Deleted by Will

[John]

Re: Deleted by Will

A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted
by John O'Donohue

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The ride you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

[roky]

Re: Deleted by Will

john o'donohue, anam cara, right? -- love the book

will see you, will --

steph, you sound stuck in the middle place, maybe? -- not the beginner's mind -- my daughter is there sometimes -- she is very sensitive, fortunately, and intelligent, surely like you in that way -- but having enough practice to experience emptiness, and to not be able to fall back on the bullshit coping mechanisms(can't fake it), but not a strong enough practice to get beyond the emptiness -- i hear what you say, but i still think, practice mucho -- and help others, as you already do -- oh, and though its not zen, try metta -- i assume you know how, if not, let me know, easy exercise, cause if you feel this bad, you are not loving you -- due to the tremendous conditioning we get, depending on our past, i don't see anything wrong with a little metta to jumpstart the process -- even doing the metta exercise once will help "diagnose" what's up -- for example, "may ( )be well, may ( )live happily" , starting with someone you love, to someone neutral, to someone you hate( like hitler) -- and somewhere in there, you -- often helps to imagine them as a child(had to do that for my abusive mom) -- and if like me, you can't do it for you, that's a dead giveaway of the core of the problem, no? -- the key here is that this is actually all you, in your many forms, and any one you're rejecting, is like rejecting your little toe, or whatever

i know this sounds hokey, but i'm not into hokey, and this does work -- and then, at the appropriate point, you let the exercise go -- but at this point, i think you could afford to indulge yourself

gassho, bob

[AlanLa]

Re: Deleted by Will

I agree with Chet, Steph. It is easier to befriend your demons than to fight them. Speaking for myself, the more I fought my demons the tighter we held on to each other. I have learned that can't beat my demons. At most, I can sometimes hold them down. But once I learned how to identify them and then get to truly know them on an intimate* level, then give them love/metta (or whatever they need), then they finally settle down and leave me alone, at least for the most part - as I am certainly not demon-free (who is?). There are techniques to befriending demons, but in the end all the techniques are really doing is the same as in zazen, helping you to Let Them Go. Easy to do this? Not at all. Worth the effort? Up to you to decide.

*You already know what the thoughts are like, but what do your demons look, feel, taste, sound, and smell like?

[John]

Re: Deleted by Will

john o'donohue, anam cara, right? -- love the book

It's from "To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings"

Gassho,
John

[roky]

Re: Deleted by Will

john, do you know his book, "anam cara-- a book of celtic wisdom"? -- a beautiful book, from a great writer

gassho, bob

[Stephanie]

Re: Deleted by Will

You guys rock. And I'm not just saying that to be nice. A lot of useful things you've posted here.

Chet--you're dead on the money with the therapy recommendation. I've been wanting to see a therapist for months now, and hopefully will be able to make it happen within the next few months. I know I need it. To sort some things out and clarify some things, at the very least. It was partly what I discovered in the social work program I'm in and partly the encouragement of folks here at Treeleaf that convinced me that this is something I need to do.

And believe it or not, I've had the very experience you describe, and multiple times at that. But somehow it doesn't seem to stick. That wonderfully liberating feeling of fullness, of totality, that nothing more is needed, eventually gives way to the dead opposite, a kind of shadow of that experience, of bone-crushing emptiness (and I don't mean the word in the "Zen sense," but the "black hole" sort of sense). Has anyone here read any Emil Cioran? He absolutely does the best job of nailing down that experience in writing of any writer I know. Anyway... I read what I write now and I see that subtext of "bipolar" there. My whole spiritual life has been like that--really high highs and really low lows, ad nauseum.

And yes, I think the best tool practice has given me, at least of late, is the ability to have moments where I'm recognizing that I'm adding something extra by fighting or resisting whatever is going on. When I can stop doing that, when I can listen to the demons instead of fight them, most of the psychic distress of the experience actually drains away. It becomes interesting, instead of terrible. And then the humor can come in too.

John--thank you for that beautiful poem. Very apt.

Bob--thank you for that eloquent distillation of the inner geography of my current location. It's encouraging to think of it as the "middle place." I think part of my difficulty has been adding onto the dark moods with the depressive attitude that this is it, this is the ultimate, this is how it really is and is always going to be. When I know from my past experience how many times I've thought such things and haven't had the faintest clue how far from "it" I actually was.

You're dead on with the pointer that all this rejection points to a rejection of myself on some level. The self-loathing thing can run really deep, and when I can catch it, when I can see that one of the fundamental things is an inability to let myself enjoy what I enjoy, and that this is coming from within me rather than being some cosmic truth, it's a huge relief. Metta certainly helps.

Alan--more excellent advice. In the moment, it's so easy to forget that fighting isn't the only option. Your way is much more expansive and interesting.

Gassho--

[disastermouse]

Telll me more about the black hole...

How fast does the 'flipping' happen? Do you feel intrinsically 'empty'? Like you have no center? Do you/have you cut yourself? Threatened suicide? Do you sometimes feel like you were 'put together wrong' or that you're intrinsically deficient or missing some special 'part' that everyone else has? Do you dread beginning relationship or friendships because you know that your behavior will drive people away?

[Jarkko]

Re: Deleted by Will

Hi will!

i dont know what was your original posting but take care in there. Trust with your heart fully on practice, Metta!

this is nothing new in here but..

As all things are buddha-dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, and birth and death, and there are buddhas and sentient beings.
As the myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death.
The buddha way is, basically, leaping clear of the many and the one; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas.
Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread.

Gassho

Jarkko

[John]

Re: Deleted by Will

john, do you know his book, "anam cara-- a book of celtic wisdom"? -- a beautiful book, from a great writer

Yes Bob, I ordered the book after I came back from retreat last week, after hearing a talk in which one of his poems were mentioned, one that I liked very much. John O'Donoghue died earlier this year, unfortunately. http://www.jodonohue.com/

You might find this strange, but I would have found it very difficult to read poetry written by a Catholic priest until recently. My Protestant Belfast upbringing left me with an antipathy to anything Celtic that has taken a few years to overcome. Practising meditation in a Catholic retreat centre with Catholics has helped to remove most of my Protestant bigotry, though,

gassho,
John

[Stephanie]

Re: Deleted by Will

How fast does the 'flipping' happen? Do you feel intrinsically 'empty'? Like you have no center? Do you/have you cut yourself? Threatened suicide? Do you sometimes feel like you were 'put together wrong' or that you're intrinsically deficient or missing some special 'part' that everyone else has? Do you dread beginning relationship or friendships because you know that your behavior will drive people away?

No cutting, suicidal threats or attempts, not really even any mildly self-destructive behavior (I told you I was too boring to be borderline). It's not a rapid shift but a slow descent and it's only when I'm in the dark place that I realize it's happened. People who don't know me well might not even know it's going on. One relative told me she knows when I'm in a darker mood because I simply "disappear" for a while. Don't call as much, if at all. I seek out solitude to the extent I can. Not because I feel there's something bad in me I must keep away from other people, but because I don't want to bother with people and their drama and bullshit and need, I want them to leave me alone.

There's a feeling of emptiness but I don't experience it as me being "empty" relative to others, but as everything being empty, a pointless farce. My life, but also everyone else's. I imagine that everyone knows they're faking it because they can't possibly see there being a point either, unless they are just stupid, in which case, good for them, I pray they maintain their innocence. Everyone else is living in bad faith. The song "It's A Wonderful World" wrecks me because I hear it as coming from this desperate hope that all these little things really are wonderful, that they somehow redeem the absurdity of our condition. But they don't.

I still feel compassion for people who are suffering--I can still feel some things--but I know that ultimately there's nothing beyond human sentiment that gives meaning to their suffering. God doesn't care about them, and even if I do, there is only so much I can do for them, if anything. My suffering is like this too. Except I take pains not to let people see it (everywhere but here, that is), as I know that so many people who try to reach out to you are doing it in an ego-centered way in which they're doing it to try to illustrate some point to you or to themselves. I find this nasty and it provokes a sadistic response in me.

I don't do things to provoke a rescuing response in others. For me to do so would be cruel because I do not believe I, or anyone else, can be "rescued" from certain things. Sure, you can be rescued from a knife-wielding attacker, or certain messes you get yourself into. But you can't be rescued from the absurd. I find gestures of kindness endearing, but there is also a tragedy to them in that they are swallowed up by the nothingness of the universe. Someone being nice to me makes me smile, but it doesn't alleviate the despair. Sometimes it intensifies it.

I certainly have self-loathing issues but I do not find them to be the cause or main concern of the despair. At times, I may not feel that I am very good, but then most people aren't either. My main issue is that life seems not to be very good. Not in the sense of "not good" relative to some imaginable "good" life could be if only x, y, and z. But in the sense that it's just a whole lot of "sound and fury, signifying nothing."

But I take pains to tell you that seeing this futility of life does not make me feel suicidal. The act of suicide would be as absurd as the act of living.

[robert]

Re: Deleted by Will

There's a feeling of emptiness but I don't experience it as me being "empty" relative to others, but as everything being empty, a pointless farce. My life, but also everyone else's. I imagine that everyone knows they're faking it because they can't possibly see there being a point either, unless they are just stupid, in which case, good for them, I pray they maintain their innocence. Everyone else is living in bad faith. The song "It's A Wonderful World" wrecks me because I hear it as coming from this desperate hope that all these little things really are wonderful, that they somehow redeem the absurdity of our condition. But they don't.

I've had similar thoughts...particularly after putting all my energy and committment into something, then realizing that even if accomplished it will mean nothing in the long run...everything just gone and forgotten. Imagine some people in science...spending fifty years working on a theory, only to have it undone overnight by some up-and-coming grad student. Or reading cosmology...the thought of rocks and space matter and non-sentient processes, all just happening without any reason or ultimate origin, and once we're gone no one to observe it. Frightening!

Consciousness itself is a form of "bad faith" in a sense, a huge consensual illusion playing out in our brains. But then again, what's bad about that? It's just the way we've evolved; values (good, bad) are part of meaning systems generated by us, so therefore a part of the same farce we are attempting to critique. For better or worse, humans rely on fictions of sorts -- religious, poetic, ideological -- for needs that cannot be addressed through logic and reason. Sometimes I think that the Shin Buddhists are the smartest -- they acknowledge, basicially, that their whole narrative is just an "expedient". In the end, what isn't?

When I get drawn into existential angst I think a little bit about how the rest of the globe gets through the day...people who work terrible grueling jobs for a living, who barely have time for a cigarette break, let alone time to worry about the Big Picture. Am I wiser than them? Nah. Just more privileged.

Best regards,
Rob

[disastermouse]

Re: Deleted by Will

How fast does the 'flipping' happen? Do you feel intrinsically 'empty'? Like you have no center? Do you/have you cut yourself? Threatened suicide? Do you sometimes feel like you were 'put together wrong' or that you're intrinsically deficient or missing some special 'part' that everyone else has? Do you dread beginning relationship or friendships because you know that your behavior will drive people away?

No cutting, suicidal threats or attempts, not really even any mildly self-destructive behavior (I told you I was too boring to be borderline). It's not a rapid shift but a slow descent and it's only when I'm in the dark place that I realize it's happened. People who don't know me well might not even know it's going on. One relative told me she knows when I'm in a darker mood because I simply "disappear" for a while. Don't call as much, if at all. I seek out solitude to the extent I can. Not because I feel there's something bad in me I must keep away from other people, but because I don't want to bother with people and their drama and bullshit and need, I want them to leave me alone.

There's a feeling of emptiness but I don't experience it as me being "empty" relative to others, but as everything being empty, a pointless farce. My life, but also everyone else's. I imagine that everyone knows they're faking it because they can't possibly see there being a point either, unless they are just stupid, in which case, good for them, I pray they maintain their innocence. Everyone else is living in bad faith. The song "It's A Wonderful World" wrecks me because I hear it as coming from this desperate hope that all these little things really are wonderful, that they somehow redeem the absurdity of our condition. But they don't.

I still feel compassion for people who are suffering--I can still feel some things--but I know that ultimately there's nothing beyond human sentiment that gives meaning to their suffering. God doesn't care about them, and even if I do, there is only so much I can do for them, if anything. My suffering is like this too. Except I take pains not to let people see it (everywhere but here, that is), as I know that so many people who try to reach out to you are doing it in an ego-centered way in which they're doing it to try to illustrate some point to you or to themselves. I find this nasty and it provokes a sadistic response in me.

I don't do things to provoke a rescuing response in others. For me to do so would be cruel because I do not believe I, or anyone else, can be "rescued" from certain things. Sure, you can be rescued from a knife-wielding attacker, or certain messes you get yourself into. But you can't be rescued from the absurd. I find gestures of kindness endearing, but there is also a tragedy to them in that they are swallowed up by the nothingness of the universe. Someone being nice to me makes me smile, but it doesn't alleviate the despair. Sometimes it intensifies it.

I certainly have self-loathing issues but I do not find them to be the cause or main concern of the despair. At times, I may not feel that I am very good, but then most people aren't either. My main issue is that life seems not to be very good. Not in the sense of "not good" relative to some imaginable "good" life could be if only x, y, and z. But in the sense that it's just a whole lot of "sound and fury, signifying nothing."

But I take pains to tell you that seeing this futility of life does not make me feel suicidal. The act of suicide would be as absurd as the act of living.

What you described sounds like it's probably chemical....just based on the way that you describe it. Do you get tired during these times as well?

*I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist*

Chet

[Stephanie]

Re: Deleted by Will

Chet,

No doubt that some, if not much, of this is coming from psychological issues. Now whether it is from pure neurobiology, purely a "chemical" thing, or whether it comes out of my childhood conditioning (emotionally unreliable / unavailable parents = an internal "object world" devoid of reliable objects; me being the emotional caretaker instead of caretakee = difficulty believing others can or will meet my needs, etc.), I don't know. But as people advised me here a while back, I certainly believe at the very least I need to see a therapist and hash this out, sort out how deeply rooted my spiritual / philosophical questions are rooted in personal psych issues.

But yes, as to the chemical / physical side: things that run in my family include depression, bipolar, eccentric and socially non-normative behavior, suicide, alcoholism, and violence. Superficially I come across as a pretty cheery person--people find me warm and approachable on average--but even when I'm feeling cheerful, there's always some sort of darkness there. I grew up in a house where depressive and angry behavior was common and tend to be more on the depressive side--low energy, etc. It's just how my mind is, and I don't mind. I don't need to be "fitter happier" etc., but I do feel this need to have a meaning for what I'm doing that transcends what I make up as I go along. Is this a displaced psychological need, or something "more"? Going to a therapist will certainly help me sort that out.

I appreciate your helping me think through this.

Stephanie

[Jundo]

Re: Deleted by Will

Going to a therapist will certainly help me sort that out.

Steph,

I can only speak as someone who had depression for many years in my teens and twenties ... don't put seeing the therapist off. Do it this week. Why wait? There are always a million reasons and excuses to not do so. And if it does have a chemical or other physical component, as your family history seems to point to, be open to some anti-depressants or the like if the doctor advices (make sure it is a therapist who also offers that option in addition to talk therapy and the like). Pharmaceuticals are over-prescribed in this country, but on the other hand, very often they are truly helpful.

My depression lifted about 22 years ago. Same world, now seen in very different ways from the (it seemed at the time) hopeless, black hole I was in. Now its not rose colored glasses for sure, but neither is it seeing the world through shattered glass. More now like seeing the world just through good eye glasses.

Your Zazen and Zen practice can only help with all this, I think. But if there is a physiological or bio-chemical element in your family, that needs to be looked at too. Don't wait. Give it a try.

Gassho, Jundo

[AlanLa]

Re: Deleted by Will

Ditto what Jundo says, but let me emphasize that prescriptions alone are NOT the answer. What's going on with you MAY be chemical in your brain, but it is also Outside your brain. Let me emphasize that the best way to go is BOTH prescriptions (if an expert says to take some) and talk therapy. I repeat, DO NOT do drugs without talk. And by all means, find a therapist you can talk to honestly and completely. It's sort of like Jundo describes zazen, if that person don't feel right, then he/she ain't right. This is not to say it won't be uncomfortable, because it will be. That's part of the process. But it needs to be a person you can share that discomfort with.

Good effort to you!!!