Hi Sammy

How to reconcile existence (life) with the fact that to experience existence (life) is to experience suffering?

Life a continues cycle of birth and death. Spring dies to Summer which dies to Fall which dies to Winter with gives birth to Spring which gives birth to Summer which gives birth to Fall which gives birth to Winter….

Life feeds off of Life = inevitable suffering.

The duality (ego) consciousness experiences life as suffering and joy. We tend to pay more attention to pain, fear and measure accordingly. (So Life is suffering) Note how in a day of 10 memorable moments were one of them is negative how most people when asked about their day will think only of the negative one. In general duality consciousness is not very skilled at measuring = more suffering)

All things in thier time and a time for all things.

For a Non-dual consciousness Birth and death are not opposites as they cannot be separated, they occur together in every moment no mater how big or small.  Every creation is also a destruction, every destruction also a creation. To a unitive mind they are one ‘thing’.

Joseph Campbell suggested each of our stories is a story of the hero’s journey. THE Question that is behind each quest being ‘How to Respond to the Realty that Life devours life for Life. How to respond to ‘Life As It Is’ is wonder and horror?

Every Wisdom tradition attempts to help us answer that question for ourselves. (Not just answer but to be that answer) Oddly each wisdom tradition answer can be interpreted as both a Yes OR No by those engaged in the teaching. For Example many might say that Buddhist answer the question with a NO get me off this cycle of life that is suffering. Yet the teachings of the Buddha Gautama points to a answer of YES now go and engage ‘Life As It Is’ . (the paradox being that this YES to ‘Life As It Is’ , fully integrated in ones being, ends the cycle.) Through the practice of Detachment (not indifference) one can be Still while fully engaged. You have experiences and emotions verses you are your experiences and your emotions…

Likewise I think Christianity. The dogmas and theology tend to point to a answer of No we can fix Life if we follow the rules while Jesus teaching point to a answer with a YES, follow me engage with LIFE AS IT IS – Birth Death Reresection the reality of every breathe we take (as well as all phycological growth)

Perhaps a answer of YES requires a higher level of non-duality consciousness… if higher and lower were opposites and meant something 🙂 I would also note that every wisdom teaching  I have come across that express the concept of levels of consciousness the ‘highest level’ is always one involving non-duality. (In Jungian path to Individuation coming to terms with the problem of opposites) 

And so we work for that which no work is required. (How’s that for a paradox) 🙂

“Harry, This pain is part of being human —”

“THEN — I — DON’T — WANT — TO — BE — HUMAN!” Harry roared, and he seized one of the delicate silver instruments from the spindle-legged table beside him and flung it across the room. It shattered into a hundred tiny pieces against the wall. Several of the pictures let out yells of anger and fright, and the portrait of Armando Dippet said, “Really!”

“I DON’T CARE!” Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. “I’VE HAD ENOUGH, I’VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON’T CARE ANYMORE —”

He seized the table on which the silver instrument had stood and threw that too. It broke apart on the floor and the legs rolled in different directions.

“You do care,” said Dumbledore. He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office. His expression was calm, almost detached. “You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it. JK Rowling”

Such is the paradox of Pain… Only a open heart can be broken, and broken, opened…

“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”
― Jim Morrison

Hi Javier

So many people have trouble asking and accepting help. Myself included. Like you it feels like something I’m just not capable of doing. Even when I do reach out their are parts of me that hold back. So frustrating getting in my own way. In my case I don’t think its my mind that won’t let me accept help but a deep routed fear of being vulnerable, rejected, asked to do something I don’t want to… so many fears. At the root of all the fears that I can’t and wont be Loved.  To live in the pain and loneliness of not taking the risk to love and be loved OR living in the pain of the fear of taking the risk and having it confirmed.  I am not a brave man.

I envy everyone, I’m jealous of peaceful and carefree they look. I’m not sure how to cope, how to live, how to get inner peace.

One thing I am sure about is that very few people are as peaceful and carefree as the look. Jealousy is a waist of time. No one gets to ‘know’ how another is experiencing themselves and Compassion only asks that we be kind, to others and ourselves, and not assume. A sure fire way of remaining stuck is comparing ourselves to others and thinking ‘if only’. In a odd way I think it gives us permission, a excuse,  to remain as we are even as we work so hard to grow and move forward.

Now I’m afraid that there are no options left

My gut tells me that the way out isn’t up but down and through. To feel what one feels without labeling or measuring. Sometimes we reach a point where all the self help and analyzing becomes a way of avoiding feeling what we feel. We keep on seeking to avoid finding.

I think of a person caught in a riptide our undertow, the more they struggle the more likely they will tire and drown.  The key to getting out of such a situation is to remain calm.

There is a time for all things. Up to this point reading through your post I picture someone who has and is trying everything except being still. If the problem comes from the mind, allow the mind to be still. That dos not mean having no thoughts but the practice of not attaching oneself a thought. Labeling , measuring , judging it, if only… our thoughts… Thoughts flow you are not your thoughts. Once can be still within the tempest of ones thoughts.

This year I start my meditation (and before I go to sleep) with the following from TS Elliot

I ask of my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing;
There is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for I am not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall become the light, and the stillness dancing.

And Or

Be still and know that I am G_d
Be still and know that I am
Be still and know
Be still
Be

Sometimes it helps… In the time of waiting and stillness I float. The tide takes me where it will, but I participate, to tired to fight, I notice that calmly moving a little this way or that, I have influence on the direction…

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by Peter.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by Peter.

Hi Murtaza

I’m sorry to hear that your struggling. I relate to the crushing loneliness that comes through your posts.

I didn’t think your posts were pointless and want to thank you for challenging me it attempting to communicate my thoughts and experiences.

Their is a time for all things including a time to be still and stopping the seeking of answers and ‘fixing’ oneself. My personal experience of such a time was to be intentional about it. If I was going to take time away from seeking solutions I also need to stop asking the questions and telling myself my stories.

Friends would tell me that I needed to fill the space ‘stopping’ created with positive thinking which ticked me off. If I was able to do that I would have been doing that!!!  The pressure to force myself into  this mode of being only amplified the negative story I was telling myself. So I told them thanks but that I would avoid filling the space with any story. I would stop telling myself my stories without replacing them.  If I notice I was in my head and repeating a story I’d stop, take a breath and get back to what I was doing in the the moment.  No story, no questions, no answers… and surprisingly I found I could do that some of the time…. then more of the time….

Like you I think (sorry if I’m wrong) I’m a head person. Meaning I live most of my life in my head, watching, evaluating, gathering information, and then when I’m sure I tell my self I’ll engage… only there is never enough information and resources to be sure…  and when I do manage to engage I often late and miss the opportunity.  I’ve accepted that it will always be my prime strategy for ‘keeping safe’ but I’m better at noticing when it gets in the way. The strategy is my gift and the thing I must overcome.

Be well and kind to yourself.

Hi Murtaza

But you don’t doubt this. You “know” with certainty that certainty is not possible,

I was wrong to question your experience of doubt. My thought was that you had built up a catch 22 self validating loop that your well-developed mode of ‘knowing’, the mind, can’t break you out of.

I honestly have no idea how to make it happen in real life, at one point i think you said, its not something you choose, from the story it seems that luck/randomness made the sparrow realize, what if he wasn’t lucky enough? What if there is another sparrow that didn’t had this realization?

When we use a world like ‘choose’ we tend to imagine a clear intention attached to a specific outcome, initiated by a force of will to ‘made it so’ always open to disappointed when it doesn’t turn out exactly as we expect.  Such an experience of choice is a product of mind and for many of life’s choices works just fine.  However it doesn’t work so well when we find ourselves stuck, especially when it was the reasoning mind that got us stuck.

So difficult to explain… The sparrow after all its striving lays disappointed and depressed on the ground.  In this state of mind/being, it is not capable of noticing the breeze that points to a way out.
Noticing the breeze is NOT a random act of luck as it requires work. (It will take work to release the mind and allow ‘flow’ – other ways of ‘knowing’ – to ‘speak’, which was always present, just not noticed. – Thus it is said we return home and ‘know’ it for the first time. Such is the realization of all illumination.)

The unconscious has noticed the breeze long ago but the Minds attachment and self validation to what it ‘knows’ keeps it from “hearing” other experiences of ‘knowing’. Sure From the point of view of mind/ego ‘letting go’ of what it knows can be experienced as giving in to random chance and losing control, its not even sure it has, and so it resists.

The sparrow could give up, as the number of bones laying around suggest those the came before have done. Instead, the sparrow’s act of well, its choice, is to be still and be quite.

The self-validating mind has not found the way out and so the sparrow asks it to be still and to wait.
To do this sparrow notes it feelings of disappointments and depression and detaches. The Sparrow has emotions and experiences but is NOT its emotions and experiences.
The Sparrow notices the past and how it got to where it is and detaches from that as well (It does not disavow the experiences  but refuses to judge or measure. By not judging a labeling the experiences are noticed and allowed/free to flow).
As for the imagined future the sparrow has no time for it, yet doing so this is not a detachment from hope or intention. The intention of allowing the future and not grasping is a difficult tension hold.  The art of allowing is not a surrender to random chance or control/intention as ones eyes and ears* are always open. Allowing involves a surrender to attaching and labeling which blocks flow, not a surrender to apathy or indifference.

Allowing does not ignore the past or feelings but a loosening of their grip so that the Sparrow might empty itself. Its in that space that the ‘heart’ and ‘gut’ can be heard. New information.

The work of ’emptying’ and ‘allowing’ is far from leaving things to chance and randomness. It involves a full participation.

*Another riddle. ‘I’ do not see, eyes see. ‘I’ do no hear ears hear

• This reply was modified 3 years, 3 months ago by Peter.

Hi Murtaza

For me its like giving up my mind, the most thing i value, the control i think i have.

Totally get that.

Like you I desire to have all the info before making a choice

I have this doubt that makes it impossible to know something for sure, even if i got all the possible info, there would be still some missing info, some gusses, and depending on luck and randomness, i can’t have that, i don’t trust that, i started to feel that whatever choice im gonna make, its gonna be just as disappointing as picking it randomly.

Lots to unpack here. You have this doubt that it makes it impossible to know with certainty.  But you don’t doubt this. You “know” with certainty that certainty is not possible, some unknows will always be involved in any choice.  You can’t or do not want to accept what you ‘know’  which is getting in the way of you finding a ‘skillful’ way of living with what you know.  One of the things  noted in your comments is that they show no indication of being in doubt. You have no doubt about the present which you tend to project into the future which is going to be “just as disappointing” as if picked randomly = no control = despair.

The one certainty I have is that ‘We very easily create what we Fear’ more so then what we hope for. I know this because I do it (and observe it) all the time.

I guess I still have a kind of hope. Hope that the “third force”

Did it happen yet? Did the third force got any closer? For me i can’t do that, i can relay on hope, it feels like im lying to myself, something i despise.

That the conciseness of which you experience your problems can’t be the same conciseness that solves it

But this is the only conciseness i have, “all i know, is what i know”

I did a horrible job trying to articulate that. Perhaps because its not only ‘mind’ thing, not a thinking thing… I’ll try a story

A sparrow is trapped in a empty old grain silo. During the day the sun shines through the cracks in the wall and in panic the bird flutters around checking out each ray of light hoping for a why out but the cracks are never big enough. Every night the bird lies exhausted, disappointed, in the dark, depressed. This cycle continues until the bird no longer checks out the rays of light for escape. To depressed to be depressed at rock bottom the sparrow finds itself ’empty’ – stops thinking, dreaming, worrying, even hoping… this emptying is a happening not a something willed for if the sparrow thinks this is not what it wants. In this emptiness , this space, this quietness, the sparrow notices a breeze coming from a small hole in the ground that it had never noticed before. Entering into a dark hole in the ground is the last thing the sparrow would ever had imagined itself doing, one of the reasons perhaps it was not conscious of it before. Terrified the sparrow enters the dark tunnel that goes deep into the ground until it eventually leads upward and into the world.

The third force and ‘new’ consciousness is the breeze from the dark hole in the ground the sparrow felt and did not come from  the mind in which it was stuck. While the sparrow was franticly fluttering around seeking out ever crack of light for a answer or laying defeated on the ground stuck in its mind/fear it was blind to the experience of the breeze. It is only when the sparrow  detaches from mind, fear, depression, hope even love… that the third happens and the way out becomes conscious.   Not known as the sparrow cannot know what lies within the dark hole. Only that the breeze was fresh air (new level of knowing). The way out is not up but down. The sparrow lived happy ever after… when one day it found it self in a house with no obvious way out…

The way out (any new level of knowing/consciousness) is not up but down.  Letting go (emptying) of the thinking (mind) that keeps you stuck which I know is terrifying.

I just saw your question to TeaK

I think what TeaK was suggesting is similar to what I am getting at in the above.  That the conciseness of which you experience your problems can’t be the same conciseness that solves it.  You have been so consistent in your thinking and responses that its its become part of the issue that needs to be addressed. In one this ability to be so consistent is a strength and at the same time a weakness that gets in the way.

As you ask the question and frustration becomes How?

Everything I have read in the last few years points to the answer involving the Zen concept of doing by not doing, the act of will which evolves the letting go of ‘will’, synchronicity (participating in ‘creation’ by entering into the flow vice going against it)… we work for that which no work is required….
This is not Passive but a Active engagement that does not ‘hold on’, that lets go of “itself”, its outcomes….creating space…

Every wisdom tradition suggesting that a ‘new level of conciseness’ is possible (may even be Life’s goal) and that the way involves a ability’s  of allowing the happening. (getting out of our own way).  Thus the ego work – ego conciseness is limited, liner and tends to be binary and not able to solve the issues it creates. It takes a healthy ego to let go of ego and engage (another paradox)… And in the end we return to where we started and ‘know’ it for the first time.

Hi Murtaza

Good to hear from you. I never hardboard hard feelings so a apology wasn’t required yet is appreciated. The communication was, as TeaK mentioned, often challenging but I always felt it was coming from a place of someone trying to understand their own thinking and feelings. I often user this form of communication in that way, and our dialog often had me asking if I really believed, felt  and or understood the things I was trying to convey.

Similar to apathy I struggle with a desire for a healthy detachment and engagement with life against a indifference and  disengagement from life. There are days when I think similar things you expressed in your post and fall into indifference. I tell myself that their is a time for everything and work on not being to hard on myself when I fall into one of those days.

Not giving advice, just that I’ve been thinking about this problem a lot lately. In trying to deal with my tendency to indifference I’ve been looking into the history of the Enneagram and its connection to the Law of three and Law of Seven, a process of ‘motion’ and creation/re-creation.   Along with that is what I view as a novel take on the problem of duality, ‘problem of opposites’, and ‘oneness’. (Language and ego consciousness tends depend on duality so its difficult to communicate but easy to get stuck in)

In some teachings there is a idea that dually collapses into oneness where the opposites ‘disappear’ and all is ‘good’.  But I have always found that such a ‘oneness’ has little energy for movement leading easily into indifference and non-engagement.  “Everything this is as it is, as it must be, as it will be”… what’s the point…. might as well disengage, move to a cave and sit quietly avoiding unpleasantries and avoid suffering… except the suffering of aloneness.  Can’t seem to get away from that one, no matter that everything is connected and ‘One’…

Anyway the take on the problem of duality involves the adding of a third (no duality  but trinary) which then creates a new forth/one/happening. By adding a third to the two a new a  ‘something’ Fourth happens.  The process is not a circle that devours itself but a spiral that projects itself outward into time and space.  When  stuck in the duality of either or the task is to add a third, which working with the two creates the ‘energy’ that allows the ‘forth’ to happen.  A act of will which starts with surrendering ones will (how’s that for a paradox the act of will is letting it go) The fourth is not controlled but a happening.  Their is intention but detached from outcome… The problem is that we tend to be blind to the third ‘force’

That was a mess… Anyway  – ‘The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge’ might be a interesting read.  It might not change anything but will keep one distracted… Still if their is a third that can break us out of our either or duality thinking/doings stuckness…. that would be a grail worth finding?

G.I. Gurdjieff. The “Law of Three” refers to an assertion that every phenomenon is a new arising that comes into being through three distinct lines of action. The first force is affirming, the second force denying, and third force reconciling.

“Just as it takes three independent strands of hair to make a braid, so it takes three individual lines of force to make a new arising. Until this third force enters, the other two forces remain at impasse. These three lines of action are free of moral judgment and they are neither “good” or “bad”.