This close to the experience it may be difficult to detach the emotions from the analysis of the experience and learn from it.  Detachment here does not mean not feeling the emotions you have only that you avoid attaching your sense of self to them. We have emotions we are not our emotions. We have experience’s we are not our experiences. (That can be a hard one to grasp, as its all to easy to define ourselves and or be defined by a single experience. )

You are not a ‘bad’ person because you feel bad or have done hurtful things to others. We all struggle and we all hurt the ones we care about most sometimes. Relationships are a crucible which will revel our best and worst qualities.  Shadow work (often projected onto the other) and mindfulness can help us separate the things that belong to us and the things that belong to our partner. Forgiveness, accountability, responsibility… are all tools that help us develop the ability to learn better, and learning better do better.

Sadly its a reality that it is often the pain of a relationship ending the pushes us to do the work that might have saved the relationship.

My experience and observations is that their is a tipping point when the past of a relationship becomes so heavy that only those where both those involved have truly learned to know themselves AND a have developed the art of Forgiveness AND have above, above average ability to communicate can over come. (Depending on those factors (and others) every relationship has a different tipping point that love, as understood in that experience, cannot over come. )  Love pushes towards life and growth, when the tipping point has been reached, LOVE may require a relationship to end if only to push us.

Their is a lot to unpack in your post, a lot that you might learn from. Keep writing. Keep a look out for your victim and villain story’s. These types of stories can shine a light on our own projections and fears, areas that might require work.

Other questions you might ask. Where in the relationship did you feel safe? Did you react or respond to you partner when you felt unsafe?  How so? How did your partner respond or react to you when they felt unsafe? Where your boundaries healthy ones?  How many of your boundaries were defined by fear and how many maintained by love? (Using the energy of fear and anger to maintain boundaries may be easier then using the energy of love. At least that has been my experience. )

I wish you well on your journey. Its sounds so odd… but LOVE opens the door to being able to be grateful for the very things you wished never happened.

From a interview of Stephen Colbert

“…he is the youngest of eleven kids and … his father and two of his brothers, Peter and Paul, the two closest to him in age, were killed in a plane crash when he was 10.”

“I learned to love the thing that I most wish had not happened.”

I asked him if he could help me understand that better, and he described a letter from Tolkien in response to a priest who had questioned whether Tolkien’s mythos was sufficiently doctrinaire, since it treated death not as a punishment for the sin of the fall but as a gift. “Tolkien says, in a letter back: ‘What punishments of G_d are not gifts?’ ”

Colbert knocked his knuckles on the table. “ ‘What punishments of G_d are not gifts?’ ” he said again. His eyes were filled with tears. “So it would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude. It doesn’t mean you want it. I can hold both of those ideas in my head.”

He was 35, he said, before he could really feel the truth of that. He was walking down the street, and it “stopped me dead. I went, ‘Oh, I’m grateful. Oh, I feel terrible.  I felt so guilty to be grateful’. But I knew it was true.

“It’s not the same thing as wanting it to have happened,” he said. “But you can’t change everything about the world. You certainly can’t change things that have already happened.”

Consider that this is coming from a man who millions of people will soon watch on their televisions every night—if only there were a way to measure the virality of this, which he’ll never say on TV, I imagine, but which, as far as I can tell, he practices every waking minute of his life.

The next thing he said I wrote on a slip of paper in his office and have carried it around with me since. It’s our choice, whether to hate something in our lives or to love every moment of them, even the parts that bring us pain. “At every moment, we are volunteers.”

I’d like to add on to what TeaK Mentioned – I very much agree that a good Therapist would be helpful in the healing of past. They can help you give to yourself what others should have given you.  

“Sometimes you have to find a way to to give yourself what someone else should have given you”.

In Jung’s path to Individuation the first task is coming to terms with the mother and father complex. Your parents may have influenced how you relate to the mother and father architype however this is not about one parents. This is coming to terms with your own ability to nurture and protect (healthy boundaries) and provide for yourself. Individuation requires that at some point one takes ownership of becoming their own ‘mother‘ and ‘father‘. Our life experience with our parents and other family  may have given a good or bad examples, and influenced our own ability to care for ourselves but it does not define it. Even so we must take ownership.

It’s not easy, by the age of 5 most of use have determined how we are we will respond to life. How we will nurture and protect ourselves.  That is what TeaK is getting at. If we want to move past that 5 year old response to life you need to ‘talk to him.

Last thought. Some mistake the call to ‘love others as oneself ‘ as a command. I view it as the reality in how we love and that if we can’t love ourselves we are going to find it difficult to love others. How you love yourself will be reflected in how you love others and what they intern reflect back to you. (Why relationships are crucibles of self discovery (becoming). The good the bad and the ugly will show themselves).

You can’t ‘fix’ what others failed to give you but you can start learning to love yourself in more skillful ways.  A part of that will be accepting the things you cannot change about yourself and focusing on what you can.

You asked for advice, so here it is: first thing for you to do is to stop trying to find a solution to suffering, stop looking for a way out- for the rest of 2021. For the rest of this year, give zero thought to ending your suffering, completely remove your attention from this topic. Do this today,  let me know how it feels for you, and we’ll take it from there (one step at a time).

For what its worth I think that’s good advice from Anita.

There was a time in my life when I felt similar to what you talk about.  Like you I got discouraged when people  suggested I be more positive. The ‘think positive’ advice, as a defensive pessimist I wasn’t built that way and that wasn’t going to change. I was not going to be able to change my thinking by replacing it with ‘positive thinking’. Then it occurred to me. What if I just left the space blank. That to my surprise I was able to do. I changed the stories I was constantly repeating to myself with no story. A kind of mindfulness I guess thought didn’t know it at the time. When the negative stories came, I didn’t try to change them but more important in time I found I didn’t have to dwell on them. Its difficult to describe.

I shared some of T.S Eliot’s pomes before. I repeat this to myself when I find myself filling the space of my self talk unskillfully

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing”  – I discovered as you mentioned that like toxic positivity, hope is a double edged sword, to easily done unskillfully.  Better not to hope then hope unskillfully.  It is important to say that this is not hopelessness.

“wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing;” I was very naïve and didn’t have a great relationship with the ‘idea of Love’. Not having to fill a time of waiting with unskillful stories of ‘Love’ turned out to be very freeing.

“there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting“. That the  waiting becomes the faith and love??? I love that.  Challenged me to re-evaluate my relationship with faith and love. *

“Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:” How very true for me at the time. Wait without filling the space with stories, negative or positive.  I live in my head so was very surprised to discover it was possible. Those moments when I let thoughts go…

“So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.” The problem of opposites. A change in perspective, the possibility that one can be detached and engaged, still while dancing! Find that the way out of our suffering isn’t the light but first the darkness, isn’t up but going down. A experience discovered in the waiting..

* Belief is no adequate substitute for inner experience, and where this is absent even a strong faith which came miraculously as a gift of grace may depart equally miraculously. People call faith the true religious experience, but they do not stop to consider that actually it is a secondary phenomenon arising from the fact that something happened to us in the first place which instilled pistis into us—that is, trust and loyalty. – Jung

Waiting becomes trust becomes a experience one can lean into.

“If you think you imagine yourself taking the position of esthetic stasis, you’ll understand about withdrawing fear and desire for what happens, and about samsara being nirvana, the still point in the mist of the turning world. That’s all there is to it. Then the world becomes a display of things from which you are disengaged, and yet, voluntarily, you can become engaged “joyous participation in the sorrows of the world.” It is very different from being compulsively linked.”

Still

“We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.”
― W H Auden

But then what our our illusions? Choice? Skillful or unskillful choice?

I’m taking a social media break.

Just wanted to say thank you for challenging me Murtaza. I hope it didn’t feel like we were gaining up on you.

I wonder why you addressed the following question to.. the normies in this site who are way less qualified to judge and advise you

i didn’t address it to normies, i address it in the hope of finding a none normie person that can agree with me, agree on my logic

So anyone who challenges your thinking must disagrees with it, (all or nothing), and disagreeing is a normie to be dismissed?  If you are certain in your reasonings why reach out? Why the need to find someone exactly like minded?

i believe in the here and now, the past is already gone, and whatever has been produce from such past, can’t live here

That’s why you say you’re “created in a way that guarantees misery”  i say this because of the combination of my past and current needs and desire and beliefs and values and goals

If the past can’t exist in the now, why should it influence the present, why not choose your present as you will?  Viktor Frankl  argued (and Science backs up) that “Between stimulus and response there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” He talks only of the possibility. His observation in the concentration camps shows that most will not choose but instead summit to fate. Either way end was the same for those that choose to respond with ‘grace’ or those that gave didn’t. Only the inner experience of the moment was different.

It is true that the ability to choose and what is chosen in a moment may be determined by the cards a person one has been dealt. The choice a illusion of fate.  Still the process between stimulus and response exists and so the fate of the possibility of picking new cards.  The past is gone, the end determined, yet their is space between that fate allows us to play with. Why not play? The past is gone, their is no requirement that we hold on to all the cards we were given, especially the ones that only exist as memory. A duality and paradox, Fate and choice existing in the same moment?

In the space between stimulus and response we filter the present moment though the filters of our fears, hopes, expectations desire… almost all of which are based on memory of the past and memory is a trickster.

Hi Murtaza

I thank you for clarifying your response, however I still don’t feel dialog between us is going to be helpful.  You appear to be very literal with your definitions where as I see words as symbols, that point past themselves expanding ones experience.

To be clear your language didn’t bother me it just left me little space to engage with.   Take your reaction to the words wonder and joy that gave you permission to assume you understood my experience and so labeled me a ‘norime’.  Perhaps if you knew of my time in the military, time of cancer, time of losing love ones you might reconsider the definition of ‘normal’. Where you responding to me you, or responding you your associations with the words joy and wonder? Presuming my use of the words meant you knew me, and knowing me, free to label me and set me aside.  The very thing you dislike others doing to you.

I brought up the Buddhist noble truth of suffering because you your original question in this thread reminded me of it. (and that this is a Buddhist site if a little one)  You assume that because I brought it up I understand it and or must agree with it. Which I do and I don’t. It seems to depends on the perspective I take. From where I look at it, in general or personal, objective or subjective…  Life is complex and simple.

I should have been clear, It was Schopenhauer who said ‘Life is something that should not be’ In context He struggled with the reality that Life feeds off life, and that he found no meaning to it, and little joy. (I wonder if he did not enjoy being sad, I wonder if that might also apply to me?) 

Our life is dependent of consuming life until it is our turn to be consumed. Every breath we take fuels and brakes down our body.  The only advice I gave is that how we respond to that reality is important as it will very much color our experiences. Some will turn to religion, some to drink, some to meditation, some to despair, some to indifference, some to engagement, some to art, some to anger, some to love, some to hate, some to compassion, some to joy… Their may be a time for each, who am I to say which is the better for someone other then myself.

I wondered if the “Salmon” after completing it journey enjoyed the struggle or resented it.  It is a wonder to me that I can imagine that that Salmon did. That does not mean I have been able to do the same with regards my own sufferings… I wonder…. when I found myself on a mountain, in a storm, injured, cold, miserable, frightened, that in that moment I found wonder at the power of the storm, the mountain, myself. A experience I would never choose to experience, yet cannot deny how alive I felt in the moment. I wonder if it was Joy? How is it that perspective can change a memory of a experience, and that change the present moment? Why is it the word wonder is related to the word wounded? Greater minds then mine have pondered such things.

This is only dialog not advice.

Interesting dialog Murtaza. You appear have undergone a great deal of self examination leaning towards a philosophical realistic view on life. Perhaps a desire to measure and label life and make it understandable if not manageable.

Life is suffering, some suffering cannot be eased, therefore the compassion action, the logical one would be to end it? (This I believe was your initial question?)

The response to the Question of Life: No, get me off this ride and end this cycle of birth and death all of which is suffering. (Birth and death both literal and as metaphor. Every creation is also a destruction and every destruction a creation. Summer leads to winter which leads to summer. That is the wonder of Life and its Horror.) Life is broken, something that should not be, refusing to conform to my will of what it ought to be, I resist life.

Another response to the question of Life, one that also sees Life as it is, its wonder and horror, and that is with a YES and then a choice to Participate “joyfully” in the sorrows of the world. Such a Yes looks suffering in the eye and does not pretend life to be otherwise while resisting the temptation to turn toward indifference. Engaging in life with a aim of not adding to the suffering when possible, open to laugh in the moments of wonder.

I wonder if perhaps how we answer the question that is Life, isn’t the only choice and act of free will we have. Yes or No. Most wisdom traditions seem to flirt with both, maybe that’s dependent on the eye of the beholder.

My observations is that a ‘Yes’ is the more difficult answer to come to, at least until it is embraced and internalized. This Yes has the potential to lead to a kind of contentment and participating with the flow of life as it is. A No tends to push against the flow, the more painful as we know Life’s will, will in the end be done. But that can be fun and a kind of wonder too…

Perhaps the trick is to be honest with which ever answer and make it yours. Maybe their is a time for each?

The salmon struggles against the current to return home and lay its eggs, perhaps even having a kind of knowing that completing its task will be its end. An end that will be the same for its spawn.  A cycle of suffering, struggle and  wonder? One can imagine the salmon happy. (Did the Salmon answer life with a Yes or No?)

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by Peter.

Hi Weiword

“Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. The warrior’s approach is to say “yes” to life: “yea” to it all.” ― Joseph Campbell

Every myth and religious tradition has struggled with the question you asked. (often related to the question of why is their evil, pain, suffering in the world) The answer of the mystics is ‘YES’. However many will argue that the answer is No, get me off this ride and end the cycle.  Others that we broke Life (sin) and so must fix it.  (and we fix it by following the rules… and following the rules will be rewarded )

You have already noted that you have little influence on the majority of the suffering in the world you are witness too, and a intuition that a answer of No is causing you a great deal of discordance.   That a answer of No is really a ego thing, a attempt to control life and shape it to our will.

What if Life is not broken?

The reality of life is that it ‘lives’ off life, life eats life, that is its wonder and horror. (each breath you take is a sacrifice of life, a birth, a death and a reresection)  Is is possible to say Yes to that wonder and horror? I believe there is.

A No tends to go against the flow, against life, leading to resistance, tension, anger and fear. While a Yes enters into the flow where you actually can influence it. Think of the sky diver that has learned to use slight body moments to influence how he falls and avoid tumbling. Either way the skydiver is falling. They can fight it and tumble or relax, influence what they can an enjoy the ride.

The challenge is the temptation to allow the Yes to turn to indifference and a disengagement with life. (which would be a No)

A authentic Yes ‘sees’ life as it is, opening the heart to gratitude and compassion. A authentic Yes will avoid adding to the suffering of the world, alleviating the suffering that is within their power. This presents the challenge of learning how to be fully engaged in life as it is and “detached” from outcomes. (again not indifference) The tension between being contemplative (still) while active and engaged.

Many of the mystics talk about the ‘stillness being the dance’  the ‘ darkness the light..  It will feel like a paradox. How can one be still and moving? How can the dark be the light?  (the way out is not up but down, into the pain)? How can one enjoy ones gifts while at the same time participating in the suffering of others, of life? (without the need of anger and hate to drive the movement?)

Mindfulness, contemplation, gratitude, compassion…. action