Gianna

What is your relationship with Disappointment? Did you have any major disappointments around the time you started to get more apathetic? Your apathy might be a subconscious strategy to avoid disappointment, “If I never care, I can never be disappointed.” Also, although apathy can come with a lot of numbness (which may be the same as what you’re calling emotional flatness) we can recognize that numbness and apathy are still emotions in and of themself. So if you feel the apathy as an emotion more and more— deeply and more deeply— you can explore around the feeling to feel more and trigger yourself to invite more feeling. This will help especially if your body is using the apathy to protect yourself against feeling (like disappointment) because it is signaling to it that it is okay/invited.

Realizing that it was an unconscious strategy to stay safe socially.

What does your mind think it’s getting out of the paranoia? Does it think that it can prevent whatever worst scenario it is imagining and then does it start to plan around it? Or does it believe that it is helpless to the scenario and just panics? It sounds like the latter by reading your description. But I’ve asked myself these questions relative to my issue with paranoia to help myself distinguish between what is worrying, anxiety, and straight paranoia. It’s good to gain awareness over what the mind is actually doing and what it is trying to get so we can provide ourself (our mind) with that thing in a way other than paranoia— so we can take proactive action for ourself. This is the self-loving thing we can do, “without love there is only pain.” Essentially our mind is agitating itself unconsciously and needs both our awareness and love desperately. What it probably is/what your mind probably needs is safety and security. How can you give your mind a sense of security? We as paranoids do not know how to provide a sense of safety and security to ourselves. Which means we were never taught it. So we have to figure out how to nurture our mind. How can you make your mind feel safe? This is an essential need of the mind and without it this is what happens. Some things that helped me: 1. My mind is agitated and is stuck in a cycle of agitating itself via paranoia. So when it is really severe it helps to feed it convincing thoughts of the opposite scenario of the paranoia— thoughts that actually convince me and that I can actually believe in, not thoughts that my mind think are bullshit. 2. Realizing that the pain that comes with caring about what people think reflects the degree to which we value Connection. It could also reflect the degree to which we need connection. Reframing in this way helps to stop self-hating on caring about what people think and to consciously recognize the motivation behind it (this helps it feel more like a choice than a tendency). 3. I would catch your ‘inner critic’ in the moment that it is criticizing you to get awareness and healing around it. Your inner critic is probably feeding the paranoia as well. Hope this helps <3

@Loba Oh that’s great ☺️

Ask whatever you are genuinely curious about or dying to know My go to is always asking why. Why are we here? Why are there others? Today I asked, why do we need self-reflection? My brother likes asking how. How is this happening? But I would start with your genuine desire to know whatever you want to know.

I suggest you start by following what resonates with you. This can be your compass for what direction to go in. I would also suggest you let go of any attachment to logical reasoning and expectations. You may have a confusing path for a more complex journeying through your life. If you want to know a lot of thing you do a lot of things. Are your addictions coming from an avoidance of pain or boredom? People want kicks of stimulus (and have addiction in general) in their life when they are emotionally detach (which would lead to a lack of direction) or when they have been neglected or abuse. If you sit with your discomfort and understand where it’s coming from you can know where to go. Meeting your needs will be the new form of direction, while still following what resonates.

Omgggg?

No it doesn’t always mean this and you can desire for reasons other than emptiness, excessive craving, etc. Ultimately, we are what we desire. So we desire to know what we are, to know what we can become. When we start to desire something we are in the process of becoming it (actualizing it) so we can know ourself; so we can know what we can become and thus what we can feel, create, and experience as ourself. So as soon as we experience what we desire we are amended and understanding arises— self-awareness is born. So you can see the purpose of this desire here does not innately come from emptiness or neediness but for a pure desire of self-knowing and self-awareness. I haven’t read a new earth but I think what Tolle is talking about is desire that comes from aversion (I want this thing to get away from something else). But if your question is, Can there be desiring that does not come from aversion but merely for the sake of the desire? The answer is yes and an example is the one above (desire of self-awareness). Another example is, do you want to be rich to get away from poverty? Or simply to understand the experience of what it’s like to be rich? Do you want to be skinny to get away from fatness? Or to feel the freedom and love of self confidence? The first comes from pain and the second comes from a more purified form of desire. You could say, as you put, a desire of the soul. As human, we are designed with sense of dissatisfaction so that we act and evolve. However, it is possible to not be dissatisfied with the dissatisfaction when we heal our relationship with desire itself (by means of not creating it out of aversion and eradicating all beliefs/thoughts that we can’t get everything we desire, because we can— we are the desire itself.) Why would we not be able to attain ourself? Once we realize this we will have an exalted form of desire that does not have to come through needing, wanting, and aversion but just for the sake of it. Like eating strawberry ice cream just for the sake of trying it.

Happy birthday!?

This quote brought me to tears. Oh, I relate to it so deeply. It's devastating to want connection and love more than anything in the world but to realize you're not capable of it. I had this realization and it's crushing but oddly brought me relief, in a way. But– like you– I realized how loving it was for the people who actually gave me space during this time (my whole life, haha) but were still there for me– loving me from afar– when I needed it (and not holding it against me). One time– and here's me making it about me now hehe– I realized this when I was driving to Santa Barbara to spend the 4th of July with my girlfriends. They invited me there so I wouldn't have to spend the holiday alone. I thought it was a good idea and went. But on the drive up I got into a deep state of self-reflection and the Truth of my interpersonal experiences was revealed to me. I saw just how badly I abandoned these people. I saw how they had always tried to be a friend to me, to connect with me, tried to get me out to connect with them and others; but I was so avoidant and just couldn't. I wasn't capable of relationships (even friends). Like your quote, I had to be my myself in order to come to terms with all the turmoil inside of me. I was crying the rest of the drive at just how badly I treated these people, how bad of a friend I had been, and how great they had been to me by giving me such space but still being there for me, offering me things, including me, and just loving me despite it. I then got into a deeper state where I realized that I actually created these people for me because I knew I needed them; these particular people. It was mindblowing. I was so deeply conscious of God (as Myself) giving me/creating these friends for me because I needed them. Just the most mature, loving, emotionally stable people– the perfect people for me in this life where I struggle deeply with relationships. You could say I realized the Absolute Perfection of God's Creation in this moment. When I saw this intended creation from God for me, I just balled even more. The amount of uncondition love/giving there. It was remarkable. I'm so happy I was reminded of this by your thread. Your writing here is incredibly beautiful, touching, and heart-opening. Sending you all of my love, dear.?

You relate to the omniscience by recognizing that you are the one doing it. ?

@RickyFitts Bookmarked! hehe. Such a great response Ricky. Thank you for sharing.?

I would try to figure out what you’re needing specifically and go for that. Often times if our need-meeting is general, we may think we’re getting a need met but we’re really not. For instance, I bet your real need is an emotional need (and you think it’s physical affection so you think you are meeting it). When really what you need is something deeper (an emotional experience) that these girls and you are not meeting because you’re playing in the dark (playing subconsciously). Once you find out what it is specifically, you can go for that directly (I.e bring it into the light/meet it consciously). It may take some time for our need to be satiated. You have to be okay with that; self-loving toward that. If you are not— and you are instead saying, “I shouldn’t keep having this need”— then it is that very mentality that is keeping you stuck.

Curiosity is always a good tool for exploring things– even things to say. Think about what intrigues you about the person and ask them about it. But I feel like anything that is personal, direct, and/or private in a flirty tone would work fine for starting a conversation with a guy heheh. Guys are easy and simple. And at that point, they are usually good at taking over/taking the lead. As far as maintaining intimacy in conversation, I usually just stick around talking about my desires for that person. It's going to take a certain level of vulnerability to be intimate with someone. What is your relationship like with being vulnerable toward men? Also, keep in mind that the guy (because of the flow of masculine energy) should want to take the lead so that you are not having too much pressure. I see you as a feminine girl; and if so, you are going to need a masculine guy. ?

Do it the moment you feel to do it. ? It's best to be out of the mind and into the moment when you are offering a connection to someone.

Make it! Why not. I think it's extremely important to share values with your partner.

Awe.

I would say that you would have to create healing/rewiring on a mental and emotional level. There are deep beliefs in people who think (and thus behave) as if they are fundamentally flawed and/or can’t get something (girls). And those beliefs are tied to/formulated from emotional experiences they’ve had. I don’t know what those— beliefs and emotions— would be (it’s probably individual). But maybe they would amount to something like learned helplessness. The symptoms of it (low self-esteem, frustration, futility, low-effort) seem to fit. ? If so, you would have to heal/rewire the mind-body around those initial aversive stimuli that created the condition (learned helpless) and release the burden (the beliefs from the emotion).

I attract situations of being laughed at. It’s the most devastating feeling to look at. There’s deep shame interwoven in this experience. We have to look at this feeling in the face and experience the entirety of it as thoroughly as we can— deeply in our body, heart, and memories. We have to open up to being laughed at entirely, existentially. It’s extremely difficult. To get there, bring up the intensity of the experience by feeling it more and more until you are experiencing a helpless-state of it— until you are OF this experience (ONE with it). In this Union, recognize Truth (the Present Moment) and bring your body (which is probably fleeing in dissociation, vibration, a flooding of the face) into the awareness of the safety of the Now. When you integrate the energy with/into the Now it will integrate with/into infinity, nothingness. You’ll most likely not attract such situations anymore because you have let them go. At the very least, you will not feel any sort of way toward them if they do happen— because you released it/purified your encompassing of it.

@AndylizedAAY You’re not really cutting yourself short on spirituality necessarily but you are cutting yourself out on a primal emotional integration, which leads to wholeness, which leads to spirituality. So in that sense yes but awakening can happen at any moment to any person because it is always self-evidently and eternally True right Now. ?

Of course you should not abandon your cheerfulness. And you do not have to suppress it you can just integrate it’s polar aspect— indifference. If you take on the energy of the aspect of you that is indifferent it will bring you ease and it will strengthen your state of cheerfulness as well. This brought me relief as a cheerful person (even though I didn’t know I needed it). And although I’ve always had a central state of indifference within me, I do not see it as a contradiction to my cheerfulness— indifference is indifferent toward cheerfulness!! ? Anyway that’s my input. Idk about the dating thing. I’ve never dated a cheerful guy. (Bc I’m usually the cheerful one!!) hehehe. Kinda sad. I’m sure it’s great to have!

If your intuition is guiding you toward Teal Swan that is definitely accurate because she is amazing when it comes to understanding loneliness. You should get her book on audible— Anatomy of Loneliness. Or, you can read it. Regardless, I agree with you that social media and YouTube are cheap forms of connection. But they are also a good stepping stone for people who really struggle with loneliness. The offline vs online debate is tricky. There are scholarly articles in sociology journals about how a bigger presence online does not necessarily equate to a more extroverted or ‘important’ person offline. Because, often times, there are large amounts of ‘overcompensation’ going on in the people who are not socially superior offline (so they compensate by building their presence online). Thoughts and reality are one. So Instagram not loading properly for you is a hologram of yourself (your thoughts and emotions around connection). In other words, your internal reality around connection is being reflected/mirrored in the external reality of ‘Instagram’. But just because reality is reflecting and mirroring your thoughts (because they are one) does not mean they are reinforcing them, they are merely reinforcing you. That is just to say that once you change yourself, your ‘reality’ (the mirror/hologram of yourself) will change.

To purify the mind is to integrate each aspect of it with Truth. So yeah, I could see the Power of Now working (because Now=Truth). I think it would be a good practice for suicidality. However, usually suicidality is about not seeing a way out/feeling helpless. So what specifically do you feel helpless about? What is defeating you? Once you find that then find thoughts/evidence/truths that contradict those ideas, thoughts, beliefs. I agree with @RickyFitts, separating out your thoughts and emotions to identify them and work with them separately is a good idea (to stop the cyclical pattern because they trigger one another).

True. ?

Oh my gosh, I love this question!! I think the biggest responsibility in life is your relationships/your connection with other things. My biggest responsibility personally is healing interpersonally but also it is myself (because I have a hard time maintaining boundaries/definition with other forms). And abandoning the self is abandoning God! So I would say (1) Your Self and (2) Your relationship/connection to ALL things (plants, animals, people, objects, technology, etc.).