Rahel,

Then consider finding a park or somewhere in nature to meditate. You keep making excuses, have a mind full of excuses, fantasies, fearful thoughts. All false, all unneeded. Much like your cousin is actually willing to show you around, help you, love you, but you have to go to the party. Same with the heart… its paused, ready, but you have to quiet your mind.

Sure, 5 billion excuses why not to, so what? Do it anyway. Fear the party, “oh no, what if my cousin does…” “what if…” “if only…”. Yes, lots of fear, you know you become afraid, make excuses, sabotage your own happiness. Courage girl, and just keep going to the party anyway.

With warmth,
Matt

Nothing comes to mind. You seem fairly convinced there is no answer, who am I to argue?

You have a bed of some sort? Time before sleep and time after sleep when it’s calm. There are people all around the world in much worse conditions that make the time to meditate because they have chosen to do so. It doesn’t have to be under ideal conditions.

Also, you may feel like this will be all your life, but you could allow your rational side to understand that it’s not going to be. You understand the concepts of time and effort. You went to University. You know that it took a while to graduate from it, and it didn’t happen the next day. So you may feel like it’s forever, but you can respond to that feeling by calming yourself down and telling yourself that it’s a false feeling.

Have you ever seen how children behave when they get upset? They throw themselves on the ground and start kicking and screaming and pushing away people who try to get her to get up and calm down. Then if people walk away and say “OK, well you let us know when you’re ready to get up”, she will start crying and getting overly dramatic claiming that nobody loves her and everyone abandons her. That is kind of the emotional state of mind that you are describing.

You are loved regardless of how you behave, but it would be much easier for your own sake to learn some humility and accept the love that is offered.

He’s not angry.

If you look at this whole thing with some intellectual integrity, you will see that there is eight pages of “I can’t do it, why am I like this, it’s impossible, I will always be like this”. There are all kinds of people who have gathered here to tell you that yes, it can be done and we are a living proof of it. Yet you somehow think that you are a special case that just can not do it. That’s not true. You are not the only person in this world who has felt like you are feeling, nor the only one who has gone through tough situations. It’s your ego holding onto these thoughts. Humility is a great antidote for ego-centric thinking.

I don’t think any of us can have all the answers to those questions. Besides, even if you had all the answers, you’d still have to do all the work that’s ahead of you.

I do understand where you’re coming from, but it doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea to pamper the ego and prolong the progress. Sometimes a firm stance is needed when you keep wriggling even though you know what needs to be done. Enabling the wriggling isn’t helpful.