I honestly didn’t understand your point, i feel your answer gonna be “because you don’t want to”

I don’t know maybe. Your responses never change and you appear to deliberately misunderstand those who respond to you.  For example someone uses the word ‘self’ and you demand a definition and miss the point. It comes off as being initially obtuse.  Language is limited especially when expressing personal experience. Words like ‘I’ and ‘Self’, illusion or not, arise naturally in the attempt to communicate. Try talking about a experience you had without the word ‘I’

That’s one of the difficulties communicating with you. You demand a term be defined, often suggesting that you are making a philosophical point but then reject any philosophical response as valid. As someone, the past, trying to tell you what to think… Its very confusing

You post on a site called Tiny Buddha and reject anything related to the tradition even as you express concerns  as it come to suffering and such that the tradition has been attempting to answer for thousand of years.

You pick apart every comment of those responding to you without it seems doing the same for your own where you often contradict yourself from sentence to sentence? I think this picking apart allows you to dismiss or not even see the point someone was trying to make.

So im not a victim???

And there we find your stuckness which you have turned into a life philosophy – you are a victim of your circumstance while no one else is  – the blessed normal’s.  Hate to break it to you but everyone one is a victim of their circumstances no one chooses.  The task is to live the life your given.  That you refuse the task because ‘poor you’, if only…  Its not a unique answer to the task.  I would even say it’s a valid response, if unskillful, but only if you own it. You can refuse the task without being a sad sack.

So yes my answer is that I don’t believe you when you say you want different when your so intrenched in your victimhood and concept of normal. Life devours Life for Life, boohoo. I don’t believe you are looking for a way out. I think you want to pull others down into your life philosophy.

Murtaza you are so certain in your doubt and contradictions.  Your replies constantly asking for definition and often suggest a move to philosophy even spiritual practice which are then quickly rejected.   You dislike the idea discovering that others have already had similar thoughts and ideas as your as you must be unique. Yet nothing is new under the sun.

You appear to be at constant war with yourself

Though first you have to define “yourself” cause i got no definition

If you say its your nature, basic needs, dreams and desires, i wouldn’t agree, because i don’t like to be told who to be, or what to be, i will be an animal in people eyes, just because i want to, now the good question would be, why? Why i want such thing? Is this why can be changed? No, why? Cause the person having this, sees no problem with it, what else to do then? Tell me, peter, whats the next logical step? .

You make my point as your reply is a contradiction: ‘I’ want change, ‘I’ cant change, ‘I’ don’t want to change.  The ‘I’ does not exit, the self does not exit??? Only you can define the word self, and I will assume you will do so to make it small and refuse to allow the word to be transparent and expansive.

We are smaller then small and bigger then big, – As above so below, As below so above – the riddle of the philosopher’s stone can only be answered by the one asking it. Who are you? What is the self? What is this ‘I’ that forces its way into any dialog of experience? Who had the experience, What had the experience?  ‘I’  not the ego, not thoughts, not emotions, not even experiences, only a means to communicate.

You desire dialog while determined not to look past your certainties,

I have no certainties, only doubts, lots and lots of doubts, about everything and anything, a never ending doubt.

Your responses in all the posts you’ve written have never verified. I can only conclude that that is only possible when someone is certain in their answers in order to banish doubts. I imagine you only imagine you have doubts.  So where is your doubt?

A person that can accept the reality that nothing is certain and learns to embraces doubt would not experience so much existential angst. Perhaps that is the next ‘logical’ step – practice embracing the doubt you assume your living in.

I was thinking about what I said about the relation of  fear, courage, doubt, and faith. That faith is that something you lean on when you don’t know, aren’t certain and doubt.  Anyone who has not given in to death leans on something even if they don’t know what. You mentioned curiosity. I like that. Curiosity,  something around the corner my attract our attention, even surprise… Curiosity, maybe the next moment will be different. I often lean on that in dark uncertain moments and wonder if that is not a kind of faith.

Curiosity, I think implies hope, even skillful hope…I  know your going to hate that and being at war with yourself imagine that you will refuse to associate hope with curiosity. If choice is possible, perhaps that is one, even a next step. If ‘its’ all illusion pick a good one.

If i could format my brain, to be a normal person with normal thinking, with normal beliefs and values, i would, but i also won’t allow this, with my current brain, if there is a place that make you like that, a place where they torture you to change your beliefs and values, to make you normal, i just hope that such place, will have garnered results, my mind doesn’t like doubt, it would be worth it though, to have your basic needs met, just this, i just eant this.

I don’t know what it feels like to have this, maybe its just a fantasy, just another illusion,

Probably a illusion.

You appear to be at constant war with yourself. If I could change my brain I would… but I won’t allow this. You won’t allow this, it can’t be done anyway and you don’t want to.  You want relationship but only on your terms which isn’t relationship.   You desire dialog while determined not to look past your certainties, certainties that close the door to dialog.  You have a tendency to say  you want what you don’t want…  You seem unaware that your tendency is to push and pull at the same time and then act surprised when you didn’t get anywhere.

Your certainty as to what is “Normal” is often insulting… I imagine your reply that only a normal person would think that.
Your life philosophy is contradiction and unskillful even if reasoned or illusion.

Fear is to courage as doubt is to Faith – Faith not necessary in a higher power but what you lean on in times of doubt and uncertainty – That may be curiosity or Mind… though mind does not appear to be holding you up. It is understandable why you dislike (fear) doubt.

So honest with your self you lost sight of your self. A man of the five senses where only the objective is real even though the objective senses can only be experienced subjectively.  One half your world is real the other half denied expression.

You use words to define, contain and make things small.  For you I wonder if the map has not become the territory.

I don’t mean to me harsh, or maybe I do. I don’t know, it happens.

What is it you really expect from such dialog

Supertramp – logical song

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical
And all the birds in the trees, well they’d be singing so happily
Oh joyfully, playfully watching me
But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible
Logical, oh responsible, practical
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable
Oh clinical, oh intellectual, cynical

There are times when all the world’s asleep
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned
I know it sounds absurd
Please tell me who I am

I said, watch what you say or they’ll be calling you a radical
Liberal, oh fanatical, criminal
Won’t you sign up your name, we’d like to feel you’re acceptable
Respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable
Oh, take it take it yeah

But at night, when all the world’s asleep
The questions run so deep
For such a simple man
Won’t you please tell me what we’ve learned
I know it sounds absurd
Please tell me who I am, who I am, who I am, who I am
‘Cause I was feeling so logical
D-d-digital
One, two, three, five
Oh, oh, oh, oh
It’s getting unbelievable

So many grammar issues in my post – it’s a vision thing – let me try again

Hi Murtaza

It takes a strong person to get help when they need it so well done. I watch my brother struggle with mental health issues, and I know its not easy.  Do you have access to talk therapy to go along with the medication assistance?  My brother found it helpful if only to accept that he needed the medication.

You are asking a question that often comes up with the practice of Buddhism and the concept of detachment. I recognize that in your case the detachment your experiencing isn’t the same as choosing to practice the art of detachment. I wonder though if an intentional practice of detachment might help?

A skillful practice of detachment is difficult, and my observation is that it often leads to the trap of indifference. If I’m detached from desire or an outcome why bother, what the point? Its not unusual to find that the more someone progress in the practice the more they tend to disengage with life.  I know that is a trap I often fall into.

The intention of the practice is to be fully engaged in life, as it is in the moment, without attaching expectations, fears, hopes. Such Attachments tend to be based on the past with the affect of projecting oneself into some imagined future.

What is the motivation to do things?  Life

Regardless of circumstances, regardless of like or don’t like, you’re it, where even a choice of not playing is playing.  Life does not care, (in the usual way we define care) though Life does push, even demand, growth and new life. (Which is a kind of care) It’s just that the ego desire is that we had control of the process and that it be painless. (Growth always involves something “dying” so painless isn’t going to happen. Life devours life for Life. Every creation is a destruction, every destruction a creation)

… I like watching movies and stories about mountain climbers. Have you noticed that 95 percent of the story tends to be focused on the struggle to get to the top, 1 or 2 percent about being on top with the remainder if any about the climb down and return to, what comes next… Happy ever after, we assume and don’t really wish to look further as the next story starts.   (As a metaphor the most important part of a journey is the return. To take back and apply what was learned. )

As a society we like the moment on the top, the gold metal. But you can’t live on top a mountain. Can you taste the conflict? Its the drama of the engagement with the struggle that pulls us into the story is the struggle, while the moment on the top is almost a bitter sweet one. At some level we know that the moment at the top doesn’t mean that much…

So which is it? The moment on top or the engagement that matters? When we tell our stories where do we spend the most time?

I enjoy watching the Olympics and like to hear the stories about what happened after the gold metal winners go home. After achieving that height, how well did they descend?  How many handled the descent as well as the assent? How many suffered depression? It seems to me that win or lose depression doesn’t care who to won or lost. In either case it is the ability to descend well that is a determining factor.

Is their choice here? I don’t know. I act as if there is. Its a work in progress… to engage in life as it is in the moment, saying Yes to Life as it is (A “knowing” that Life as it is, is Love) while detached from desire or outcome. Sounds like a contradiction but it isn’t.

Joseph Campbell when asked a question about meaning and purpose said that There was no point in asking the question when You are the answer.  Life does not give you meaning or purpose it is you, regardless of circumstance, that gives meaning and purpose to Life. So, play????

What is the motivation to do things without dopamine or reward?  What is the motivation to do things with dopamine with and without reward?

I suspect the answer may be the same. You’re writing the story,

I would like to say something about this idea of love being communicated.

When a relationship ends its common to hear someone say. “I don’t love you anymore”, – “you never did”…

Is it possible to end a relationship as a experience of Love?

Joseph Campbell* liked to tell this story of a samurai warrior, a Japanese warrior, who had the duty to avenge the murder of his overlord. After some time, the samurai found and cornered the man who had murdered his overlord. He was about to deal with him with his samurai sword, when this man in the corner, in the passion of terror, spat in his face. And the samurai sheathed the sword and walked away.

Whether the samurai kill the man as a act of honoring his code (his center of “being”), or anger the murder would be just as dead. However, this is not a story about the murderer nor is it a story about justice, mortality or even the code of the samurai. It is about acting from a place of ones “being”, ones truth, responding to life needs from ones authentic center.

If I say Love is the code from which I serve and respond to life, and someone has “murdered” – crossed a boundary that duty requires a response. It is possible to pursue that responsibility of accountability as an act of Love?

(I argue here that personal, social wellbeing… meaning, purpose, joy.. arise from a experience of being loved which cannot exist without the experience of getting to be accountable. That nothing we do or are could be experienced as mattering and or experienced as “being” loved without the experience of accountability for the “good” and the “bad”).

Love, accountability, responsibility, fear, hate, forgiveness, vengeance, justice, freedom… all have something in common. They all involve the setting boundaries. The question, from which do we draw on to build the boundary?

With regards to relationship, it might feel necessary to use the energy of anger to create the boundary to end a unhealthy relationship. Perhaps better to say ending contact, as that is also a kind of relationship?

The problem with creating a boundary using the energy of anger is that it burns and does not care what or who it burns. I would suggest that the boundary that ends a person relationship can be maintained from the energy of Love.  Ether way a boundary is created. It is possible to create the boundary without damaging the ‘code’ in order to fulfill the ‘duty required of the code’

It may seem to be a impossible paradox, as a seeming paradox words fail… here is a riddle to ponder

“Stillness is what creates love,
Movement is what creates life,
To be still, Yet still moving
– That is everything!” 
Do Hyun Choe

There is a time for everything even the creation of boundaries from a place of hurt that may not feel like love, yet it still may be.

From what I’ve observed Anita response to those seeking dialog always comes from a place of love even when healthy boundaries require a dialog relationship to end.

* Google Ep. 2: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth – interview with Bill Moyers