I have a similar background and experience, but am probably a lot older. Eventually that emptiness led me to vipassana meditation and a realization that my mind

I have a similar background and experience, but am probably a lot older. Eventually that emptiness led me to vipassana meditation and a realization that my mind is composed of the thinking striving mind and my sensate mind, but both are subservient to my awareness. My striving was driven by my thinking mind at the expense of my sensate mind. It also controlled my awareness. Vipassana meditation, over the course of a two years of daily practice, taught me how to assert the primacy of my awareness - which has no voice like my striving mind, or feelings like my sensate mind. This awareness mind I learned is the true mind, it’s where thought actually happens but the thought isn’t visceral like my other two subsystems. In drinking and substances and food I fed the senate mind, and striving at work and career I fed my thinking mind, and was unaware of my true underlying self that lurks in the awareness. Meditation helped me isolate these components of my mind and assert awareness over striving and sensing. My mind still thinks and strives and I still feel, but they are background processes and in general I am quietly myself now. My anxiety is gone, I know what I like to do, and I am not unhappy when I’m not doing what I like to do - I’m just aware of it, and acknowledge my thoughts and striving. I am probably more ambitious now than before, but it’s very narrowly focused on what I want to do and I know why now. I’m also painfully aware that I’m a baby in this experience and am not very skilled. Now I really truly understand why Buddhism is as influential as it is. But if what I said is right, and an awful lot of folks believe it is over many thousands of years, the emptiness you feel is because you’re simply not letting yourself be yourself, but are confusing the imperatives of your thinking mind with you - which makes you feel because it’s not you. While I said simply, it’s not simple to experience especially if you’ve been driven by ambition and anxiety for a long time like I was. If you want a price of what I’ve got I suggest starting here: https://www.audiodharma.org/series/introduction https://www.audiodharma.org/series/introduction Or if you prefer YouTube: https://youtu.be/TALTfUxelAc https://youtu.be/TALTfUxelAc The master here is a guy named Gil. He’s very interesting and his style appeals to western style engineers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Fronsdal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Fronsdal Good luck. The path your on can be extraordinarily painful.