Dear Peter,

I assume you have clothes, food, shelter, maybe even some pocketmoney :), so, why the *anxiety* to succeed or even just get established if thats a better choice of word? Of course we should give our energy to finding right livelihood, but should it be a cause for anxiety? Search for right livelihood has been very difficult for me, mostly due to fear, but it did not in itself make me anxious, I had (and still have to a small degree) social anxiety and fear because of my teens, just like you, but not anxiety about succeeding. I was and am aware that that is others expectations controlling me, the cause being that I/one has an image about myself which says “I’m capable, i have some capacity, i can do what others do just as well…” etc etc. So that is an example, a common, bare-bones one, and i proceed then to get hurt when the image gets threatened by my not living up to it, which has/is happening in yours and my case. But its just an image, and one I created myself. If we hold it, we are controlled by it until our dying day, or or more accurately, what we perceive others perception of our image to be. You seem a clever fellow, Im sure you see how utterly futile it is to play this game. We are only monkeys if we play this game, there is no freedom in life this way. We build up and nourish this image in our formative years as a defence mechanism, then it comes back to haunt us because we are controlled by the feeling that we have to keep up to it. Simple stuff, yet we seem not to want to give up on it. Pity.

“But what I’m wondering is: is stepping away from your ambition not also a step away from purpose? Isolation, although sometimes necessary, does not seem constructive in the long run.”

I tried to explain above how I personally (which I discovered mostly through J Krishnamurti’s talks) consider the image I have about myself, built up since childhood, to be responsible for ambition in its common meaning. In this sense, ambition has no meaning. So, can a man with no garden-variety ambition, with no image in his head that he is this or that, clever or stupid or artistic or whatever, find a purpose? Surely he can. To be personl for a moment, I would like to become a small urban market gardner because i think that serves a good function in life. But I dont need a mite of ambition or self-image to see that. Ambition means self-fulfillment, and that and right livelihood will surely never meet.

I am not trying to advocate that people isolate. That would be crazy. I think I said don’t shun being alone when the time to be alone is upon you, which it may be at this time, thats all. Life brings us what we need. If we find ourselves alone, it be what we need at that time. When you are surrounded by people/facebook, its very hard to have insight, because the images are whirring away. I harp on about that, but only because its the root of everything. Aloneness, which I repeat i dont advocate for in itself, has meant I have learned things about who i am and what it means to be a human being that I could never have learned if things went swimmingly, or were socially connected 24/7. I would not swap my position. I certainly would like to be involved socially and economically, but it has to happen naturally and organically as a person gets healthy again. If its being rushed, that is the image doing the rushing.

The inner child method is one Im familiar with and its helped a lot people, myself included. But I dont think it goes the whole way. I did it, I remember crying as I did it and feeling a sense of release, and while it did help, theres stuff it didnt get at, which is, in my observation, ones own reaction at the time of events. We have, I think, to see how our own behavior contributed to it. In my own case, my getting hurt, which was partly the fault of others, was also my own fault, since I had formed a certain image of myself that got then got injured. I thought I was such and such, gentle, kind, etc and then others trod on and were generally rought with me, and I was hurt. So my hurt was my own doing to a great extent. This can be hard to accept initally. When I see this, which is the work im doing at the moment, it integrates the experience much more deeply than just the inner child work alone. Any sage worth his salt has said that insight is the liberating factor, so there must be insight into the whole of hurt, not just any one particular hurtful experience, otherwise even individual hurts cannot be fully wiped away. That is my 2c anyway, for what its worth. As Anita pointed out and which i see myself even this last month, there is more energy and clarity when past hurts are recalled and dealt with properly.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by brian.