Buddhism has many schools of thought so You may find the Karen Armstrong’s book ‘Buddha’ a good introduction.

Gautama Siddhartha is ‘called’ to ‘Go Forth’ only after becoming aware of life as suffering, – unable to reconcile life with death. Being Lost it seems is the best place to be to start, some might say the only place to start such a journey!

Its seems like a paradox however in Buddhism becoming more “positive” is not about positive thinking but about seeing ‘life as it Is’ and then at a profound knowing that ‘Life as it is’ is LOVE… This ‘knowing’ opens the door to compassion and love for all Life – all of it even the parts we might label and experience as wrong. The question of being “positive” dissolves no longer needing to be asked or answered.

These awakening to Life as it is no longer attached to a false concept of self/egotism that responds to ‘Life as it is’ with a NO and demand to change what cannot be changed – the source of  much of the suffering we create for our self.

We suffer not just from the experience but the story our egotism creates by attaching the ‘I’ to the experience. The self (small s) is an illusion, you are not your ego, you are not your memories, you are not your experiences. Letting go of egotism and the unskillful stories we find we can be “happy” engaging in Life as it Is.

As an Artist it might be interesting if you can allow your art to become part of your ‘meditation’ practice. That you allow your art to inform and ‘create’ you even as you create it.  A kind of alchemy of the soul. Imagine what the journey your art might uncover as you work to free it from attachment to a ‘I’

There are some great blogs about journaling on the site (google tinybudda journaling)

4 Ways to Use Journaling to Calm Your Inner Critic

• This reply was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by Peter.

This site has a lot of good resource information on the subject – I suspect some of them might point you in the direction of a video

Try  googling  ‘tinnybuddha meditation’ and or check out the Blog section Mindfulness and Peace

8 Quick and Easy Meditation Techniques to Calm Your Anxious Mind

Everything changed for me when I realized I could meditate in many different ways, to suit my schedule, moods, and needs; and that the only goal was to show up, mindfully observe my inner life, and practice detaching from my thoughts.

I like the line ‘Perhaps the value of a life cannot be measured, and we are surrounded by the tempest of the sea.’

I think there is truth in that – We sense a something within the tempest, a something at the tip of the tongue that if we could just… name it… we might just… but when we do name it, its lost.  There is order in chaos, which seems a contradiction but isn’t.

Your poem reminded me of a poem by Rick Cain

The ancient of Man ponders his curiosity. Questions arise as he wonders of his own significance… how time moves as sands of an hour glass, not to be grasped, but reckoned with by the moment. The focus of a single crystal houses hope, love, and the rainbow multitude of Life’s involvement. We see these things in passing we feel them as now. The Master of these sands is he who loves each crystal. – Rick Cain

• This reply was modified 7 years, 1 month ago by Peter.

Deep peace of the running wave to you.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the shining stars to you.

I wish you well Tannhauser

“so I don’t know whether it is the Reiki that has made me feel calmer or it is I…”

It is nether and both. Our experiences shape us and we shape our experiences. We are not our experiences… Your experience of Reiki is opening you up to a greater awareness that is helping you to look through experience…. it is not Reiki (experience) that “makes you” your are more then experiences.

It may be best not to overthink things at this point. Words tend to define and limit experience (especially when we use them to talk to others about our experiences) If I’m reading your post correctly that is something your working on letting go of.

I like the idea of “beginner’s mind” –  having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions …

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” – Suzuki

Stay open to the many possibilities and I suspect you will find yourself amazing yourself. And in the words of the great DR Seuss –  “You’re off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, So… get on your way!”

Some of the pain your experiencing isn’t coming from what happened to you but how your defining a right and wrong choice and so creating regret.  The good news is this is something you can change and a good place to start the healing

“Many people imagine that there is a right and wrong choice to be made in every situation. If their decision leads to the result they desire, then they made the right decision. If it doesn’t, then they made the wrong decision. Right and wrong are determined by the outcome that follows.” – Nancy Colier

This attitude toward our choices, as well as this version of life, can cause us a great deal of pain, pain often labeled as regret. Regret more often then not is anger directed a one self.

The emotion we experience as regret is information that we wish we could undo the past and had more control – (its petty much all ego). We get stuck in the emotion of regret by staying fixated in the past – in such a case regret is a waist of time – We want a do over and then sulk when we don’t get to have one. If only, if only, why me, not fair, life sucks… I suck… down the rabbit hole we go.

Regret as information is helpful if we delve down into it. We can’t change what happened so we looked at what we might learn from the experience. (honestly – without creating victim and villain stories. If your creating victim and villain stories your still in regret and aren’t being honest). We see we have done the best we could with what we new in the time. We accept the responsibility that belongs to us and let go and even forgive what does not belong to us. We realize that based on the what we felt and new at the time we would make the same choices and did the best we could with what we had.  Regret turns into acceptance. Yes we could do better and deserve better and so we take what we learned to do better.

“For every choice we make, we use the experience, information, and intentions available to us in that particular moment in which we make it. We make the decision we make in an attempt to achieve the goal we desire, with the resources we possess now. Life then unfurls in the way that it does; it becomes what it is in part as a result of our choice and in part as a result of the mystery with which life manifests, the mystery that at times seems bigger than all our choices. The truth is, there’s no reality existing somewhere else that says, “Darn, you’re not going to get to join us over here in the happy life, where you could have ended up if you had made the right choice and picked the other path.” That other, imagined happy life is and has always been just a thought. The particular reality that would have come, had we made the other choice, never was and never will be our reality.”

“There’s only one thing we can know for sure, and that is that whatever situation we’re in now, it will change. It will change in part through our choices and in part through life’s eternal changing nature. Rather than squandering your attention on old choices made, moments that are gone, turn your most powerful gift, your attention, to what’s here now. Bring the best of you, your wisdom, and your full presence to the next choice that presents itself, here, with a sincere intention to do the best you can with who you are right now. Be in this choice, this life, this now, and stop imagining that reality could be or could have been anything other than what it is.” – Nancy Colier

 

From what I read in your post I think Buddhist practices and community could be a great benefit to you.

You may not always agree with the teachings you hear from one teacher to the next… and its not expected of you to agree. The goal is not to come up with a list of rules to follow but to work through what you learn and discover your truth. With any practice, philosophy and or religion we can ‘miss the mark’ if we get lost in the words and lose sight of what the words point towards. (the map is not the territory – words are symbols)

You may also find it helpful to do some shadow work.  Just google shadow work. I liked the book – Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche – by Robert A. Johnson