Some questions I have in these dark times

[Nightwise]

I am in a really bad spot in my life right now. I reckoned I am going to ask the same questions I had written to a coach that I'm seeing on this forum, and perhaps you guys will be able to give me some insight. Mind that this is more or less a copy and paste

 

 

Fears and hopelessness now seem to overwhelm me. I am not in a good state of mind, and my fear is often overwhelming.
 
There are a few questions I have that I would like to discuss with you. I write them first because I know there is a possibility that I may be in a state where I cannot focus during the conversation. For you to write back you can write above, but perhaps it is better to bring it up in the conversation itself. I put a P in front of the priority questions. The rest can also be treated, but that is more optional,
 
- P What could be reasons for me to keep going? How do I find motivation to continue?
 
- P How can I get a different perspective on what is currently happening? You would think I have grown a lot over the past few years, but now it seems like I just dug myself a lot deeper into the shit over those years and made absolutely no progress.
 
- P How can I get a different perspective on my idea that any kind of change or self-discipline or structure would be meaningless if I then come across old habits that again seem to be very strong again?
 
How can I gauge change, or trust that it is possible at all, and even if it is possible, how do I deal with the idea that it wouldn't matter if I don't change the amount of suffering I do experience? Now it seems as if I am doomed to fail if I want to make lasting changes in my life or if I want to hold on to something, and the pain of experiencing that constantly but again keeps me from trying at all.
 
I seemed to be able to really push through in 2013, and then I also completed a panic attack program, and when I try the same thing again I notice that I drop out after an hour. Good part of this is because I no longer believe it is possible for me now. Where did this ability go?
 

 

- How do I deal with the fact that my energy level changes over time where I have energy one week to make many changes and the other week completely go the other way and only want to rest and detach?
 
- How do I deal with the fact that I don't have an enlightened guide in my life? I know I have you, among other things, and you give some good advice, but sometimes I think that living in close proximity to a spiritually enlightened master would be best, and it hurts me to perceive that it isn't.
 
- How do I trust that existence wants the best for me? It seems as if I have to figure it all out myself now, and that I am not being guided. And in my current state of fear and confusion, this is incredibly paralyzing
 
- How do I look at topics such as positive thinking, distraction, and the normal mental health system? I have always had an attitude of confronting what is there and not trying to escape it. I am especially skeptical about positive thinking because it often feels like suppressing negativity.

- what could be reasons for me not to get attached to you, for example, or any other form of self-help that I could use to help myself?

[Shmurda]

Hey man, 

I read your questions and they're very specific and personal. There's only two ways you're gonna get answers to these questions: you answer them yourself as honestly as you can, or you work with a therapist who is able to fully understand where you're coming from. 

I used to think that others could help me out of a rut like the one you seem to be in. Then I realised that my belief that someone was going to help me was actually making it harder for me to overcome. Consider that you are the only one who understands your issues, and you are the only one who can get over them. 

Lastly, you absolutely must have a daily meditation habit if you want to maintain perspective on this matter. Otherwise you're just going to be a slave to this perceived suffering. Try to keep some distance from your self and the pain. This way you will be able to see it more clearly and deal with it better. 

Determination is key. 

[Nightwise]

I appreciate your response. 

I'm unsure whether I want to even try to answer these myself. Because if I start thinking about these matters when I'm in a state of deep fear which I often seem to be in, I'm coming from a place of fear and many of these questions I don't even want to confront if the answer happens to be painful.

Yes, I do notice that I seem to cling to the need of someone else answering these questions for me. I'm grasping and I don't really know how to let go of that tendency, perhaps because I still hope that someone else will give an eye-opening insight for me.

About the daily meditation habit: I've tried, but I couldn't continue because there was simply too much resistance coming up, and also doubt. Doubt because the idea of trying to be determined about something creates in my mind all this attachment and heaviness, which then leads to eventually so much resistance that I feel pretty much forced to let go of it at some point and then to embrace the perspective of detachment and letting go because how can I be at peace and forgive myself otherwise if I'm still having a lot of attachment to something I feel absolutely unable to do after some point?

Much of my resistance against determination is doubt. Doubt whether it's even a good idea to be determined about something and thereby in my eyes lose your flexibility.

[Litaken]

"What could be reasons for me to keep going? How do I find motivation to continue?"

Where are you going? Continue where? Why should you be anywhere else than here and now? There is no reason to, and you are on the path of realizing that.

"How can I get a different perspective on what is currently happening? You would think I have grown a lot over the past few years, but now it seems like I just dug myself a lot deeper into the shit over those years and made absolutely no progress."

Try to look at the things happening outside from your point of view. Ie. COVID is percieved negative because the only point of view people are considering are their own (not exactly but simply put). But have you considered the long run? Playing chess and losing a game still makes you a better player most of the time. Playing survival with a virus will still make us better in the long run. Our only problem is if we can not accept that any game sometimes we win, and sometimes we lose. If we won all the time the game wouldn't be a game. Maybe it's not you who will benefit from it, but your children or grandchildren. I know it sounds silly but it's a good tought practice, to take the point of view of the virus itself. What does it want to do? The only thing it wants is it wants to live, exactly like you! It doesn't want to hurt anyone, in fact when it hurts you it's destroying it's own living environment. So in this sense you both have a similar goal.

"How can I gauge change, or trust that it is possible at all, and even if it is possible, how do I deal with the idea that it wouldn't matter if I don't change the amount of suffering I do experience? Now it seems as if I am doomed to fail if I want to make lasting changes in my life or if I want to hold on to something, and the pain of experiencing that constantly but again keeps me from trying at all."

Well then why do you want to hold on? Why don't you let go? 

You have an image of a future where if you did all that change in your life that you want everything would be different and amazing and happy and peaceful, but this is not the case. This image is shown by your mind to motivate you into escaping from the situation that you are currently in, making you denying your present and seducing you with an illusory future. This is a destructive type of motivation, which we are unfortunate enough to learn from our environment. The constructive type of motivation here would be to act out of just because you can, or out of love.

Change is a tricky thing, it's always partial. An object can only change partially, which means that parts of it change, and parts of it stay the same. If the whole object in one instant changed independently from it's previous state, then that object would be a completely different and independent from the state before the change. That's not change that's a completely new object, which would break causality. Why I'm saying this is to encourage you to not take "change" too seriously. I'm not sure how you get with the idea of absolute love, but it simply means that nothing gets lost (again, causality, the object gets lost but it's effects carry on forever). If you let go of the desire to change so much, maybe that's when you will be able to start to change, because then it's not something you must do, but something you can out of just free will, which is degrees less dooming.

"How do I deal with the fact that my energy level changes over time where I have energy one week to make many changes and the other week completely go the other way and only want to rest and detach?"

Live with it Just accept whatever state you are in, don't try to whip yourself. Again, you are trying to escape, from an illusion that is not real.

"How do I deal with the fact that I don't have an enlightened guide in my life? I know I have you, among other things, and you give some good advice, but sometimes I think that living in close proximity to a spiritually enlightened master would be best, and it hurts me to perceive that it isn't."

I think your enlightenment is all good, you are just in early stages where everything is a mess, nothing makes sense including life and you felt like that for probably a good time now. I've been in those shoes and even get back there form time to time, but now I know that time is not a waste. You are just sensing that you are going in a loop, just round and round and round. But this happens precisely so one day when you are conscious enough you can recognize this loop well enough to be able to get out of it. This loop is just the lesson, that you are in the process of learning right now, similarly for a youngster if you challenge it with saying the biggest number, he will start going "not one because two is bigger, but not two because three is bigger, and he will go on and on and on, until the point where he will suddenly recognize that this loop would go on forever without any result. That's the time the toddler will stop and have it's mind blown by the lesson he just learned. I've been in such a loop for ages, like 25 till 30, deeply depressed, thought about ending my life for hours every day. But then something amazing happened, I got a missing piece of the puzzle I was struggling with so hard (from Leo thanks for that forever), and the next days/weeks were full of shocking, mind blowing, and beautiful realizations that I never thought even exist. Leo's video in neurosis is just so full of invaluable information and points, I suggest you watching it carefully, again if you did.

"How do I trust that existence wants the best for me? It seems as if I have to figure it all out myself now, and that I am not being guided. And in my current state of fear and confusion, this is incredibly paralyzing"

No it doesn't. It wants the best for all of us, collectively. If you put yourself in the center, you will always see things that could go your way, but that would be at the expense of someone elses way. Think about life as the optimum of all our bests. This is one of the big lessons of enlightenment (I think, I'm not a guru :D), to deattach from the desire of the self that wants everything to go in it's way.

"what could be reasons for me not to get attached to you, for example, or any other form of self-help that I could use to help myself?"

You deattach from something when you realize it's only an illusion, this works for anything but probably not the simplest topic. Comes with time.

Edited July 7, 2020 by Litaken