Stuck In Stagnation

[beatlemantis]

I'm new to online journaling and don't have much etiquette in the area, so I'll just spill out everything I'm thinking and we'll see how that fits. 

Tomorrow will mark exactly a month in which I've been plagued by apathetic numbness. For as long as I can remember I've had a laundry list of ambitions and goals for myself  - all constantly regenerated and renewed. It definitely was a strong streak of neurosis and incessant, external needs for most of my childhood and adolescence. But as I've discovered more personal development theories and Leo's channel, it shifted to a more emotionally-based, internal to-do list. 

Last night, I graduated from high school, and a week ago I turned 18. The weeks before those events piled on expectations and excitements of all kind. How I would feel, being the most primary. But as those have come and went, I have felt absolutely nothing. 

The months before this I was absolutely riveted by life, by spiritual work, by consciousness and my own psyche. I felt immense love for those around me and for the exciting turns of my life to come. I was driven, excited, and abundant in energy. Relationships were rich and full of depth, music was colorful, and I was creating so much towards my life purpose and impending success. 

But now, I feel hopelessly stuck. I feel no connection to my spirituality and personal development, I feel cold and isolated to the people around me,,, I feel immensely frustrated with myself for letting this come over me. There are huge expectations for me, especially at this time in life, and I was so excited to take up on them for the sake of myself - but now I feel I've dropped everything. 

I know I should accept, but I have that classic fear of remaining even more stuck. I try to push myself to re-embrace spirituality and my actualization, but it doesn't ignite me as it used to. I feel utterly lost and blocked-in from myself, I don't know what to do - and I would give anything to have an emotional breakthrough - even to cry. I want release so immensely, but I don't know how to open myself up to it again. 

Edited May 27, 2017 by beatlemantis

[Visitor]

Hello beatlemantis.

First of all, congratulations for finishing school.

Just to let you know, many youngsters leaving school have felt the same way and even worse. So you are not alone with this experience. Life has turned a new chapter. Everything has changed. Routine of going to school, study, meeting regular friends (and even enemies) has ceased. To get along now requires money to travel and meet others at places that cost to buy drinks and food. Your friends are about to meet new friends (you may lose friends). They are starting a new life with new goals and interests. Learning to be independent is a must and somewhat uncertain. A new set of coping skills will need to be learnt.

Coping skills checklist (off the cuff): Coping with....

1. Rejection (from job interviews, partners, peer groups, parents parenting)
2. Financial responsibilities of earning money, budgeting, savings, paying bills, food and cooking, medical, insurance.
3. Socializing into new groups. Meeting new people. Dealing with different personalities.
4. Living alone.
5. A job that bores you, or challenges you.
6. A new set of unfounded fears about self and future.

This forum is a good place to ask questions about how to cope with your new chapter in life.

[beatlemantis]

@Visitor Thank you for sifting through that post! I appreciate the checklist and encouragement. Lists tend to spark me back into a let's-get-shit-done mindset. 

[Prabhaker]

4 hours ago, beatlemantis said:

I don't know what to do - and I would give anything to have an emotional breakthrough

The whole of life has to be meditative. Only then will you begin to feel things. And when I say that the whole life is to be meditative, I do not mean to go and close your eyes for twenty-four hours and sit and meditate – no! Wherever you are you can be sensitive and that sensitivity will pay. 

 Someone asked Buddha, ”How shall we meditate?”

Buddha replied, ”Whatsoever you do, do it with awareness; this is meditation. Walking, walk attentively, as if walking is everything; eating, eat with awareness, as if eating is everything; rising, rise with awareness; sitting, sit with awareness; all your actions become conscious, your mind does not travel beyond this moment, it remains in the moment, settles in the moment – this is meditation.”

Meditation is not a separate process. Meditation is simply the name for life lived with awareness. Meditation is not an hour-a-day affair where you sit for one hour and then it is over till tomorrow. No, if twenty-three hours are empty of meditation and only one hour is meditative, then it is certain that the twenty-three hours will defeat the single hour. Non-meditation will win, meditation will lose.

It is easy to meditate if you don’t want to be blissful — it is very easy to meditate. If you want just to be blissful and you don’t want to be in meditation, that too is easy. The rarest combination is meditation plus bliss. Meditation minus bliss is easy; bliss minus meditation is easy. But meditation minus bliss is not true meditation and bliss minus meditation is not true bliss either. They are true only when they are together.

Many people have tried to meditate without bliss because it is simple, less complex. You have to take only one work upon yourself: that you have to still your mind. And you can force your mind to be stilled, but you will become sad, you will have a long face.

Bliss needs to be shared; it exists only in sharing. It can’t exist when you are alone, it disappears. It is a communion. Meditation can exist in aloneness and bliss can exist in togetherness. But when both exist then you have to learn a totally new way of life.

[beatlemantis]

16 hours ago, Prabhaker said:

But when both exist then you have to learn a totally new way of life.

Completely new way to think about meditation that I hadn't considered before. Thank you, @Prabhaker you've given me a different way to approach things. 

 

[beatlemantis]

I had the most intense night of my life a couple days ago - would love to share it if it means someone else can make sense of this state. 

In my experience of this, my nights would dawn without content. It's usually pretty easy to have a set game-plan for the day, especially on the path to actualization. But during this time - it was the first period of my life in which I felt compelled to do no spiritual work or expand my personal development. 

I drudged through online forums, videos, articles - anything on what I was feeling. I watched emotionally triggering films and videos - still nothing. I was up until I completely exhausted myself, without that satisfying hit-the-mattress kind of release you'd normally feel before sleeping. The mornings after would feel uninspired, lost, and I apparently only had the energy to watch mindless comedies and do low-brow clerical work. 

So, a couple of nights ago, after over a month of no answers, no satisfaction, no drive or game-plan - I "slipped". I had completely dissociated from my body, my home - I felt I couldn't achieve solitude. I was sobbing like a maniac but it felt more like wet paint dripping down a thick wall, rather than a tsunami that ends in immense release. It was awfully isolating. I couldn't even feel comfort in my isolation. My tears were cold, small, and unfamiliar.

During this time, there is an immense feeling of wanting to run away, which I feel is quite understandable. I mean, if I don't feel I'm getting answers from my usual resources (i.e. actualized.org, spirituality books, meditation, yoga..) then somewhere out there must have an answer for me. I was brought very close to the brink of booking it, but eventually passed out for a couple hours. 

I woke up very late in the night from a phone call from a close friend, and couldn't go back to sleep after. I couldn't go into work. I booked an appointment with a therapist, and promptly slept my heart out until the afternoon. 

The therapy session was distant - there was no release, and not much understanding from her side (though, there wasn't much on mine either). I feel I gained more from the journaling session I did for a few hours, which is the point I'm trying to build to here for those going through something similar..

From my understanding, this occurred from an intensely neurotic way of developing an actualized life. My old habits and paradigms constricted my worldview and cramped my acceptance of myself - even though I was doing incredibly heart-centered and conscious work. I relied heavily on the external look of things, giving myself deadlines and placing expectations on some life experiences (i.e. "you have to be perfect and conscious by college"). 

I can now see that this past month was almost forcing me to accept myself from what I was scared of being (unmotivated, unhealthy eating, cold/distant, stagnant, unimpressed, etc.).  It wasn't so much of a step-back as it was a much-needed, 18-year-long sabbatical from my incessant to-do lists. (In the eyes of a neurotic person, these lists mostly serve as an "anything but me" distraction). I'm going to make a bold statement as to say if this is the manner you are developing yourself - it seriously will not last you long. It is not substantial, and it'll break you. But what you take from that break-point can utterly transform you. 

That leads us to where it's brought me today. Just the day after the disconnected therapy session and the confused, blurred-path outlook on life I've become familiar with. I realize today that a period like this is chance to start from the basics. That's where I'm taking this. Foundational, subconscious mindsets need to be restructured from a place of health and acceptance rather than a place of hatred and neediness. I'm following paths without "should's", I'm being gentle and patient with myself. I'm checking in and inquiring constantly, and I've felt extremely authentic in my needs, internal dialogue, and interpersonal relationships. 

A neurotic to-do list is not authenticity. If you want to taste the truth of life and live out your values, to live out what is most substantial and significant for your life - forcing it will not get you close to there. I know you've heard this before, but this is a huge shocker to me as a newbie, and an incredibly profound and much-needed direct experience for anyone taking on the self-actualization process or any self-development work. 

I'm thankful for this confusing, stale, and intensely important experience, and if you are going through something similar - I only hope you can be realize this was your only current necessity.  

Edited June 2, 2017 by beatlemantis
Grammar

[beatlemantis]

Continuing the study of this experience, I've just realized after reading a short section of The Road Less Traveled that it may have been brought on by a withdrawal of my love and familiarity of neediness. Be it some force outside me or a cultivation of my subconscious, this period transcended me as a means of shedding my lifelong habit of "should's" and "should-not's". It was absolutely critical for this journey, and I believe if I had faced it head-on without seeking solutions to stop my apathy, it would have been a much more swift process. Of course, these are obvious observations, but as I said before, they are absolutely necessary in direct experience (especially for a deeply habitual neurotic). Posting this add-on as a reminder to appreciate whatever whims of depression or indifference hit you - you're shedding something significant for your journey, and you'll figure out what that means for you later. For now - experience it. Thanks for reading. 

 

"...The feeling associated with giving up something loved - or at least something that is a part of ourselves and familiar - is depression." - Scott Peck

Edited June 10, 2017 by beatlemantis