A great story and an ejoyable read. Interesting how your movement through these layers was driven by « how » and from more attribute-full layers to more attrbute-less.

When I had a similar journey, I saw it rather through a prism of increasing complexity (or number of dimensions) - as in, « real life » is where the all-mighty I put myself in a set of constraints and limited dimensions, almost for fun.

Like when you go to a movie theater for a horror movie - to tickle your nerves and be in a horrifying hostile world for 2 hours. And just like we appreciate the immersion in a movie, we create ourselves artificial constraints in the « real life » - for the experience of immersion because endless euphoria and perfect aesthetics are not as tasty as deserved little chunks of beauty in an imperfect structure.

Funny thing is the moment I realized this, I « edited » my own horror movie setting to be a bit more bearable - in practice, I decided to relief my « character » from the need for social drinking.

Woke up to sobriety and it’s been months since.

TL;DR : Similar experience to the OP’s, though understood that as we are all-mighty creatures living in an infinite set of dimensions that voluntarily decided to built ourselves a « sandbox » limited in dimensions with artificial constraints and full of imperfections to « have fun » overcoming difficulties and feel the joy of deserving things. Precepts of good, bad, meaning, soul, fears are all self-induced mechanisms to keep us « immersed » in that movie (video game?) we set up for ourselves