How To Deal With Melancholy?

[hinawashi]

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I've had this problem for quite a while now.

Technically it isn't that serious of a problem and it's not really affecting me personally. To be honest I actually feel great about myself and it's not like ordinary depression. It actually came with all this self-development work that I've been doing and while it feels great to wake up from hell, it actually pains me to see a lot of people including my family and friends still stuck in a low-consciousness state. Sometimes this melancholy expands so much that I ending up feeling sad for all the people in the world, like when I'm peering out the window of the train station and I'm just looking at the city from above, for example. It brings tears to my eyes even though it's got nothing to do with me.

What even more mindfuckingly ironic is that I never had any real experience with empathy before I started doing self-actualization work. Now all of a sudden it's getting overwhelming. Is this supposed to happen? Or is it too much of a good thing?

[ajasatya]

4 hours ago, hinawashi said:

it actually pains me to see a lot of people including my family and friends still stuck in a low-consciousness state. Sometimes this melancholy expands so much that I ending up feeling sad for all the people in the world

do you look back at your own memories and feel sad for them or do you accept them as learning experiences? everyone has his own rhythm.

you can be either melancholic or grateful. it's your choice. either way, notice the transforming potential of those feelings. leo built this web space and his youtube channel. i am enhancing my yoga/meditation skills to help others and myself and i am also planting forests and working on a high quality project to help mankind.

i don't think your feelings are the real cause of your suffering. i think you're suffering because you don't know what to do with them.

[Toby]

I have no solution here but all I can say is I love the Enneagram to show the potential but also egoic strategies. Overly simplified, one egoic strategy to deal with sadness and neediness is "melancholy" (type 4), another is being driven towards success (type 3), another is becoming "the helper" (type 2). All as a way for getting love as a substitute as living as love. But all types have a deeper, more real potential of course. Even though everyone has a main-type, everyone can find every type and strategy and also the essential qualities in them. A good book that explores that: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1893840263/

[hinawashi]

@ajasatya Actually what I'm feeling right now is a mixture of both melancholy and thankfulness. It's this mixed feeling that really causes trouble. I honestly don't know how to deal with this cacophony of emotions, but for now I'm just going to accept that it's OK to have mixed feelings.