How Do I Stop Trying To Understand Reality Intellectualy?

[Dan Arnautu]

All of these thoughts are going haywire into my head. Since all of my certainties were shattered, it's really hard to get comfortable again. It's like I'm punching myself in the face constantly and have no control of my hands, but in this case with my mind.

What is reality? What the fuck is this thing? Why do I not dissapear in the next second?, etc. This triggers intense fear in me and it's really hard to calm down, even when I try to meditate.  It's really hard to talk about this, as I was an extremely stable guy until about 2 months ago. I felt much more at peace before. I wasn't thinking about this stuff all the time. It's really hard to figure out if it's just spiritual purification or causing myself unnecesary suffering. It's like I feel unsafe in reality and something is coming to get me every second. I feel no sense of security.

I did not break my meditation practice. I feel at peace for about 1-2 hours, and then the thoughts and fears come back full throttle. It's really intense. I can't go on with my day properly. How do I ground myself and resume a more normal life again, not being in fight or flight 24/7?

One day I feel perfectly fine and happy and joyful and the next is the complete opposite. I had 2 panic attacks at the gym. I haven't had one in like 4 years. What is happening?

Is this just an addiction to certainty? I know that nothing really changed in reality, but just my view of it. But it feels pretty real. I don't know what's at the core of it.

 

Edited June 15, 2017 by Dan Arnautu

[Bob84]

By realizing and accepting there is nothing to understand and that you are just mentaly mastrubating 

[Dan Arnautu]

@Bob84 Is there a way to redirect the thoughts to something else when it happens, not just being mindfull? It helps when I say, ok, that's a thought, so it's not necessarily true, but the emotion it causes tricks me into thinking there is an actual real threat and it becomes a vicious circle that I can't seem to stop.

[Principium Nexus]

Ask yourself what the threat is? You feel a slight existential crisis, but where does the fear come from?

Probably you want to grasp all these concepts and get it right, there needs to be some REAL ground right? In fact there isn't, atleast no concept you can think of. Only being is the most true experience you have direct access to. Don't think, listen, feel, take a deep breath. What are the most distance sounds you are aware of? Do you feel your awareness expand?

Once the awareness of the surroundings grows your silly thoughts shift to the background. You experience the now in full presence, let it be.

[Max_V]

@Dan Arnautu I must say, I know what you're going through. Had several of these really frightful weeks I asked about on the forum aswell. I was/ still am sometimes, really scared that I will die in one of these attacks. 

What I've learned from everyone's responses is that there is only one way to handle it.

Don't try and overcome it, don't fight it, don't resist it.

This has worked for me and when you get out of these 'cycles' for a while it feels amazing.

 also, instead of trying to say "I accept this", "I accept that". Say "Its okay". This works because when you try to say "I accept" you are trying to like or to love something you want to go away or despise. When you say "It's okay" this doesn't apply as wanting it to go away, but being completely acceptive with it.

Anyway, good luck. I wish you the best

[Prabhaker]

49 minutes ago, Dan Arnautu said:

I had 2 panic attacks at the gym. 

Weight training  can swell the muscles and make the body worth looking at, worth exhibiting, but there is a great difference between exhibition and life. There is a great difference between living, being healthy and being an exhibitionist.

Some labor is very essential for the agility of the body, complete alertness of the mind, but avoid excess. Each person should find out according to himself, according to his body, how much labor he should do to live more healthily and more freshly.

55 minutes ago, Dan Arnautu said:

it's just spiritual purification or causing myself unnecesary suffering.

Spirituality means not escaping from suffering but living with it: living with it, not escaping! And if you live with it, you will become more and more aware. If you want to escape, then you will have to leave awareness. Then, somehow, you will have to become unconscious. If you do not escape, if you remain there with your suffering, one day suffering will disappear and you will have grown into more awareness.

[Dan Arnautu]

@Prabhaker

3 minutes ago, Prabhaker said:

Weight training  can swell the muscles and make the body worth looking at, worth exhibiting, but there is a great difference between exhibition and life. There is a great difference between living, being healthy and being an exhibitionist.

Some labor is very essential for the agility of the body, complete alertness of the mind, but avoid excess. Each person should find out according to himself, according to his body, how much labor he should do to live more healthily and more freshly.

Spirituality means not escaping from suffering but living with it: living with it, not escaping! And if you live with it, you will become more and more aware. If you want to escape, then you will have to leave awareness. Then, somehow, you will have to become unconscious. If you do not escape, if you remain there with your suffering, one day suffering will disappear and you will have grown into more awareness.

I agree with the second part.

Regarding the first, I don't make an excess out of exercising. The gym is just the place where the panic attacks happened. Might as well have happened in the bathroom. No real causation between them.

[Prabhaker]

3 minutes ago, Dan Arnautu said:

I don't make an excess out of exercising.

Weight training and meditation don't go well together.

[Dan Arnautu]

@Prabhaker Why wouldn't they? I would argue the contrary. I feel much more at ease after working out and more in the present moment. I sit too much as it is and I only go three times a week.

[Bob84]

1 hour ago, Dan Arnautu said:

@Bob84 Is there a way to redirect the thoughts to something else when it happens, not just being mindfull? It helps when I say, ok, that's a thought, so it's not necessarily true, but the emotion it causes tricks me into thinking there is an actual real threat and it becomes a vicious circle that I can't seem to stop.

Be present in your body and not in you head. You cant truly feel the wind on your skin and mentaly mastrubate at the same time.

Guess why they say focus on your breathing to relax 

Try some things out where you dont think. Like walking the dogs and simply feeling your feet, the wind, etc. All is nothing. When you believe it is something you are mentaly mastrubating again.

[Martin123]

@Dan Arnautu love the one who has all the questions. It might seem like he wants understanding, but all he really wants is your loving attention!

[Dan Arnautu]

@Martin123 I think I've found my answer and you are right. I tried doing the self-acceptance exercise Leo has again to see if one of the ”me's” is more sensitive right now. When it got to these 3 me's: the me who is scared, the me who feels lost and with no direction and the me who is confused, something clicked, like really hard, like ”THERE IT IS!” . I had a deep aha moment and saw what I was neglecting and saw the reason I felt so ungrounded.

Lately I felt pretty invisible to the world, like I am not there, and now I saw that I just needed recognition and love from myself. I felt unloved, scared and alone until I gave myself that love and security back. After gushing my eyes out for about 10-20 minutes, I now see that I just need to learn to trust myself more. 

With all of this work, I started doubting that a light is even there, and I started to overexaggerate the fact that I shouldn't trust myself, to the point where I didn't even trust my intuition or my direct experience.

Thank you all for the answers! Love to you, all!

[Delinkaaaa]

@Dan Arnautu  I think that you do not know how to relax.

You know what is relaxation? It is the opposite from doing on purpose. 

Next time you go to meditation, try something different. Try to let go of everything. Try to fell what you need the most to do — and then let the neediness go out. Release everything needy. Say yourself „I am going to acomplish nothing“. And insist to that. You are going to acomplish nothing at all at the duration of this meditation. And than enjoy. 

I think that the biggest problem of yours could be sticking too much to your purpose. You feel too much small to acpomplish it. This creates feeling that reality is unfeasible. This is what you need to release. 

Try to not drive into extreme. 

Try to adjust your meditation to your feelings. When you feel bad, your meditation needs to change. 

[Norbert Somogyi]

1 hour ago, Prabhaker said:

Weight training and meditation don't go well together.

How so?

[Dan Arnautu]

@Delinkaaaa  That can be also a reason. Why not? I'll try that. I definitely resist the present moment. No doubt about that.

Edited June 15, 2017 by Dan Arnautu

[Dodo]

3 hours ago, Dan Arnautu said:

@Bob84 Is there a way to redirect the thoughts to something else when it happens, not just being mindfull? It helps when I say, ok, that's a thought, so it's not necessarily true, but the emotion it causes tricks me into thinking there is an actual real threat and it becomes a vicious circle that I can't seem to stop.

All you need to do is notice and allow. Notice what? Notice you are not any entity. Allow what? The entity's confusion or whatever seems to be the entity's current problem. 

Edited June 15, 2017 by Dodo

[Prabhaker]

9 hours ago, Dan Arnautu said:

Why wouldn't they? I would argue the contrary. I feel much more at ease after working out and more in the present moment.

8 hours ago, Norbert Somogyi said:

How so?

One should do physical exercises which make him more aware, alert and alive throughout the day, not only after gym. Every technique that makes your mind silent is not meditation. You can avoid the complexity of spiritual transformation. You can chose a technique to force your mind to be still. It is a negative state; it makes mind only empty, not silent — forcibly made still. But it is not a natural growth of silence. 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.

Weight trainers tend to pull their chest out and belly in. There is a stupid idea popular in the whole world that belly should be pulled in and chest should look larger, it hinders natural breathing. Breath is literally the bridge connecting all of these aspects of our being and our existence. When you are relaxed ,as the breath goes in, your belly starts rising up, and as the breath goes out, your belly starts settling down again. Try to see children, very small children, taking their breaths. They take them in a different way. Look at a child sleeping. His belly comes up and down, not the chest. That is the right way to breathe; remember not to use your chest too much. Sometimes it can be used – in emergency periods. You are running to save your life; then the chest can be used. 

There is a Japanese word for the initial source of breath. That word is "tanden". Right breathing is connected with tanden, which is located two inches below the navel. The further a man is away from existence, the further his breath moves away from tanden. The higher your centre of breathing is, the more tense you are; the lower the point of your breath, the more you are relaxed. If your breathing is from tanden, there will be no tensions in your life.

This is the very reason why children are free from tension. Observe your breath in a moment of relaxation. You will find it coming from tanden. When you are filled with tension and anxiety, observe your breath. It will become short, and it will come from the chest. Short breath is an indication that you are far removed from your original nature.

There is a reason why we breathe from the chest. A very wrong concept has pervaded in the world. According to this, the chest should be well developed and large, and the abdomen should be flat, almost against the back. This mad tendency has created a terrible disturbance within the human body. In order to inflate the chest, the breath has to fill the chest and not be allowed to go down further.

Observe yourself sometimes as you sit quietly by yourself on a chair. Let yourself loose, - there should be no tension - and you will feel the breath rising from your navel. But we do not let ourselves relax even when we rest. Is the idea of having an expanded chest so ingrained in us.

Edited June 16, 2017 by Prabhaker

[Dan Arnautu]

@Prabhaker I am sorry but you are making a lot of assumptions and I can tell you don't actually know from first hand experience what it's like to do weightlifting for a long period of time. I do not condemn you for not knowing though. When I started I also didn't know.

Deep Diaphragmal (belly) breathing is one of fundamentals in weightlifting. The shallow chest breathers are the meathead bros in the gym that have no idea what they are doing. The guys that suck their belly up are just insecure.

I have a much better breathing than 99% of people out there not only because of meditation and weightlifting, but also because of vocal singing. If you do not use deep diaphragmal breathing when singing, you won't be able to generate power and your vocal cords will get damaged. Also, when you start lifting you don't force yourself into a meditative state. It happens on it's own accord. You enter in a flow state.  

 

[Prabhaker]

1 hour ago, Dan Arnautu said:

Deep Diaphragmal (belly) breathing is one of fundamentals in weightlifting.

9 hours ago, Prabhaker said:

There is a Japanese word for the initial source of breath. That word is "tanden". Right breathing is connected with tanden, which is located two inches below the navel. The further a man is away from existence, the further his breath moves away from tanden. The higher your centre of breathing is, the more tense you are; the lower the point of your breath, the more you are relaxed. If your breathing is from tanden, there will be no tensions in your life.

 In zazen, Zen training, the tanden (or hara) is the source and foundation of deep meditation. Weightlifters don't breathe from tanden throughout the day (not talking about during exercise), neither are able to keep their body (and lower belly) as relaxed as a meditator throughout the day.

20 hours ago, Dan Arnautu said:

I feel at peace for about 1-2 hours, and then the thoughts and fears come back full throttle. It's really intense. I can't go on with my day properly.

Those who breathe from tanden live in a relaxed state, they are always peaceful. The problem you are describing is not possible when breathing is natural, from tanden (or hara).

Before I learned about meditation , I have done weight training.

[Dan Arnautu]

@Prabhaker I understand where you are coming from. But, how do you know weightlifters don't breathe from tanden throughout the day? Have you checked each one of them?

Also, I do agree that breathing from tanden keep you relaxed, but saying that people are ALWAYS peaceful is a generalization. It's not like they become immune to other emotions. Maybe you are referring to a UNDERLYING peace which is not affected by the surface agitation. In that case you are right. But to say that they are always peaceful on the surface. You don't know that. You are assuming that.