Is life basically a fight against laziness?

[RedLine]

Fighting again and again every day. Immediate pleasure versus long-term goals. It happens since the moment the alarm rings and you want to keep sleeping but you know if you do it it will bring bad consquences to you. It contiunos during the day with your cold shower, with your job/project/study, with your pickup journey, with your breathwork, etc etc. And once you think you are doing good, you relax and you mess it up again so you have to be in permanent alert and fight. It is so tired. It is what I hate  about life. I have been all my life in this cycle of be discipline, relax, fail, try to discpline again, get it, relax, fail, etc, etc.

Edited May 8, 2021 by RedLine

[Epikur]

1 hour ago, RedLine said:

Fighting again and again every day. Immediate pleasure versus long-term goals. It happens since the moment the alarm rings and you want to keep sleeping but you know if you do it it will bring bad consquences to you. It contiunos during the day with your cold shower, with your job/project/study, with your pickup journey, with your breathwork, etc etc. And once you think you are doing good, you relax and you mess it up again so you have to be in permanent alert and fight. It is so tired. It is what I hate  about life. I have been all my life in this cycle of be discipline, relax, fail, try to discpline again, get it, relax, fail, etc, etc.

It kind of is. Even after a while when you are lucky to semi retire you have to do a lot of things just to maintain your potential otherwise one goes down so fast and problems pile up. That is why the Buddhists tell life is suffering. 

Though meditation is a good way to expand time so it works a bit in your favor but still the rat race takes a toll.



****$$$$ 

[RedLine]

11 minutes ago, Epikur said:

It kind of is. Even after a while when you are lucky to semi retire you have to do a lot of things just to maintain your potential otherwise one goes down so fast and problems pile up. That is why the Buddhists tell life is suffering. 

Though meditation is a good way to expand time so it works a bit in your favor but still the rat race takes a toll.



****$$$$ 

Yes, I love mediation because I don´t have to do anything, just observe. But then I have to go back to all that efford on the daily life which is pretty discusting.

[Tetcher]

3 hours ago, RedLine said:

Fighting again and again every day. Immediate pleasure versus long-term goals. It happens since the moment the alarm rings and you want to keep sleeping but you know if you do it it will bring bad consquences to you. It contiunos during the day with your cold shower, with your job/project/study, with your pickup journey, with your breathwork, etc etc. And once you think you are doing good, you relax and you mess it up again so you have to be in permanent alert and fight. It is so tired. It is what I hate  about life. I have been all my life in this cycle of be discipline, relax, fail, try to discpline again, get it, relax, fail, etc, etc.

Very nice. I've taken cold showers everyday for a year hoping I would get used to it but it never got better, it got worse if anything. I don't know what to tell you because I experience the same thing. You can stop striving but you'll become fat, unsharp and irrelevant overtime. Striving seems to be a state that at least keeps at your best, as awake as you can be, if you can sustain it your entire life I'm sure you'll have a better death than if you didn't.

edit : replacing word struggle with strive

Edited May 8, 2021 by Tetcher

[RedLine]

1 hour ago, Megan Alecia said:

 

Buddhist power to practice nothingness.

 

What I mean here is the opposite of spiritual work. Spiritual work feels like no-efford, you just have to watch and do nothing, meanwhile what I am mean here is hard efford sensation. 

[PepperBlossoms]

Nice post.  Man laziness is tough - I've been struggling with it towards work.  Maybe it also has to do with what we are saying we are lazy to do.

Maybe we are lazy when we know that what we are doing doesn't matter all that much and we don't really care about it or value it - - we know that the version of us as a human is temporary and is going to "die" and the stuff we are working on, if we don't keep it up, will just go bad if not addressed but also mother nature will just ruin it too - so why spend all this time working on it when it will just go bad anyway?

There could be more drive to work on stuff that has the ability to last past our death and last more towards infinity... I don't know - just a guess.

So the spiritual work - maybe it is easier to work on because it seems like we could use it in a way that could last for infinity in some way.

If it is not significant enough, we have a hard time doing it??  we have to tell ourselves that the task is significant to want to do it in the first place (or that the consequences of not doing it are worth avoiding)

[The Mystical Man]

Spiritual work takes effort. Read The Road Less Travelled. 

[Max_V]

On 8-5-2021 at 4:07 PM, RedLine said:

Fighting again and again every day. Immediate pleasure versus long-term goals. It happens since the moment the alarm rings and you want to keep sleeping but you know if you do it it will bring bad consquences to you. It contiunos during the day with your cold shower, with your job/project/study, with your pickup journey, with your breathwork, etc etc. And once you think you are doing good, you relax and you mess it up again so you have to be in permanent alert and fight. It is so tired. It is what I hate  about life. I have been all my life in this cycle of be discipline, relax, fail, try to discpline again, get it, relax, fail, etc, etc.

Mhh, I think I can give some helping words, even though I'm quite in the middle of learning how to go about it myself (I'm 21). 

What I've noticed is that, yes there is this cycle of trying hard and then falling into traps again, and again, etc. But this is only frustrating if you think of it as staying on the same line trying and failing, instead of viewing it as moving upwards little by little. If you practice discipline, you will get stronger at it. Over time, if you really practice, you will be able to overcome that challenge and become so aware of your pitfalls that you probably won't make those mistakes ever again. Pain and hardship is only unbearable when there isn't a strong meaning you are fighting for. A vision is what makes it doable. 

There is also the issue of positive vs negative motivation. If you do something to avoid a pain then it is, like you say, a never ending cycle of getting there and losing it, pain on top of pain. But if you do something to reach some goal or vision, and you focus on that, then whenever you fail it doesn't hurt as much. Because that vision outweighs the pain of failing. 

Reflect upon these things, maybe it can help.

I wish you all the best and good luck on your journey.

 

[Rajneeshpuram]

laziness is homeostasis, your body needs it

[RedLine]

2 hours ago, The Mystical Man said:

Spiritual work takes effort. Read The Road Less Travelled. 

 

It depens on the techinque. Do nothing and noting, wich are the main techniques I do, feels no-efford to me. I just have to observe what  arise in consciusness and don´t push hard to anywhere

 

1 hour ago, Max_V said:

Mhh, I think I can give some helping words, even though I'm quite in the middle of learning how to go about it myself (I'm 21). 

What I've noticed is that, yes there is this cycle of trying hard and then falling into traps again, and again, etc. But this is only frustrating if you think of it as staying on the same line trying and failing, instead of viewing it as moving upwards little by little. If you practice discipline, you will get stronger at it. Over time, if you really practice, you will be able to overcome that challenge and become so aware of your pitfalls that you probably won't make those mistakes ever again. Pain and hardship is only unbearable when there isn't a strong meaning you are fighting for. A vision is what makes it doable. 

There is also the issue of positive vs negative motivation. If you do something to avoid a pain then it is, like you say, a never ending cycle of getting there and losing it, pain on top of pain. But if you do something to reach some goal or vision, and you focus on that, then whenever you fail it doesn't hurt as much. Because that vision outweighs the pain of failing. 

Reflect upon these things, maybe it can help.

I wish you all the best and good luck on your journey.

 

That´s a good point. Just focus on the goals and not in the process so when you mess it up you don´t feel guilty due to you broke your discipline. Probably make the dispcline itself the goal is my mistake.

 

 

1 hour ago, Rajneeshpuram said:

laziness is homeostasis, your body needs it

ok so I think my body needs homeostasis all the time haha

Edited May 12, 2021 by RedLine

[SolarWarden]

Kinda agree on this and even thinked about it today. Had this idea pop up in my mind.

In west we glorify the rajasic (activity) and shame the tamasic ( laziness). With this system there is a third and a rarer option which is satvic ( peacefullness). 

I don't know yet what the difference between satvic and tamasic is in practice. Neither one of these states seem to help me wash the dishes at home.

[Thought Art]

Your life will go through stages. What life "is" is your direct experience of the moment. Allow for things to change over time. 

[Roy]

Perhaps the key to life here is to stop focusing on so much resistance to the present moment, and focusing more on acceptance.

Edited May 12, 2021 by Roy

[Nahm]

On 5/8/2021 at 10:07 AM, RedLine said:

It is what I hate  about life.

It’s not caused by or coming from a secondary source “life”. It’s judgement, conditioning. Let go of the expectations and conditions about how you or anything must be by expressing emotions instead of, and whenever the habit of ‘thinking about yourself’ arises. That is the resistance... the hating... not the living. Enjoy whatever is as it is. Notice if & when you hold happiness to be contingent upon things going your way, and bring the happiness you are into the moment instead. Happiness is now. It’s not “in a future”. It’s not “only if you do or accomplish x, y or x”. That’s conditioning, or conditional happiness. 

[Megan Alecia]

As Terence McKenna said, life is fundamentally about appreciation.

But as recent thinkers and influential figures have suggested and asserted, appreciation in this life requires discipline, responsibility, and all that kinda conscientious values (Leo talked about this as Jordan Peterson's and other self-help, mostly masculine, culture icons' function in current pop culture.)

In other words, taking current world/online trends into account, people want to find a way to enjoy both work (self help culture) and play (Tiktok, entertainment, podcasts, Grammys, Netflix, food channels, etc etc) in a sort of orderly way.

Edited May 15, 2021 by Megan Alecia
By people I mean those under 30 maybe.

[BipolarGrowth]

Sounds like it’s time for a laziness retreat. I’ve been on one for about a month due to a significant injury, and it’s been incredibly spiritually enriching. 
 

You’ll never perfect what is already perfect. Trying to do so is normal and addictive though. Nothing wrong with playing the game. 

[Moksha]

The ego loves to label. Laziness, ambition, it doesn't care, as long as it can judge. What happens when you let go of judgment, and simply be? You might be surprised at the creativity and beauty that is waiting to be unleashed, when we are willing to lose the labels.

[Blackhawk]

Life is a fight. For example just think about how hard the body is working every second to stay alive.

Edited May 15, 2021 by Blackhawk

[Nos7algiK]

The best fight against anything, specially mental interpersonal attachments, is to not think about it. I don't mean, push the thoughts away, but rather attempt to detach from the awareness that is laziness to the point where it doesn't even pop into your mind anymore. You will no longer be lazy then, because you don't perceive laziness. An issue arises when we try to combat that which opposes us. If you keep saying " I need to find a way to not be lazy" then your attempts will only cause you to suffer in the end. Alan Watts said it pretty great on the lines of something like "If you tell the devil you are going to get rid of him. Then he will find ways to trick you so you have him back in your life down the road". It's best not to say anything and best not to think anything. There is no award down the road you can acknowledged for if you acknowledged  "I'm no longer lazy" you are still thinking about it. It will be completely absent from your mind and you won't even be aware you are eating the fruits of your labor. This is largely due to laziness itself is not a good/bad thing, but rather your thoughts about the subject matter. No thoughts = doesn't matter.

Edited May 16, 2021 by Nos7algiK

[mandyjw]

Ever worked really hard on something you were inspired to do and it didn't feel like work at all cause you loved every moment? Yeah, shoot for that. You want to want to do what you "should" do. This means sort of practically, working on loving doing what you're doing when you don't think you want to be doing it (all that takes is dropping thoughts about not liking it) and doing more of what you love doing.