Troubled by an existential dilemma! (Major trigger warning!)

[ExistentialMuse]

Hello,

To contextualize things, let me start off by emphasizing that this question is being asked from a poignantly pragmatic stance, as opposed to some hypothetical armchair or meditative ass-cushion one. In other words, the young-adult persona typing this question is standing on their God-given feet, trying to make life decisions.

The essence of this query has to do with how awakening/enlightenment may shift ones relationship-outlook as such (including how it pertains to my particular situation which I'll get into in a moment).

To be more specific, I'm asking whether enlightenment/awakening serves* to “enhance/enrich” relationships (making them more profound than they would be in a normal state of consciousness) or whether it actually “ruins/spoils” the spellbinding magic of them.

You see, as an introvert who has struggled their entire life with being intimate/romantic (including the cultivation of friendships in general), I initially turned to spirituality with the hope it would help me “get out of my head” and make it easier to actualize my desire for connecting with others.

With that being said, upon delving deeper, I inevitably ran into non-dual teachings. These of course talk about the “illusion of otherness” - a message, which I'm afraid has impacted me in the most ironically soul-crushing manner. In short, this news has pretty much capsized my stage-green, interpersonal endeavors and has left me in a sea of crippling depression. Note: My unrest hasn't just merely come from teachings, but also experiences on substances.

Given that I have no way of feasibly erasing my memory of my current circumstances that wouldn’t entail committing suicide, I’m frankly desperate for some yellow/turquoise wisdom in terms of moving forward. I say this because I’m doubtful that a therapist, (who would in all likelihood be operating from some limited orange/green paradigm) could offer that much help. At least, this is the way I see it at any rate - especially since my quandary has now inflated to a metaphysical level as opposed to being merely psychological.

To be blunt, as a spiritual amateur who has only half-assed the “oneness/awakening game” and as an autistic incel who has no ass in the “social/collective game”, I feel like I'm imbibing the worst of both worlds so to speak. I never could've guessed God would ever dare to have such a dark sense of humor - even in his wildest dreams.

Thanks,

Edited February 22, 2022 by ExistentialMuse

[peanutspathtotruth]

Beautifully written! Welcome to the forum, and thanks for being so open and vulnerable.

There are so many angles we could look at here. Enlightenment doesn't "serve" anything. But in the way you wanna hear it, in my experience, it does both. The loss of the sense of otherness can take out the magical spark of sexual attraction - then again, if you truly see how it's all you, the magic is increased tenfold.

In the beginning, you're in love because you think there's someone giving you love and you feel validated, liked, pleased, all the good stuff. Then you're seeing that actually, this other person is not a person, and neither are you, and they are not giving you anything. This can feel disappointing - no one will ever fulfill you.

But then you can see how it's all love. All of it. And this beautiful embodiment of your love that you call your crush or partner is there for you to love and to share beautiful, soulful, infinite love. They don't give it to you. You are it. Sex becomes a celebration of your infinity that just wants to melt in a constant reaffirmation of union and the annihilation of all boundaries.

A commitment to a partner can be a commitment to embody your enlightenment in a beautiful way. Some don't even bother committing and putting in the hard work. Others say it's one of the most challenging and fruitful paths of embodying awakening. I have come to agree with the latter. All parts of life will be affected by your awakenings. Embrace it all. You want relationship? Then go experience them from where you are. That's your horizontal development. Then, let your spiritual work be your vertical development. Both go hand in hand.

[LastThursday]

@ExistentialMuse I'm sorry you feel the way you do.

I'll just pick up on the use of the word illusion here:

1 hour ago, ExistentialMuse said:

“illusion of otherness”

It's easy to get tripped up with this and confuse illusion for not existing or not being real. I can state for a certainty that others exist and are real, and you should think of them and interact with them with that in mind.

Illusion is just a pointer. It says that the everyday notion of "others" is not what you thought it was. That's not so strange. When we look inside a car, we see an engine made of zillions of parts and oil and wires and so on. Normally, we just drive and press the brakes and the gas pedal and look out of the windows. A car in a sense is an illusion, because it normally hides all the complexity away from you.

Once you look inside a car, you can't undo what you've seen, but you still drive the car and believe the illusion. Nothing changes except your knowledge.

[ExistentialMuse]

@peanutspathtotruth Thanks for your reply. I get your point about the term “serve” and in retrospect, I would say it didn’t quite capture the essence of what I was trying to communicate in the first place. Perhaps a better way of putting it would have been: I'm trying to understand the “side effects” of awakening (if I can put it that way) as it pertains to relationships specifically.

[peanutspathtotruth]

6 minutes ago, ExistentialMuse said:

@peanutspathtotruth Thanks for your reply. I get your point about the term “serve” and in retrospect, I would say it didn’t quite capture the essence of what I was trying to communicate in the first place. Perhaps a better way of putting it would have been: I'm trying to understand the “side effects” of awakening (if I can put it that way) as it pertains to relationships specifically.

I see. And I think I kind of addressed that: you might see your aloneness and your seeing through illusions as temporal disappointments. You see that what you thought would fulfill you (a relationship) in fact could never do that. It's all you. This realization can hurt a lot. But it is also the most beautiful thing to see. I guess that the unfoldment of it is unique to everyone. So you will have to find out.

Let me just quote the essential summary of "A Course In Miracles" to tell you that you don't need to worry. Enlightenment will take everything from you that is false. But that wasn't even real, so you didn't lose anything:

"Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists."

[ExistentialMuse]

@LastThursday Thanks for trying to bring some nuance to the table. Considering how such a “spiritually germane” term such as “illusion” could become prone to be used as a sort of “fill in the blank” buzzword for more than one communicative purpose, it would be worthwhile for there to be more elaboration on how it’s being used - if that hasn't been done already.

Edited February 21, 2022 by ExistentialMuse

[ExistentialMuse]

@peanutspathtotruth Thanks again for such empathic responses. It's honestly unclear to me what the proper way is to construe my desire for relationships in the first place. Perhaps I'm seeking fulfillment or maybe I just want to romance in an enjoyably delusional manner for a time.

Edited February 22, 2022 by ExistentialMuse

[BipolarGrowth]

This work has at times lost me friendships and romantic relationships. It also has given me many higher quality friendships than I ever had before. I find pursuing a romantic relationship to be not worth the trouble unless the person was a truly good fit or things happened rather naturally now. I think this might actually be quite good for me personally as I used to be a romantic love addict to a degree. 
 

I think the main thing to keep in mind is that you’re differentiating yourself with this work. This naturally can lead to some isolation from people with certain perspectives simply because there might not be enough overlapping interests to create a good foundation for a friendship or romantic relationship. I would say that this process has brought me to the depth of friendships and relationships I wanted though at times. I have many friends, pretty much exclusively online, who I can discuss this work with, and this has been one of the best things to ever happen to me. 
 

If you want to create good friendships and relationships, it can be beneficial to try to make those connections in places where people share similar interests. 
 

Best of luck. 

[ExistentialMuse]

@BipolarGrowth Thanks for the encouragement. As a person who was heavily indoctrinated into a very religious/conservative worldview, my knee-jerk reaction ended up being a headfirst plunge into meta(_) views to understand what the hell is going on. Moreover, I retrospectively realized this was (at least in part), an addictive, subconscious attempt to disillusion myself from all the unhealthy programming I had received - which a junkie like myself, is probably going to keep doing.

Unfortunately, my inspiration to to pursue normie human affairs, (such as the kind we've discussed) has been stifled - which is what I'm trying to get over as it's quite difficult to do something unless it's being done in-spirit (inspiration). In other words, one's “gonads” “gut” “heart” “soul” “cortex” etc has to be into it (so to speak), otherwise it feels like one is just pulling along a bunch of apathetic apparitions.

Edited February 22, 2022 by ExistentialMuse

[BipolarGrowth]

On 2/22/2022 at 2:21 PM, ExistentialMuse said:

@BipolarGrowth Thanks for the encouragement. As a person who was heavily indoctrinated into a very religious/conservative worldview, my knee-jerk reaction ended up being a headfirst plunge into meta(_) views to understand what the hell is going on. Moreover, I retrospectively realized this was (at least in part), an addictive, subconscious attempt to disillusion myself from all the unhealthy programming I had received - which a junkie like myself, is probably going to keep doing.

Unfortunately, my inspiration to to pursue normie human affairs, (such as the kind we've discussed) has been stifled - which is what I'm trying to get over as it's quite difficult to do something unless it's being done in-spirit (inspiration). In other words, one's “gonads” “gut” “heart” “soul” “cortex” etc has to be into it (so to speak), otherwise it feels like one is just pulling along a bunch of apathetic apparitions.

Then just develop yourself where your interests lie when you have the time rather than forcing “normal” activities which are unfulfilling. Eventually, you’ll probably exhaust the interest in spirituality to a degree and normal stuff might be more appealing again. At least that’s what happened for me. 

[ExistentialMuse]

@BipolarGrowth Interesting. One of my biggest difficulties has been to face my fears and not get carried away by emotion and also to wisely strategize things in such a way that there aren't pathological imbalances - which can lead to negative emotion in the first place. I guess it's about learning self-love.

Edited February 24, 2022 by ExistentialMuse