Home→Forums→Tough Times→I MUST have my life of full pleasure back
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February 10, 2015 at 4:24 pm #72598MattParticipant
I do not wish to help others suffering through my depression and anhedonia (absence of pleasure). I only wish to help and inspire others through my pleasure alone and to dominate and be awesome in this life through my pleasure alone. I also wish to be regarded as an awesome person for having pleasure and creating awesome and empowering compositions through my pleasure. Suffering, despair, and lack of pleasure only serve to have a very negative loathsome value to me (even if they were to serve to make me a more empathetic person towards others suffering or even if my suffering made me more intelligent and creative). I wanted to be a composer for the world of anime (Japanese cartoons) and videogames. My pleasure was the only thing for me that allowed me to percieve a profound bond and connection to the characters and their worlds and was the only thing that allowed me to be inspired by these worlds and characters. My depression and anhedonia only serve to disconnect that bond and inspiration not only in their worlds, but also in my own personal life with my family and other good things in my life. I now only feel a world of hopelessness and meaninglessness no matter what I perceive or think otherwise. So this is why I give up being a composer only until my full pleasure returns since me feeling awesome and feeling a profound bond, inspiration, and connection to good things in my life through my pleasure is the only thing to me that makes me and my life good. I may physically be able to bond and connect with my family and other good things in my life, but there really is no sense of bond, inspiration, motivation, or connection at all for me due to this depression and anhedonia. When I had my pleasure in the past and was able to bond and connect with the characters and their worlds, it was something truly great. I was inspired then and was ready to become a composer to inspire and empower others through this pleasure (sense of bond and connection) I had with these characters and their worlds. I also wanted to create compositions through this pleasure I had as well as other profound feelings of pleasure so that I can seek out and relate to those types of people who also share the same profound feelings of pleasure I have. But now, I am completely disconnected from the characters and their worlds. These characters and their worlds are now nothing more than just animated images, scenes, etc. without my pleasure. Even the most awesome, profound, and beautiful scenes from anime and videogames do not provoke any sense of profoundness, inspiration, or bond and connection. I may very well acknowledge them as being profound and awesome scenes. But that is not the same thing as me and my life having any profound good meaning, inspiration, or bond and connection with these characters and worlds.
My sense of disconnect and such is not the result of me attributing negative and neutral value to my suffering. My pleasure really is the only good thing in my life and is the only thing that makes me and my life good. My thoughts, other created good meanings in my mind, as well as everything else in my life including my own dreams without my pleasure are all nothing more than just different words, sounds, images, etc. In other words, they are all neutral (neither good or bad) things and it is only my pleasure that makes me and my life good while it is only my suffering that makes me and my life inferior, worthless, and bad. Again, it has nothing to do with me attributing a neutral value to these things. My thoughts and other created good meanings in my mind are all neutral in of themselves and it has nothing to do with me attributing a neutral value to them. This is because they are all neutral conscious experiences which means that there is no profound experience whatsoever from them without my pleasure and that my pleasure is the one and only profound good experience for me in life. Even if I were to perceive something as being good in my life without my pleasure, then that is still a neutral conscious experience and there is nothing profound and good about it. As a matter of fact, my mind would only be tricking me into perceiving that something is good in my life when the fact of the matter is that all of my thoughts and created meanings in life are nothing more than words, sounds, images, etc. in of themselves regardless of how I perceive them. These thoughts might be the words good and bad and might very well be good or bad meanings, but they are only good and bad in a neutral sense which means that they are not truly good or bad at all and that it is only our pleasure and suffering that are the true good and bad things in life. What I mean by “in a neutral sense” would mean that these thoughts are only good and bad in a fake sense.I truly cannot perceive anything as being good in my life feeling depressed and also in having this anhedonia. Nor can I achieve any sense of bond, inspiration, or connection to anything or anyone good in my life. Some people might say to me that our feelings do not define our thinking and perceptions in life and that it is all just a matter of how we respond to our problems in life. But this would be false here in my case of depression and anhedonia. How is one supposed to experience any sense of motivation, inspiration, bond, etc. while feeling depressed and also having anhedonia? They might very well claim that they have somehow managed to achieve this, but it is only how we feel that defines us and our lives as either being good or bad and all our thoughts and perceptions are neutral as I’ve just said before.
Now even though I still value other good people even despite my depression and anhedonia, I can be a composer to help and inspire many people. However, I also have a personal life of my own to enjoy through my pleasure, too. If I can’t get that personal life of my own, then this is why I have given up being a composer only until my full pleasure returns (if it ever does). I have just as much value as any other good person and I have every right to have focus on myself and to want this personal life of my own back. We are of just as much value to ourselves as we are to each other. Therefore, I have every right to give up on my dreams for now (and to even end my own life if it were somehow proven to me that I would never be able to recover my pleasure). Me choosing to live for others without my pleasure is nothing more than me lingering on in this life for their sakes. There is nothing good about me and my life in helping others without my pleasure. It may be good for them, but it is nothing good for me. Some people might say to me that me living for others is my own personal life and that there is no need for me to have a personal life of my own to experience pleasure in when I can instead have all the focus and live for others. First off, we are of just as much value to ourselves as we are to each other as I’ve said before and it would be demeaning of myself to have less focus towards myself and to have all the focus and attention towards others just as demeaning as it would be for me to tell you to have all the focus and attention towards me. Second, even if me choosing to live for others was somehow a personal good life of my own, then there would be two aspects of my personal life.
One aspect would be me living for others while the other aspect would be living for myself in me having pleasure in my own personal life. Therefore, since I have just as much good value as any other good person, then that gives me the right to have that other aspect in my life. If I can’t have that other aspect, then me and my own personal life is nothing good at all. We all have personal lives to attend to. Not just in the sense of living for others, but in living for ourselves and experiencing pleasure in our own personal lives. Therefore, I have a personal life of my own to experience pleasure in which would be my profound feelings of pleasure experienced from listening to music, composing, other good things in my life, and having a profound bond, inspiration, and connection with the characters and their worlds through my pleasure. Even though I could very well live for others more than I am now, I still have this personal life of my own that I deserve to have. Since I have just as much good value as any other good person, then that means that this life has to work out for both of us. In other words, I must have my own good life while others have their good lives of being helped by me and such. If I can’t have my own personal life of pleasure ever given back to me, then that gives me the right to end my life and to no longer live for others. I wouldn’t be having lesser good value towards these people in me choosing to end my life. Rather, the good value that I once had towards living to help these people and to live for them to not cause them grief, this good value has been redirected towards another good value towards these people. This new good value I would have towards these people would be that it is just time for me to go and that they should live on, prosper, and find their own ways and strengths in life without me. And that I would now have someone else take my place to help these people. I would also be having good value towards this person as well since I would be saying to him/her in my mind for him/her to value helping these people and for that to make his/her life good and worth living. Therefore, I would not be having less value towards this person and/or others by giving this person the hard work of taking my place to help these people. It would be the right thing to do since such an inferior worthless life I would be having if I could never recover my pleasure, this life would absolutely need to be ended.
Now I realize that there are composers who have composed great pieces of music through their suffering. However, that doesn’t matter at all to me. The only thing that matters to me is my pleasure and composing through my pleasure alone. You can also compose pieces of music that have a tragic, dark, and gothic feel to them through your pleasure alone anyway (the pleasure in tragic, dark, and gothic things) and that was also my intention. You can compose such pieces of music through pleasure alone and they can be just as good as (and even better) than what you have composed through your suffering.
In conclusion, I would like to say that this isn’t just some black and white mindset I am having here. My life really is all black (bad) and there are no shades of grey whatsoever. In other words, there are no brief moments of pleasure whatsoever in my life to at least put my life in the grey zone. Also, my personal values that say that pleasure is the one and only good thing in my personal life, this is a strong and strict personal value I hold and you would have no right to try and change it just as I would also have no right to go up to you and to try and change your personal values. It would be just as offensive to me for someone to try and change my values just as offensive as it would be to you if I tried to change your values (even if it meant that not having these values meant bringing you less suffering in your life). Therefore, I MUST have my life of full normal pleasure given back to me that I once had before. I must have my life back. Otherwise, if my pleasure is permanently lost, then I will go with it. I won’t have it any other way.
February 11, 2015 at 6:08 am #72616AikiBenParticipantHi Matt,
Truth, that something that so many spiritual masters have tried to convey to others in the past like the Buddha, Jesus, etc, etc, cannot be given to others. You can only point the way to it. You can’t arrive at truth through logic, if it was that simple then anybody with a reasonable IQ would quickly learn how to be another Buddha. One of the main purposes of meditation is to get you out of your thinking mind (with all it’s conditioning, beliefs, opinions, logical arguments) to access something else. I’m certainly not enlightened, but I’ve had glimpses of what Jesus, Buddha and others have tried to express, and it’s only through these glimpses that I’ve really begun to comprehend what they were saying. The Buddha recognised this difficulty, and so always made the point that the teachings themselves are not the truth, I cannot show you the truth, I can only help point you in the direction of it.
Anyway, I was just trying to lay a foundation for saying what I’m about to say. I can see that you have a very firmly fixed opinion on what life is about. You make a good argument for it. But I am quite sure that there is something beyond that, far beyond it, such that if you were to see it, you would let go of this idea which you seem to be prepared to let you pull you into the depths before you will let go of it, or even question letting go of. You see, if you are fortunate enough (and open enough) to come across things written by those who are awakened, they will tell you that the path to truth is synonymous with letting go, letting go of our views, beliefs, opinions, ideas, all of it.
I recently came across a quote which said that, “the ‘clever’ are fools”. There’s a lot of truth to that statement. You see, it’s very easy when you’re intelligent to let the mind be the master and believe you are correct because you know you are intelligent and you are able to create good arguments to uphold your beliefs. Your cleverness is what is keeping you stuck. It is the old Zen proverb, your cup is completely full so nothing else can enter, you WILL NOT let it enter, I sense it strongly in your conviction. I’m not saying you have to change your belief or that it’s wrong, but what if you have only part of the answer? I’d invite you to keep questioning, to look further, to be open to other things and ideas. It’s funny, for myself, certain things that I said an absolute NO to in the past, saying it was all a load of complete nonsense, I eventually was open enough to give it the benefit of the doubt and all of my previously held super strong conviction that I was correct was embarrassingly blown out of the water. Mark my words however, this is very difficult, many people will not bare to really have their deeply held beliefs questioned.
I want to say one last thing about Jesus just to highlight what I’m saying about truth, beliefs, etc (I’m not actually religious you might be surprised to hear but I’m just using it to make a point). When he would give his teachings, he was accused by the religious authorities at the time of committing blasphemy. These men thought that things that Jesus did were wrong, that he went again religious ideas. They were fuming about it in many instances, why do you think they crucified him. You see, everyone suffers from the same problems, they have their own fixed ideas on the way things are. These men of the religious authorities at the time, the vast majority would not have been in any way awakened, would not have been able to see truth. They were only going off their own opinions and beliefs and what they had learned from their religious texts. If you listen to people talk who have genuinely experienced an awakening, they say they have no views on anything, they seem to have a peaceful presence about them that just knows, if you are ever fortunate enough to be around such a person. They have let go of any ideas about what life should be like, etc.
I invite you to watch a few videos by Adyashanti on YouTube, there are many so find a few titles that catch your eye and watch those. It might be that you won’t be able to stand him, which is fine, he’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it might be interesting to you.
February 11, 2015 at 7:07 am #72618MattParticipantI am going to make one last important point here which is that I only live by my own values and not the values of others. Therefore, I do not live by the values of others who tell me that I should and would be a great person for pursuing my composing dream anyway without my pleasure. I also do not live by the values of others who tell me that I should let go of my own values and open up to other ones. My own personal values are what now at least truly make me the better person despite my anhedonia and depression.
If it were somehow proven to me right now that I would never be able to recover my pleasure, then the only thing that would make me the better person would be for me to end my life. Therefore, I am the better person for giving up on my dreams and I am the better person for ending my life. Me accepting my loss of pleasure, moving on in life, and pursuing my composing dream anyway, this would make me and my life inferior and worthless since I would be living by the loathsome values of others and not my own hedonistic values.
Now as for anyone who would tell me that I would be selfish and such for ending my life in the event that my pleasure doesn’t recover, then you honestly expect me to live my life having no personal good life of my own to experience pleasure in? Furthermore, for you to expect that from me would mean that you have utterly demeaned my own personal value as a human being and my life for rejecting my desire to have a personal life of pleasure of my own. You would have rejected my own personal good value that I have which would be my right to have a life of full pleasure.
February 11, 2015 at 8:47 am #72629WillParticipantYou don’t seem to be asking for advice. In fact, you seem resistant to receiving it from the outset. So I won’t advise.
I would like to ask a question, though. Is the rigid mindset you display in these posts serving as a useful tool in your quest to recover pleasure? What’s your experience so far?
February 11, 2015 at 10:01 am #72631AnonymousInactiveDude, i m not gonna give u a lecture on my thoughts about life – just one thing straight up – go outside, have some real fun for a day – i dont see the point of this whole theorizing into happiness nd oh i shalt live if only i rediscover my pleasure – you nd i are living as we read/write this on this site- the thing is, life is too short to be only spent inside our heads – this could just be the depression talking, were u always like this?
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