Re: Buddhist and Borderline.
Hello to Chet and all other's posting here!
Quite a wonderful thread, really. I don't think it is uncommon, this painful state you summed up so well "I don't know how to continue as a person with these problems, Everything in my life is constantly in jeopardy because of it."
As Seung Sahn Soen Sunim is quoted to often say: 'Only don't know.'
To tell you the truth, I'm beginning to think that this 'borderline' business is a normal response to entering the 'adult' world, the work world, society. That is: there is nothing wrong with you. To me it is the process of transition (and similar in magnitude to the transitions of womb to world, crawling to walking)it finds it's expression in a more adult form of 'tantrum.' Those areas of our psyche, our being which have not been tempered (our tempers might fall into this category) now get 'hammered out'--so that even our tempers get tempered!
I therefore don't see it as 'you with a problem' but as you working out these strange hidden unspoken equations in the workbook of daily curriculum called LIFE.
One way to work with these things is to categorize them: BPD, PTSD, etc., and maybe it helps: having a name and a description, surely it helps by taking away a sense that it is only you, or unique to you.
I look back on my own years of irrational raging (at parking places , at red lights, at soured milk, at being late for work). I see now that there was rage inside me looking for a place to be expressed--like lightning looking for the closest place to 'ground.'
Lucky for me I had my son later during this process (I was 39) and so much had played itself out already. I still had moments of raging, and while these were not expressed at him (I specialized in inanimate objects), he did witness them. By that time these things weren't frequent. I had found causes to champion--I was shop steward for my union--and got to harness this energy against injustices.
As I look at it now, I believe most of it (the raging, the energy expressing itself as rage--which oddly enough was a form of depression) was due to stress or constraints I bound myself to: I was encountering a clash of worlds: the one of my own making and reality itself, throw in the world's of other's making into the mix...3 ring circus!
But while I believe the stress was between my ears, I still had something to 'express,' something to 'get out of me' -- this mental/emotional/physical place ending up in tantrum is no different to my way of thinking than using two hands, two fingers to 'squeeze' a boil or a pimple.
As I've gotten older, sometimes irrational rage from mostly younger (but not always) people gets expressed toward me!! And I can recognize it for what it is--not personal--no more than a fart is 'personal.'
I greatly benefitted from structure even though at times I would rail against it. I greatly benefitted from the coolness and warmth I experienced in zen and through my encounters with various zen teachers in whom I met friendliness which denies dependency (I'm talking co-dependency stuff here, not inter-dependency). I got to experience what I guess I would call inert intimacy or noble intimacy (like inert, noble gases of the periodic chart of elements).
All of this is metaphor and metaphor only works up to a point.
The simplest way to explain it is that I am a late, late, bloomer: I'm finally growing up.
Pema Chodron in a talk I heard on the radio late one night (KPFK archives has some good stuff--Something's Happening Show). She said something to the effect "There really only is one mantra "OM, GROW UP, Svaha!"
Chet, It is happening, and you are. You aren't saying "it's them it's them", already a plus, you are saying 'it's me, it's me,' but that isn't quite it, either, it is closer to 'it's my condition,' which is a good perspective with which to work with it. Condition is not a solid, rigid thing. You are not a solid, rigid thing.
As far as relationships go, all I can say is when I was young I experienced much wonderful, loving relationships and much misunderstanding and turmoil and many break-ups. Why oh why could I not have just had lovely friendships and shared sexual delights with others without this false burden for them to bear of being 'permanent life long partner.' That search for the 'ultimate' partner was what ultimately killed off beautiful relationships from enjoying themselves on their own terms--
I am now not sexually active, at least not with others. I enjoy a closeness and an intimacy in my friendships which surpasses (hard to believe but true) the sexual intimacy with others I had when younger.
I've come to understand, at least for me, that I was not cut out to be in a co-habiting relationship with another, at least not yet. Maybe when I 'grow up' some more? Yet, oddly, I've never been happier (and this is the past 5 - 8 years or so), and things just are better and better.
What happened to that suicidal high school girl I was, what happened to the young woman whose emotional pain was so great, she thought she would die from it? What happened to that search for another to love, to understand, the longing to be understood and loved? I have no idea.
I can't say zazen practice made the difference--because I can't go back and clone myself and see what would have happened if I had been Catholic instead, or if I had stayed in my marriage or if I had majored in a biological science instead--
All I know is that I continued to practice zazen and I continue to practice zazen..
However, Zazen isn't for everyone, and I would never recommend it. I don't know what I would have done without it: zazen and the passage of time to let 'growing up' happen. All I know is everything is so wonderful now, now that my body is starting to decline! I enjoy even what I don't enjoy! Now there's gratitude!
Please forgive me for this lengthy and very wordy post. May it be of help to someone somewhere!
I'm off to do errands.
Everyone have a good weekend!
PS I just wanted to add that I really appreciated what others wrote, all of the comments quite excellent and thoughtful.
I also wanted to say that in retrospect the part of myself I hate is the part of myself that hated parts of myself!!!!!
Hello to Chet and all other's posting here!
Quite a wonderful thread, really. I don't think it is uncommon, this painful state you summed up so well "I don't know how to continue as a person with these problems, Everything in my life is constantly in jeopardy because of it."
As Seung Sahn Soen Sunim is quoted to often say: 'Only don't know.'
To tell you the truth, I'm beginning to think that this 'borderline' business is a normal response to entering the 'adult' world, the work world, society. That is: there is nothing wrong with you. To me it is the process of transition (and similar in magnitude to the transitions of womb to world, crawling to walking)it finds it's expression in a more adult form of 'tantrum.' Those areas of our psyche, our being which have not been tempered (our tempers might fall into this category) now get 'hammered out'--so that even our tempers get tempered!
I therefore don't see it as 'you with a problem' but as you working out these strange hidden unspoken equations in the workbook of daily curriculum called LIFE.
One way to work with these things is to categorize them: BPD, PTSD, etc., and maybe it helps: having a name and a description, surely it helps by taking away a sense that it is only you, or unique to you.
I look back on my own years of irrational raging (at parking places , at red lights, at soured milk, at being late for work). I see now that there was rage inside me looking for a place to be expressed--like lightning looking for the closest place to 'ground.'
Lucky for me I had my son later during this process (I was 39) and so much had played itself out already. I still had moments of raging, and while these were not expressed at him (I specialized in inanimate objects), he did witness them. By that time these things weren't frequent. I had found causes to champion--I was shop steward for my union--and got to harness this energy against injustices.
As I look at it now, I believe most of it (the raging, the energy expressing itself as rage--which oddly enough was a form of depression) was due to stress or constraints I bound myself to: I was encountering a clash of worlds: the one of my own making and reality itself, throw in the world's of other's making into the mix...3 ring circus!
But while I believe the stress was between my ears, I still had something to 'express,' something to 'get out of me' -- this mental/emotional/physical place ending up in tantrum is no different to my way of thinking than using two hands, two fingers to 'squeeze' a boil or a pimple.
As I've gotten older, sometimes irrational rage from mostly younger (but not always) people gets expressed toward me!! And I can recognize it for what it is--not personal--no more than a fart is 'personal.'
I greatly benefitted from structure even though at times I would rail against it. I greatly benefitted from the coolness and warmth I experienced in zen and through my encounters with various zen teachers in whom I met friendliness which denies dependency (I'm talking co-dependency stuff here, not inter-dependency). I got to experience what I guess I would call inert intimacy or noble intimacy (like inert, noble gases of the periodic chart of elements).
All of this is metaphor and metaphor only works up to a point.
The simplest way to explain it is that I am a late, late, bloomer: I'm finally growing up.
Pema Chodron in a talk I heard on the radio late one night (KPFK archives has some good stuff--Something's Happening Show). She said something to the effect "There really only is one mantra "OM, GROW UP, Svaha!"
Chet, It is happening, and you are. You aren't saying "it's them it's them", already a plus, you are saying 'it's me, it's me,' but that isn't quite it, either, it is closer to 'it's my condition,' which is a good perspective with which to work with it. Condition is not a solid, rigid thing. You are not a solid, rigid thing.
As far as relationships go, all I can say is when I was young I experienced much wonderful, loving relationships and much misunderstanding and turmoil and many break-ups. Why oh why could I not have just had lovely friendships and shared sexual delights with others without this false burden for them to bear of being 'permanent life long partner.' That search for the 'ultimate' partner was what ultimately killed off beautiful relationships from enjoying themselves on their own terms--
I am now not sexually active, at least not with others. I enjoy a closeness and an intimacy in my friendships which surpasses (hard to believe but true) the sexual intimacy with others I had when younger.
I've come to understand, at least for me, that I was not cut out to be in a co-habiting relationship with another, at least not yet. Maybe when I 'grow up' some more? Yet, oddly, I've never been happier (and this is the past 5 - 8 years or so), and things just are better and better.
What happened to that suicidal high school girl I was, what happened to the young woman whose emotional pain was so great, she thought she would die from it? What happened to that search for another to love, to understand, the longing to be understood and loved? I have no idea.
I can't say zazen practice made the difference--because I can't go back and clone myself and see what would have happened if I had been Catholic instead, or if I had stayed in my marriage or if I had majored in a biological science instead--
All I know is that I continued to practice zazen and I continue to practice zazen..
However, Zazen isn't for everyone, and I would never recommend it. I don't know what I would have done without it: zazen and the passage of time to let 'growing up' happen. All I know is everything is so wonderful now, now that my body is starting to decline! I enjoy even what I don't enjoy! Now there's gratitude!
Please forgive me for this lengthy and very wordy post. May it be of help to someone somewhere!
I'm off to do errands.
Everyone have a good weekend!
PS I just wanted to add that I really appreciated what others wrote, all of the comments quite excellent and thoughtful.
I also wanted to say that in retrospect the part of myself I hate is the part of myself that hated parts of myself!!!!!
Comment