Kath

Thank you so much Ayla

I don't think you have anything to apologise for @governor If you can't be honest and open on here, where can you be?

Thank you so much for your replies. It's good to hear I'm probably not insane! Wrt what I'm doing, I'm just meditating alot and reading alot, watching youtube videos, trying to 'get it' I suppose. Thinking about it all alot, or meditating . . . . . . . .. I do know I need to get moving. But I've got into a head place I suppose where I think 'what is happening is meant to be happening and if I don;t feel motivated that's because that's what's happening/ But perhaps that's just a bog standard pure and simple excuse for general laziness??

I'm worried that this might not be healthy for me. After a few months of the most amazing spiritual journey, I find I actually really can't seem to function atall at the moment. On any level. I want to just give up - but can't. How can you go back to blissful pain, when you've opened pandora's box. But equally, I'm getting nowhere with my journey at the moment. I'm completely stuck. I'm frightened - is this normal and OK, or have I messed my head up so much that I'm just a vegetable now. That's how I feel. I can't think properly about anything, but when I meditate all that happens is my head actually hurts with it all. There's no peace - all I do is wake up and either sit reading, or meditate, or eat, or sleep. It's not good. But there isn't a way out. I've tried to 'do nothing' but nothing is always something. Please help me - at least let me know if any of you have experienced this. Please someone tell me I'm going to be OK - or rather, please tell me 'I' will eventually give up the fight and all will be well. I know that all things change, and I know in a moment or tomorrow or whenever I'll have some peace again, but I'm so frightened that all this is a wild goose chase, that I have it all wrong,. and all I've done is added more pain and suffering into my life . . . . . . . . . I get it all on a rational level, non-duality resonates so deeply within me that I know the truth of it all. But that's just on a rational level. It hasn't got to m y heart yet - there's still an 'I' there who's absolutely refusing to get gone! I know there's an element of 'I' can do nothing - but where's the peace to be found . . . . . . .I'm so tired. I find it so so hard to just be in the moment when it feels like that's taking too much energy and I should be focussing on not doing so much doing. Aaaarrrrgggghhhh! What a conundrum. But it's making me so physically exhausted. I'm putting wieght on due to inactivity but can't seem to be able to motivate myself atall to do anything . . . . . . . . .Please help

hmmm . . . . now you might need drugs for that!!

It's a hard one - my husband suffers from depression too, and, prior to his illness, was the most open minded and spiritual people I know. All I can say in your sister's defence is that depression is really insidious. It can make the sufferer feel so useless and worthless that, in the end, all they have is their depression - they get very protective of it in a way. It's an extremely tough one - and one that if you find a solution to, please share!! I would do anything in the world to be of support to my husband . . . Having said that, I've suffered myself from depression and anorexia resulting from ptsd so know that the time has to be right for spiritual seeking. I certainly didn't come across it then and tbh, not sure I'd have been able to be open to it either. I suppose if it can be of help in any way, it can be of help to you - it's certainly helped me to be less judgemental, more open, more able to sit with him in his dark moments without feeling the need to fix him. All good stuff xxxxxx I feel for your situation with your sister. It's not easy. I play Youtube videos in his presence so he may 'overhear' and something may resonate, and I've left books lying around . . . . .

I can't offer you any help atall Diz, but I can empathise. I first read your post, then you edited it to a more positive note - where I'm still with you in your 'lost or losing my mind' theme!! I need help too - but also know the stupidity of that entire statement. There are no sentences I can write - even that one - that makes any sense atall. I'm angry - 'why did I even start on this path?', frustrated 'When will I see the beauty and feel what I so so so understand on a cognitive level is true?', disillusioned 'OK, so now I have learned what I know to be the truth (and I do mean know - not just understand), why haven't I caught up?', sad - no idea why but want to just cry, frightened 'OMG, I've messed with my head and now everything's wrong in it . . . . . . . . . ', cheated 'I'm doing and being but I'm still here' . . . . . . . . . . . and I could go on and on and on, with dualistic statements that contradict what I know to be the truth. I know the truth - it makes sense in every fibre of my being (although I know there are no fibres ) I've felt it, I know it, but I'm still damned well here. Fighting with a mind I know has no place, knowing that to 'do' anything is misguided, but doing nothing is doing something. Getting in a holy almighty intellectual mess, then trying (??) to let it all go,. Then wham bam, one day it all fits and it's all lovely. Then today wham bam it's absolutely damned well not. Please be gentle with me with your responses. I am more than aware of the inconsistencies and inaccuracies in what I've written - I know that in fact there is nothing to be written. But, just for now, I need a bit of focus and clarity - can anyone help???????? I don't want to watch any more videos or read any more books, I know what answers the wise ones will give me . . . . . . . I have such a strong sense that I know this all to be true, why am I still here????????

That was my first thought - but it hasn't clicked for me. I can see that my head picture is only a representation - and I can see that I have a head picture of a piece of paper. But how does that piece of paper get permeated with the head picture of something else - ie: a photograph? If my head picture is my mind's representation of consciousness, how does a photo make my eyes and brain create the right head picture???? I really am sorry for my apparent stupidity on this one!! I promise, I'm not being difficult on purpose - I just so want to get it!

I know this will seem naive to many of you - hopefully one day soon it will so to me too. But - I get the whole thing about the mind creating a representation of consciousness such that the 'head picture' is a map of the terrain. The terrain being consciousness . . . . . and I was feeling quite good to be honest, I thought I'd got that. Then - like a tonne of bricks - the thought hit me "But what about a photograph"??????? arrrrgggghhhhh - can anyone help explain please?????

For anyone who doesn't get that we don't control our thoughts, try to create one. Try to get into that moment BEFORE a thought comes, and try to make it happen. You'll find (like I did) that it's futile - the thought will be what it will be, you can't make it happen. Thus - we're not controlling them - they just come and go on their own. I found the exercise really liberating - I understood on a rational level that we are not our thoughts, but trying to make one happen really drove it home how we are so not our thoughts. Up to that point I'd been observing them, but not realising quite how independent they were . . . . and how conditioned and automatic too perhaps Just a thought!

I'm not a maths nerd, but my husband is and we have many interesting discussions as you can imagine! He isn't practicing any self enquiry, and is a little resistant to the realisations I am experiencing. Not in a nasty sense, but more in a skeptical sense. Hopefully one of you may be able to help me with a question that we were trying to discuss last night. On what level does time exist? I 'know' that 'I' am no time and no space, but my husband raised questions about progress (both personal progress and evolutionary progress) which also appear to be truth. There does appear to be a passage of time. How are these 2 truths (if in fact they are both truths) co-exist?

Maybe there's a simpler answer. maybe your anger comes from frustration that things not being how you think they should be, or how you wish they could or would be. Maybe accepting things don't have to be how you want them to be would help dissolve your anger. All the rest is chimp stuff really - trying to rationalise and find a 'head' way around the underlying problem?

If that is the way you feel right now, then that is the way you feel. Be with it. Accept it. Accept the sadness, accept the desire for answers. See it as just what it is - a simple desire for something that, at the moment, you can't get. Simply be until you die. You can be certain that, as all things change, so will your feeling you have right now. I don't intend that to sound defeatist - it is quite the opposite. It is meant to say that what is simply is. You can take time out and do nothing no harm will come to you. There is no hurry. There is no need to find those answers you look for. Just accept that, for now, you are in a state of sadness. You don't need to do anything. I know how difficult that is by the way (really, I do know), but I also know how liberating and how much of a relief it can be to just accept it for a moment. You don't need to commit to accepting it forever - you're not rolling over and giving in, you're just accepting that, right now, you're lost. Wait a while and it will change.