — and still practice — But at that time, I hadn’t truly lived them. So, they couldn’t calm the chaos inside me.
I had taken pleasure to its peak: foreign travel, hitchhiking, drinking, smoking, women, and more. My business was also doing well. We had secured investment for the second phase, the team was strong, and my days were full. And it was right there — in the middle of all that — that the “I[1]” who saw the world as revolving around himself… cracked.
There was no external event. But something in me opened. It felt as though years of reading, reflection, and self-observation were finally bearing fruit.
I stopped and asked myself:
“Is this it? Is this what real life is supposed to be?”
This fracture wasn’t some grand awakening or enlightened moment. All it did was let me see — just a little — how many weights I was carrying, and how many chains were wrapped around me.
At first, I felt fear. “How could I not have seen all this for so many years? And now that I see it, what should I do?”
Then came helplessness — the chains were much tighter than I had imagined. And months later, the fear turned into failure. I decided to close my eyes to it all — to the chains and burdens — and just go back to how life used to be. I tried. More than once. But I couldn’t forget. I couldn’t return. It was as if the way back no longer existed.
I thought for a long time. I struggled. I suffered. I read a lot. I reached out to teachers. I turned inward and watched myself again and again.And in the end, I came to a realization:
This path must be walked slowly and patiently — hand in hand with fear, pain, and the existential weight of being. I realized I had to enter the darkness I was drowning in. Not with force or resistance, but with discipline and perseverance. Step by step. To see each burden, each chain. To stay with it. To speak with it. And — eventually — to be free of it.
Throughout this path — since adolescence — I wrote down whatever came to me. Over time, I filled more than a thousand pages with handwritten notes. This book (and a second volume that is still being written) was born from those pages.
Together, through these two volumes, we’ll walk this path of unbinding — slowly and patiently, side by side.
There are a few other things that might help you better understand the person walking this path beside you:
- I’ve started many businesses and projects in my life. But every time I felt I was approaching success; I would somehow sabotage it. In one startup, just as things were going well, I subconsciously started looking for a way to pull myself out of the process. I’d dig around to find an excuse — any excuse — and then resign. Something inside me whispered: “Be careful not to get trapped in the illusion of success. Don’t get stuck in the marketplace. Don’t fall asleep in the trance of daily life. Don’t let the outer world control you. Don’t let the pursuit of ongoing success make you, its slave.” Perhaps a large part of my failures, resignations, and abandonments came from a fear of success — or rather, a fear of being chained by it. I was always chasing freedom. Freedom from society, from the world of buying and selling, from definitions and attachments — and most of all, freedom from myself.
- I’ve often felt alone — and I’m content with that. For a large part of my life, I haven’t had a deep, genuine desire to join society. I’ve spent years in voluntary solitude. At times, I wouldn’t leave the house for months — and I didn’t feel bad about it. I rarely imagined buying a house, or a car, or having a wife or children. Most of the time, I lived and thought like an outsider — a rebel. I didn’t want to live the kind of life society had defined for me. I wanted to define life for myself.
- One thing I’ve never needed to try hard for was the desire to know. It just happened. Even in my worst states — during the deepest depressions or the busiest periods — I always found time to read, learn, reflect, and observe myself. Reading and learning and awareness were the best therapy I could prescribe for myself. And most of the time, it worked. I’ve watched thousands of documentaries, read countless books, taken courses I knew I’d never use. But knowledge, awareness, and introspection — these have always been my form of play.
- For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt that something was missing. I knew I was in love, but the kind of love I felt was in conflict with the one society defined — and that put me in a strange fog. I remember being fifteen, sitting in a family gathering where everyone was talking about their goals and dreams. Someone said they wanted to be rich. Someone else said they wanted to become a lawyer. And so on. When it was my turn, I said: “My goal in life is love.” Everyone laughed and said I was too young. But the love I meant wasn’t what they imagined.
It was a kind of love I knew existed — but didn’t know what it was. Now, after 25 years, I’ve just discovered a definition for that love. Only a definition. A definition that cannot really be defined. A definition I haven’t yet turned into reality — not even one percent.
- I’ve always tried to put myself in difficult conditions — just to observe myself and my reactions. Maybe I spent months hitchhiking and backpacking for this very reason. It was a kind of self-imposed asceticism — for the purpose of knowing myself.
- There are dozens of other puzzle pieces, large and small, which over time — as I grew and eventually cracked open — slowly fell into place, and transformed the “I” into “Mono.” Mono is walking the path of self-awareness. And this book is the fruit of what has been gathered along the way.
1. Refers to “the image of self” I had built — not the true Self, but the identity I unconsciously constructed over time.