theleelajoker

@gettoefl yes that thought crossed my mind as well. Question is how to handle if their best is gas-lighting, double binds etc? What to do with narcissist, power-driven behavior? How to handle friends, family and partners that act like that? Yes, I can take the buddha approach, preach compassion etc. But reality is that I am not Buddha. Doing this is possible for me sometimes but not all the time. I see the patterns but my ability to stay calm is less strong than my understanding of what is going on. Eventually I do get triggered and if it gets too much I feel like distancing myself from these people

@Salvijus: Yeah, same same with everything - observe, act mindful and don't react. Gotta pick up my vipassana practice again @DefinitelyNotARobot: Well, this is taking it to another level : D I do believe in the cosmic game idea. They are certainly playing a role They are in a way definitely a mirror of me and my actions So you mean that I am actually deceiving myself constantly to be a human and my experience points me towards giving up this false belief? Or at least realizing and accepting it? This thought gives me actually a new completely new perspective, thanks for that What I take from it that it is actually just part of reality. Much more, self-deception is a necessary condition of it. So why resist what makes this game possible at all? Rather, integrate and welcome it. Or am I missing your point? What is left then is the social game aspect of it...thinking out loud: self-deception and lies are OK as long as it does not feel malicious towards me. If it does, it is best to observe and avoid ego response while at the same time take considerate action to distance myself from it

Wow, that is quite an analysis. Appreciate it. Unfortunately, I know that what you described is a realistic scenario. I once have been in a toxic relationship and this seems like a 2.0 version of it. I learned a lot since then and she is by far not as immature as my ex. She's in therapy, she actively works on her patterns and I know she does give an effort. At the same time, I see the limitations of change. It's like a growing plant - no matter how much water, sun and care you give it simply takes time and there is no way to accelerate things. In your experience / opinion - what is it that attracts her to me? I think it is more difficult for me to see as I am emotionally involved. I would guess she is looking for positivity/lightness that might be underrepresented in her, looking in me for stability and identification she cannot give herself. And speculating a bit more - maybe she is subconsciously looking for a relationship that will not work because it confirms her belief system ("I am not worthy of love") The last point would then be valid for me as well - only that I started to realize it a bit more than she does at this point of time...

@Roy yes I went through the "want her to catch up phase". I realized that this only creates expectations and pressure for both of us. Even when I did not say anything directly, I believe she subconsciously felt that I have such expectations. Big Lesson for me that it matters what you feel and not what you say. I dont want her to change as I did before yet if I accept her as she is now, the question of fit becomes stronger. I really do like the elastic analogy. For us right now it looks like a constant strech-relax cycle. Things seem fine for a while but I realize more and more that they are not. Every month or so there is a situation where conflict happens and the tensions discharge. Then I see what things she has been holding back in the phase before. But the core issues are not sufficiently resolved. And the cycle begins again...

When I read your reply, my first intuitive reaction was: You're probably right. About her and that SD is probably overcomplicating things here. The quotes below feels very on point. Being too tolerant is a) not good for me and b) more or less confirming her patterns and in the long run, not helping her. Coincidentally, I cut out a friend for this very reason just today. I was tolerant, and respectful, and non-judgemental for quite a while but there was a gut feeling that a limit was reached. This action actually led me to the question of what feels right for my relationship with my gf. Hurts to let go, though. As of right now, I think I will talk to her very openly about my concerns and what she feels and what she thinks is best. If she is really committed, then we can give it a certain period of time and then see how we feel. Sometimes it requires some effort to make the relationship work. I am willing to give it a bit more time to find out if this is "working things out" or "squaring the circle"...

Thanks for sharing Moksha. I can realte to the missodentification and the uniqueness of the journey, at least I believe I can do so to a certain degree. The one thing I wonder: The more I progress on my path, the more lonley i feel (especially lately). It seems that fewer and fewer people see what I (beleieve to) see, respectively fewer people can get at least an approximate idea of what is going on with them and the world around. To relate to your example, I could symbolically express it like this: It's like I watch the pigeon in the sky, and the people next to me look at me in a strange way, saying "what's wrong with you? It's just a bird". Or they even get insecure, being mad at themselves for not seeing the pigeon the same way. As if they can't stand the peace of others as it contradicts their own state if mind of "unhappyness" I know it makes no sense to tell them about the bird because same way as I did, we all have our journey and everbody learns on his own (or not). I know it's on me to accept the way things are and probaly there are others looking at me and wondering "how can he not see it?" It is just this very uncomfortable feeling that the more I learn, the less understood I feel. Fewer people I can talk to on the same "level" and more situations where I just stay silent knowing that noone around will be able to understand what I am saying. Am I creating a problem myself? Am I projecting my own thoughts and fears? Or is there maybe a price of personal development that needs to be paid in a strange form of loneliness? Thinking about it, probably this is one of the reasons why I joined this forum - a desire to be understood and to relate to others in some way. Any other ideas you have re this situations other than "accept and/or find the people you do relate to"?

I have a similiar feeling. The more I read in this forum, seeing all the discussions, all the arguments, all the back and forth about who is enlightened and to what degree and so on...I really wonder about the motivation and state of mind of many of these people writing these posts. There are however - and I definitely want to emphasize this - notable exceptions. IMO great people in this forum that refrain from bragging and postulating "I know, I am right, I am enlightend or I know what enlightenment is etc" and whose oppinions and intentions I very much appreciate. So much I already learned from them and (hopefully) will learn in the future. Back to the original topic: Regarding Solipism...I had mixed experiences. Not yet scared about it but definitely an "ego-rush" of taking myself too important. I believe I learned from it. Now, I do my best not to judge anything and although I definitely had my low points it works for me right now. As much as I can I go for "It is what it is, so why resist or even make myself crazy about it?"

When seeing it like that, it seems that many mysteries of life/science simply disappear. It is so interesting that this happens at boith the extreme macro and extreme micro level. Thanks for pointing that out. I really like how you put it with "edges of reality". Reminds me of a video game - try to walk to the edge and there is no game beyond that anymore. I do wonder about the conceptual thinking. It is always said "drop all concepts". I get the idea. But...how does this e.g. practically work for you if I may ask? How you manage to get there - meditating a lot? "just doing it"? And how dou you go through your life and everyday human stuff? For instance relationships (friends, family, partner). So you know "you" dont really exist, the others dont really exist, but here we are. And there is a reason why we are, otherwise we would not be at all. Even if we just exist for the sake of being". For me it is not clear how this works and I am curious to hear your oppinion on that.

It does help as far as it can help on my current stage of development. I did not experience a direct realization of who I am, no deep state of meditation, DMT or similar. As as far as this goes there is merely an intellectual "ok makes kind of sense and I can imagine"...or better, talking about the limitations of the mind, I understand that I really can not imagine What I do have is recently more and more often the feeling of - I don't know how to say that in any other way - living in two layers of reality. I notice that with less resistance and judgement, I see another perspective of reality. Still in this dimension, still everyday human stuff. But it becomes easier and easier to me to see the meta level of things. Why is this or that happening to me or my friends? What is the background- teaching, learning, growing, facing fears or simply playing etc - of this particular event or situation? I see synchronicites and get more of an idea of how current events are related with other events in my past. Don't know how to describe it better. A metaphor would be that I got new glasses for my eyes - things are still the same, but I believe to see them much more clearly.

It does help and I can relate. There is one thing a friend once said that I found true in many situations: "Wounds inflicted by others can only be (completely) healed by others, too". What I mean by this is that certain traumas may only be solved by interacting with people and (kind of) expressing them again. However, this time the "traumatic" experience is replaced by "healing" one. To give a personal example: My father is a narcissist and I obviously was never good enough. I developed the feeling of not being good enough and avoided and/or suppressed certain behaviors and personality parts of me. I worked on this but and all the meditation, self-work etc. on my own did not heal this (seeing this with many people). However, it gave me the strength to first gradually accept it and finally to show it towards someone else. And only when I found the part of me that I disliked was accepted when I expressed it and that I was loved equally nonetheless, then I truly felt the healing. I know this goes against the "it's all in our own power, nobody can give you love and acceptance but yourself" idea and I do agree with this, too. I do not find that contradictory but rather see it complementary. And in a way at least for me it shows that relationships are crucial and one of the most important things life has two offer to us are each other.

This reminds me of the Law of Opposites from Conversations with God. So "suffering" has to exist for us to take "enlightened" action, like the room has to be dark before light can come into it. There is this quote that I thought to understand a long time but did not fully experience to really understand. "Strictly speaking, there is no enlightened person but only enlightened action". The way I understand this: Let's say we do take an "enlightened action" in this very moment. Afterwards, the next situation will occur with again a choice and this duality of "right action" in the next moment (which is then oc now ). And as everything changes constantly this continues until the end of our life here (or infinity, IDK) - choices over choices, experience over experience. --> So there is not "state of enlightenment" to reach and all we ever can do is to focus on the now, to act now in the current moment to the best of our ability. BTW: Your replies help me a lot to clarify things in my head, thanks for keeping replying. It's very much appreciated.

Yes I believe I get where you are pointing at. Thinking this to the extreme: The whole thing about "awaken the world" and the bodhisattva idea of bringing enlightenment to all sentient beings is actually an illusion then? You can't have "no suffering" without suffering. Like a dog chasing its own tail - endlessly going in circles

Why do you think this is so? Sure, there is the idea cosmic hide and seek, the analogy the red button "god" created labeled "surprise me ", the idea of "experience for the sake of experience", like dancing for the sake of dancing (Alan Watts elaborates wonderfully on these ideas). It does make sense to me but even if I can't put a finger on it...it does not seem complete to me, either. And even if it all about experience - why is the structure of reality, the way of experience exactly the way it is? If it is just about experience, you could experience literally anything. Why this feasting on suffering? Why this strange "path" to wake up? Why is there Feeling, Thinking, Being and Awareness, etc.? The matrix movie makes me wonder sometimes - is there a secret dimension that is hard or impossible for us to access that is powered by suffering?

Wow, only a few words that to me hit the mark so well! Looking at some of my past behavior and certain behavior of others, I clearly recognize this. Especially the last one: To people without highly developed personality, it is actually super appealing! They can't see through the fog surrounding this dominant person and all her/his insecurities. I often see how girls are attracted to it and feel often very sorry for them. They mistake dominance for confidence and self-love. One can see what's coming miles ahead but they can't - they walk just right into it their doom...

@Moksha Thx for your words. Once certain things are realized I often think "how could I not see it before? How was it actually possible to miss this for such a long time?" I like the fish in the water asking "what water?" analogy fits so well! Will be good for me to keep in mind that realizing the water around me is not a one-time thing. Looking back how often I already had this feeling it seems to go on very often for a very long time or maybe even infinite.

After a few weeks (that feel like a lifetime) have passed I want to share some experiences and conclusions I made since my first post: I went to 3 day vipassana reatreat, this time with different mindset and the simple intention to relax and let go no matter what This meant e.g. I went against the instructions (be "perfectly equanimous" - which just created pressure if you are not "perfect") , some parts of the daily schedule, mediation instructions and other small things that did not "feel right" to me Findings (= My opinion, not saying these are fact. Happy to discuss) The vipassana technique is great, the teachings aren't. They are repressive, just as said before by @Breakingthewall The mind is nothing that needs to be controlled or worked against - it's just doing its job, even trying to help. As soon as I not only observed thoughts but welcomed them with a friendly curiosity, many things clicked. And at some point the mind was super calm without any effort. There was a crazy point where I was "empty" and there were no more thoughts to be thought. No pressure, no force, no effort - just everything that wanted to be thought by the mind was already expressed. The mind tries to help but can only project the future from past experiences. Sometimes this helps (fire was hot yesterday - fire hurt - better not touch fire today) and there was a time where thoughts/emotions/ behavior by the mind made 100% sense. It was adequate in the context of a certain point of time. But since things change all the times, we need to learn when to follow the suggestions of the mind and when not to. But not by fighting it - rather by treating the mind (i.e. one part of us --> ourselves) gently like we would treat our own child ("look, I know why you think that. I understand why. I appreciate your suggestion. But you see, things have changed because...") Following this, there is nothing about the mind that's need to be purified or even controlled - it just needs to be integrated A key information was the "inner family system" (e.g. different parts of our psyche / personality) that people wrote about here. No matter what, integrate it - it's yourself after all. This applies on psychological level, but also on the big picture: If we are all just parts of the "godhead" - I am bothered by another person's behavior, I am bothered by my "own" behavior. This person is simply the "external extension" of one of my own parts of my personality (see also the "mirror laws") Same goes with any pain. Someone else wrote in this forum "the pain signal is the healing signal" (can't remember who did) and it is so true Point no 7 applies to any emotional or physical pain. Just feeling it with curiosity, welcoming it makes it not only go away. It makes me free. (physical meaning in this context pain e.g. from meditation sitting, not pain like "I just broke my leg in a car accident") As I changed, and stopped trying to change others, they started to change. I almost could not believe my eyes and ears but clearly could see it in other peoples behavior. Tat tvam asi -you are it. Always. In every daily interaction, thoughts, struggle, conflict. It is all there because "I" want it to happen. So why fight it? Having this thought in mind helps me tremendously to avoid suffering (oc, I still have pain etc - but right now I don't suffer over suffering as much as I did). Learning and applying the points above as best as I can I feel as "good" (meaning balanced, calm, equanimous) as I have never before. Happy to hear opinions on this!

Thx for writing this. I started reading about IFS and all I am thinking is .."oh" It's just like you said - meditation helps to see parts. I also feel the blockages, chakras etc - when reading through your post, it all connects for me . Thanks. Don't ever judge any of those parts - that's at least what I learned for me. Never ever do it, even those parts that feel like they distract you from IFS. I do my best to always welcome it with curiosity. That's the big revelation from my last meditation retreat.

Nice words. Especially the quote above is something I am just starting to grasp through experience.

I often wondered what is actually my "intuition" and what are thoughts that I might mistake for intuition (or vice versa). I can't say in your case, but what helps me is that thoughts easily change over time while my intuition ("gut feeling") usually stays. To find out keep in touch with what you ponder about. I am optimistic that sooner or later you will know.

Thank you Moskha, again your words do resonate with me. A lot of points you make that seem just right for me in this moment. I feel that some things in my mental structure and approach to life are shifting through the recent experiences and the conversation here. I also feel that if I am not careful, conscious and determined then I might fall back to the old pattern. Just like you described in the litmus test about re-attaching. And I also have the feeling that here all the dots connect: meditation to recognize if and what kind of expectations I build up with my conscious or unconscious mind / thoughts, "the absolute will" that Breakingthewall talked about to get free of the trap while not repressing or judging anything and finally the total game of transient trophies, false promises and false happiness outside of myself. I look forward to this challenge: "using" my mind and my intellect to still do the things in life that I feel like doing (professional goals, family, etc.) but at the same time not building or clinging to any expectation. I like "do not demand the impossible of it" because that is what I (subconsciously) did all the time. And it is so damn funny because it is so simple, so obvious, you can read it everywhere and I even talk about it myself. But I really needed the suffering, the desperation of the last weeks to feel and integrate this truth a bit deeper. Finally I would like to share that I did feel a bit of the light yesterday, walking in the park. Being free of expectation as much as I could all the heaviness of the last weeks was gone, disappeared into nothing. Instead there was a lightness in both my steps and in my mind. I was just happy and content with what is. Did not even want to do anything, just being. When I woke up today, I felt a bit more heaviness again. But I did not judge or loose my calm - instead I am thinking: "And so the game begins again" This time, however, I feel much better prepared to play. @axiom@Breakingthewall@Moksha you all contributed towards this feeling - thank you.

In this moment, I wonder why you think she would do this. Are there signs she might do that? Or are you "seeing" signs that might not be there? (fears / or self sabotage might come into play. Too little information for me to form an opinion on that just putting out the possibility) Is she would do this - forcing choices with an ultimatum is imo not a good idea. If she likes you, she likes you the way you are. Including your "quest for awakening". If she wants you to change I would wonder: Does she like an "expected" version of you that exists in her head only?

In my experience two things are crucial: Trust and Listening. Trust your intuition, not your thoughts. Trust her if your intuition tells you to. Listening is - imo - another absolute superpower in relationships. Listen with the intent to understand what she really wants to express. If you are not sure if you do understand, don't make assumptions (thoughts can be a trap here) but ask respectful questions. Do the same not only for her, but for yourself.

Thank you for the poem. And the suffering & purpose - yes, I understand this more and more on a experiential level. Intellectually I "knew" that but can't really "know" without really experiencing it (I like the term Gnosis for that) I just (re-)discovered this: Few days ago I had a big fight with my girlfriend and was super scared to the idea of breaking up, loosing all we build, the idea of a family etc. I was so attached to this but at some point I was able let go of and said "OK, then it's not meant to be". Crying a lot in this process of burning away these attachments and fears. And also showing these emotions in front of others (showing vulnerability is/was another fear of mine). To my own surprise, I realized letting me feel this pain and expressing it helped me a lot. I was calm and (mostly) in peace with things next time we talked. When I basically had given up the hope to make this work, at some point we both were just able to let go. Almost as if we pressed a magical button labeled "let go". I was able to talk with her openly, including my fears. We made up and I feel the connection stronger than ever before. And although I can't say or know for sure, I have the strong feeling that she had a very similar, a basically mirrored process as I did. Only in a more intuitive (female?) way instead of the logical, rational way I am approaching this (e.g. like discussing things like "suffering", "mind" and "reality" with people like you in this forum )

What you are saying does resonate. I still see value in the Vipassana approach, but there was some imbalance in my way of interpreting and doing it. I believe I got too deep into the "calm your mind" attitude (repression) and too little into the expression of what I am thinking / feeling. The consequence was trying to do something with force, just as you said. And the result was repression and the result of that was feeling shitty, to be blunt. I very often had the feeling of experiencing life as a game. Can you please elaborate a bit more about what you wrote here "you have to unravel its secret, it's like a game." For instance, how you go about playing this game? Triptamine is not an option right now. I do psychedelics but currently its more about integration of my previous experience (mushrooms) before going on another trip. On a side note: The "trap" you talk about reminds me of the Samadhi documentaries. IMO absolutely worth watching. This feels so true right now. I tried to avoid suffering - or what I called "unnecessary suffering". In my mind, there was a logic of some suffering that is necessary to learn and some suffering that I can simply avoid. I thought "hey just do the right things (meditation, sports, be present as much as possible, active social life etc) then I can eliminate "unnecessary suffering" and only necessary suffering remains. I see now that there seems to be a flaw in this logic. 1) How do I know which one is necessary, which is not? 2) Whatever it maybe, I resist suffering. I resist what is. Which does not sound like a good plan at all

I just processing your replies. Thanks for that. I think something is starting to click. 1. Things happen (or seem to); 2. The self (which is entirely illusory) then tries to claim the apparent happening as its own. It believes it either brought it about, or that it somehow owns it. Of course, this is completely untrue because the self does not actually exist I understand "claim the happening" as I am building up a story how it happens, the causalities, what I did etc. ? Is that what people talk about in "do nothing" meditation? I think I am starting to get what you say. I often had the feeling, that I bring myself to this point of anxiety etc just that my suffering becomes so strong, that I have no choice but to let go. I had this experience once during my vipassana retreat. This makes so much sense. What I do not understand is your point about will. I thought "will" = mental activity and thus effort and creating disbalance. Like the analogy with waves in a pond. All of you - thanks a lot for your comments. I already feel much calmer. Facing some of my biggest fears helped. Just feeling things instead of being afraid to feel. And then it is not as bad I thought it would be