The Buddha of course, taught people to desire less and to attain a kind of happiness by not engaging in the endless round of human ‘wants’, which are usually based on what others have, what others want to sell you and what others think you need. But he did go further in that he saw many of the natural desires of humans, to raise families for instance, were also chains. And yes they are but I wonder if he knew how some people take these chains on knowingly?
Hinduism also practices the denial of self as a way to attain a form of enlightenment about one’s true place in the Universe. I am not sure I go along with the whole eating one’s own defecation thing, but I understand the discipline involved in trying to lead a life of pure mind when that mind is trapped within a body. It is, after all, the generally accepted idea of spirituality that it is more noetic than corporeal.
Living a life of the imagination I do have a sense of what it means not to be the me everyone else sees and interacts with, but I think we all do that. Because all of us wear the persona we only take off for those we are most intimate with, and sometimes not even for them. But in a way that also reflects the Universe for that too has a persona.
It is not all trees and butterflies, but physics and chemistry. And so are we.