Thanatos13

I find the video on moralizing to be flawed. On the one hand he doesn't really address things like theft or murder, though one of the comments brought it up he mentioned something on the lines of a should statement. Second if you get rid of the should and should nots of life I feel like that would cause paralysis. After all, if there are no shoulds or oughts then there isn't really a reason to listen to teachers or to treat others well or to really do much of anything. Happened to me one time and I almost starved to death because I didn't see a reason I ought to live (again getting rid of such things). Right and wrong aren't really all to morality, but it's more like values. But even getting to "authentic desires" is still a should because it's saying one should be authentic or follow such desires. Of course there is also the argument that if everyone did what they wanted then no one would be able to. We only enjoy such conversations and (relative) peace through morals. Morality is pretty much what holds me back from killing as well as other things.

Title says it all and the answer is only further complicated by nihilism. As much as I can remember I never really knew what I wanted to do with my life because every burning desire fades the next day. People ask me all the time what I would like to do, and I have no answer. Even if there was nothing holding me back and the world was my oyster I still couldn’t give anything. I felt dead inside. So I went with what people said I should be doing. College, authenticity, spiritual enlightenment. I was an empty shell looking for something and only going with it because people said so, didn’t matter who (which makes the internet my enemy). Then came nihilism and life has been hard. Without any guiding principle I just laid in bed like a corpse. If there is is good and bad, better or worse, and morality is just “because I say so” then I had nothing left. I try to gloss over it, but even living gets hard. It’s like “what am I living for”? Do I have to live? But dying is hard so I keep going, a walking corpse. I think I understand how vampires feel. Meeting out suffering and making people unhappy just to feel something. I have been living someone else’s life conventional or unconventional merely because they say so. That’s all it takes to pull my strings. I see people speak of life purpose or what they want, and I don’t get it. I don’t get how they know.

I for one welcome death and I sense much death anxiety on here. Not sure why people want to live so much. I don’t seek death but I won’t stop it when it comes.

It’s not about going up or down the spiral. That’s not the goal or the design behind the work.

Only if you give meaning to such things. But sometimes failing to die is just a failed attempt and people try again. Its not the most profound. People just give it importance because that is something you’re “supposed to do” same thing as seeking “truth”. Same thing as blaming the victim when they get different results.

Or not. Like I said, it’s fine if you don’t know.

Not talking about the song. But what is love? I hear it tossed around everywhere yet I’m beginning to think it’s just an illusion.

Technically nothing “good” will happen since there is no objective measure of it. But things will happen whether I want them to or not. Saying all beliefs as false is simply untrue, mostly because I cannot prove it. Who said it was fear? Who said the conditioner self is based in fear and why should you believe them? You also believe that enlightenment is a thing that people can reach and that it is truth. But that’s off topic. But mostly it seems like someone has a different experience from you and you assume they are the problem. I told you what happened. If you don’t have an answer that’s fine but don’t blame the “victim” (for lack of a better term).

If you don’t know that’s fine. I did contemplate and I conclude that it doesn’t exist and is but a phantom. More apparently it can be whatever people want it to mean. People say attention, but that can just be attention. Not all attention can be love as well, but love can be a kind of attention. But that doesn’t really answer my question. But if you don’t know then that’s fine. But I’m asking.

That’s not love, that’s just attention.

What if you contemplate your own death and nothing changes? I have accepted that all this will end some day and nothing really changed for me.

If you want to believe that. Because you are not everything. You never really arrive, for you are always a little bit behind. I can understand why mystics in the past believe such things, but when you feel what they feel you have to wonder if they didn’t just make some story to explain things. Everything does not work out (it’s really just events that happen). Firstly, no it doesn’t. “Direct experience” might as well be because I say so, yet it doesn’t prove anything. You seem to think you can escape concepts, which seems like a mistake to me. They need not be words, language, or tools. It would also be incorrect to call concepts illusions. The last mistake is hoping people understand what you feel. Yet emotions cannot be described. Anger cannot be described since it would require me to be you. The funny thing about all this is that ultimately you can’t be sure you have experienced what others have. You take it on faith, like most claims here. But I guess the primary mistake is assuming “direct experience” can be trusted.

You are not love and you are not infinite. These are merely comforts to cope with existence.

There is no such thing as unconditional love or love for that matter. Both are just an illusion. Not to mention there is no “everything is going to work out” there is just a set of events that play out. But even if I humored that, you cannot know that everything will work out. That’s just hubris. It’s more accurate to say that you will be fine with whatever happens.

It would be like a toy robot asking that. I don’t have any strong desires or the need to eat or sleep. But survival is a tricky thing. It wouldn’t matter if I did take responsibility. You don’t seem to get that when it’s all meaningless there is no decisions since everything is “the same”. You seem to think we have responsibility over what happens in our lives but we don’t.

Because eventually we stop questioning and just settle somewhere, which is fine. But eventually people just reach a point where they stop. The irony of constant questioning is realizing how much is taken on faith, and also how pointless it is. If you feel like everything is groundless it’s because it is. It’s all shaky ground when you get to it

Unfortunately since most people on here base it on personal experience there really isn’t much to say other than nothing happened. Even the spiritual books only really had an impact if I believed their words, which is telling. Something doesn’t have to be true, one just needs to believe it so. I did. The end result was that you cannot really trust anything. No matter what one does it doesn’t mean it leads to truth, but rather the endpoint of a certain set of actions/beliefs. That’s why “direct experience” is a myth in the way people use it. It’s just experience. But whether it is IT or not is based on a matter of faith or belief. Ever ask why self inquiry is important? Why does it matter? How do you know you are arriving at truth and not just crafting another story? We assume this leads to truth, but ultimately that is founded on nothing. You cannot trust anything. Your experience can be a lie, awareness too, senses, mind, all of it can be and you would never know. It comes back to Pyrrhonism. To suspend judgment on nonevident matters, and it’s all nonevident.

@Serotoninluv if you want to interpret it that way then it does make a good story. But not really a lesson in anything . For me such experiences are like water off a ducks back or flowing rivers. They come, they go, and they have no value or meaning unless I give them one.

many realities, heh. its the only one. Anything else is just a dream we project on it

I don’t think there is anything spiritual about spirituality. Doesn’t mean I’m saying it’s wrong outright, but the qualifier seems misplaced. Second thing is that there is no such thing as an authentic self and desires. Hence my issues from childhood until now. That’s what happens when you question enough, realizing there is no authenticity to build on.

Because nihilism is reality. Any meaning is just human invention, same with morals and values. When you wake up to that it’s just.... well there aren’t really words. I just lay in bed. I promise you feeling the full negative emotion doesn’t make it go away. I feel it but it stays. As for the previous part of your comment, please see nihilism.

I don’t do anything besides sleep and school. I just play games and tv for fun. No friends, no boyfriend (gay), family tries to help but I don’t care about them, 27, I work, I live in Florida

He didn’t, since he didn’t provide help. I didn’t say I didn’t want help, since I posted on here. But no one has said anything helpful or understands. So far I haven’t heard anything to deal with nihilism and my OP. All they do is preach, if I wanted vague nonsense I would go to church.

Actually it is. It’s meaning that isn’t inherently true. Ever since I was first exposed to it I had a hard time denying it as reality. Even Leo makes the same remarks. Philosophy isn’t about feeling good. Because there is no meaning in doing so. When all things have no inherent value there is no reason to change course to anything else Don’t know what that has to do with it. Meditation got me here, though I know not how. Prior to realizing this I felt alive. I found beauty in everything regardless of what it was (which make things weird). Dancing was spontaneous for no real reason. It was like life was a tempest or a roaring ocean and I was the leaf on the wind, the wave, the waters. I felt life flow through me rather than direct it. But then nihilism showed me that it was all in my head. That life wasn’t any of those things. That the things that people said were important and mattered really didn’t. Neither option was better than another. I can’t keep pretending things are important or that they matter, that value exists.

That whole “surrender” that people talk about is why this is happening.