Reoccurring Feeling of Emptiness

[CameronsExploring]

Im not sure where to start, but i have this reoccurring feeling of emptiness that comes and goes throughout the week. Its been going on for the past 4 months or so, its currently been summer off of highschool.

I feel like I lose my motivation to do anything and I almost feel trapped by it. The feeling might stay with me for half a day or longer in which i feel empty myself and feel that everything else in my life is empty as well. Some other things that could possibly describe it are boredom, unfulfillment, disengagement. I can't really tell why it comes up. I can feel bad about loosing my motivation and not doing anything useful. This feeling, I cant live with it anymore, like I am trapped by myself. Sometimes I feel afraid and uncertain. Ive been spending a lot of time at home alone since Covid days. It usually feels worst when I am home alone for long periods of time.

I also think my sleep is connected to it as well. At night my thoughts can run and keep me up, making me tired and deeping this feeling the next day. And I feel like ive been withdrawing from my friends.

Its only when this feeling has been lifted then do i feel like doing something. Only afterwards will i feel ready and energized to work on the LP course, hangout, do projects, and other things. I want to create and aspire to my own visions for my life. The nights are mostly safe, I dont know why, but I usually feel fine during the nights. I notice less feelings of emptiness and I can allow myself to relax.

Anyone else have a similar experience with emptiness? Any advice?

Edited August 13, 2021 by CameronsExploring

[ted73104]

Do you know what has caused you to lose your motivation? Also, do you have close friends you could talk about this to?

[CameronsExploring]

@ted73104 Im not too sure, I just dont feel like doing much sometimes. Like things loose their value to me for a bit. It could be due to losing sleep, I usually struggle due to my mind running at night. Ill have to journal about it.

Sometimes I feel directionless so im taking the LP course to create that direction in life.

I do have a few friends that I could talk to about. Atleast one of them is able to relate in some way.

 

[ted73104]

Is it possible that you strongly believe motivation and achievement are important factors on what a person is worth in life? When you say you feel trapped when you lack motivation, is there a sense of urge that you should have motivation to do something?

Perhaps there is something you desire and you are pushing yourself too hard to obtain that specific thing. We all have a ideal self image on what kind of person we should be, however we may not have enough understanding on how to actualize that kind of self image. Many things are harder that we imagine, even if we wanted to change a simple habit would require lots of hard work. So you need to be easy on yourself on such things. Pressuring yourself is not going to achieve anything, although it does tell you how much you want that specific thing.

What you want exactly may not be easy to figure out. You may have to go step by step, doing surface level things to satisfy yourself on the short run, but then contemplating on what you really want in life to prepare for the long run.

[hamedsf]

feeling of emptiness is still a feeling not something as a real thing out there.

so whenever you feel it means you are trapped in that fuckin' emotion. try something to get out of it.

how? you might be lazy to do the necessary stuff on a daily basis and that might make you comfortable not grinding for your goal but that comfort in and of itself will produce negative feelings to make you do something. ]

actually, it's better to sweat in the process of achieving your goal then be comfortable and not doing anything special.

[Zigzag Idiot]

The method of inquiry in the Diamond Approach involves sitting with states of deficient emptiness. To completely allow them and even with whatever curiosity one can muster, delve into the core of these emotionally difficult states.

In doing so, it’s often found that the cause of these “holes” are revealed. This revelation is accompanied by a healing of a split off part of one’s essence. An undoing of the fracture IS the healing in which an ego structure was covering up an aspect of one’s essence. It’s slow gradual work healing ‘one hole of deficient emptiness’ at a time.

I’ve paraphrased the process. If you’re interested, the link below will be to a web page with more precise excerpts of this methodology.

https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/theory-holes

 

[Waken]

Maybe everyone is always avoiding that, trying to distract themselves from the emptiness of life, trying to not feel that by constantly being busy with stuff, creating a future idea of something to achieve, etc. How about not avoiding it?

[Zigzag Idiot]

Exactly @Waken 

In addition to being forgiving towards others another main idea conveyed in A  Course In Miracles is what you just wrote. What some call dissociation. I did a search on an ACIM site and pasted the results below for anyone who may be interested.

⬤T-4.VI

Your other life has continued without interruption, and has been and always will be totally unaffected by your attempts to dissociate it.

⬤T-4.VI

The separated mind cannot maintain the separation except by dissociating.

⬤T-4.VI

You do not recognize them now, but what has been dissociated is still there.

⬤T-5.II

His is the glory before which dissociation falls away, and the Kingdom of Heaven breaks through into its own.

⬤T-5.III

He may have dissociated the Call for God, just as you have.

⬤T-5.III

This dissociation is healed in both of you as you become aware of the Call for God in him, and thus acknowledge Its being.

⬤T-6.II

Exclusion and separation are synonymous, as are separation and dissociation.

⬤T-6.II

We have said before that the separation was and is dissociation, and that once it occurs projection becomes its main defense, or the device that keeps it going.

⬤T-6.III

By teaching peace you must learn it yourself, because you cannot teach what you still dissociate.

⬤T-6.V-B

These insane ideas are clearly the result of dissociation and projection.

⬤T-7.V

Fear produces dissociation, because it induces separation.

⬤T-7.VI

If you dissociate your mind from it you are perceiving the most powerful force in the universe as if it were weak, because you do not believe you are part of it.

⬤T-8.IV

It does this simply by dissociating itself from everything.

⬤T-8.V

Dissociation is not a solution; it is a delusion.

⬤T-9.VI

If it is in you and can produce joy, and if you see that it does produce joy in others, you must be dissociating it in yourself.

⬤T-9.VI

Therefore you can create as He did, and your dissociation will not alter this.

⬤T-10.II

Unless you first know something you cannot dissociate it.

⬤T-10.II

Knowledge must precede dissociation, so that dissociation is nothing more than a decision to forget.

⬤T-10.II

What has been forgotten then appears to be fearful, but only because the dissociation is an attack on truth.

⬤T-10.II

And you have replaced your knowledge by an awareness of dreams because you are afraid of your dissociation, not of what you have dissociated.

⬤T-10.II

When what you have dissociated is accepted, it ceases to be fearful.

⬤T-10.II

Yet to give up the dissociation of reality brings more than merely lack of fear.

⬤T-12.VII

This leads directly to dissociation, for it represents the acceptance of two goals, each perceived in a different place; separated from each other because you made them different.

⬤T-14.VII

You will realize that salvation must come to you this way, if you consider what dissociation is.

⬤T-14.VII

Dissociation is a distorted process of thinking whereby two systems of belief which cannot coexist are both maintained.

⬤T-15.I

Again the ego tries, and all too frequently succeeds, in doing both, by using dissociation for holding its contradictory aims together so that they seem to be reconciled.

⬤T-19.IV-D

Here is your promise never to allow union to call you out of separation; the great amnesia in which the memory of God seems quite forgotten; the cleavage of your Self from you;--the fear of God, the final step in your dissociation.

⬤T-21.V

Yet any part of knowledge threatens dissociation as much as all of it.

⬤W-96

Dissociated from its function now, it thinks it is alone and separate, attacked by armies massed against itself and hiding in the body’s frail support.

(acim.org/acim/chapter-15/the-holy-instant-and-special-relationships/en/s/194)

Taken From -

https://acim.org/acim/chapter-4/the-rewards-of-god/en/s/85?wid=search&q=Dissociation

 

[Nahm]

@CameronsExploring

There is a misappropriation, a mislabeling or miscategorizing of emptiness. Emptiness is the greatest feeling possible, and all things are possible in emptiness, and inspiration runs through your veins like electric love-bliss. 

What you’re experiencing is not emptiness, it is the reluctance to ‘empty your cup’. 

The expedited route is to do some things selflessly for others. Then you will realize the goodness of feeling sought is not coming from somewhere or something else, but arising in, as, you, because you are awesome. Unthinkably awesome. 

The emptiness of the sky is not reoccurring, but the clouds (thoughts) make it seem so. 

[CameronsExploring]

@Zigzag Idiot

On 8/13/2021 at 6:16 AM, ted73104 said:

Is it possible that you strongly believe motivation and achievement are important factors on what a person is worth in life?  

I think so, I can feel sort of bad about myself for not working on the goals I set for myself. I definitely dont like it when I lose my motivation to do work on my own things. I think I unconsciously place my sense of self-worth on what Ive been able to accomplish in a day. 

@Waken That seems about right, I think I do try to distract myself with things. If I have too much free time I end up not knowing what to do with myself often.

@Nahm Thank you for your post . Also what exactly do you mean by the goodness of feeling sought?

Edited August 14, 2021 by CameronsExploring

[Nahm]

@CameronsExploring

The feeling of actual emptiness. 

[Waken]

On 14-8-2021 at 8:34 AM, Zigzag Idiot said:

The separated mind cannot maintain the separation except by dissociating.

This one makes a lot of sense to me. Some interesting lines in there thank you for the share