Hi Emma,
Welcome to the DhO.
Quite a poignant post for your first post. Waking up can be almost like a rebirth in itself, as your testimony attests. If you stick with your new found discoveries and keep working at it, you should discover what the other side of the coin looks like. All people really want is to be told the truth and how to find it out for themselves. As you continue to grow and explore the Dhamma that Gotama taught, you may be amazed at all the "stuff" you used to "buy into," and begin seeing it for what it actually
is for the first time.
The power of ideas and the mind to create reality is not something to be taken too lightly. It can hold people hostage to falsehoods, keeping them bottled up, anxious, and afraid for their future, not to mention their present. It's much better to be able to see reality as it actually is and know that one does indeed have some control over it, because then one has something solid that one can deal with, rather than to be tied up in negative thought and despair over something that only exists within the mind itself. (Personally, I think most of us realize this even when we're in the midst of it. It's just that we don't know how to get out of this trap once it has sprung on us.)
Emma ---:
I spent most of my twenties following an American Hindu-style "master," not unlike the teacher described in Bill Hamilton's book Saints & Psychopaths (which, incidentally was an awesome, healing read). While I ultimately left that situation profoundly hurt and disillusioned, I did have some very real spiritual experiences in my years of involvement, along the lines of what is described here as the A&P. And as much as I would like to forget a lot of what happened and what I participated in, I do have have the feeling of not being able to go back somehow - spiritual and existential questions just bother me...a lot. After reading more in the past year about the progress of insight, my best guess is that I have being cycling again and again through the dark night for years, becoming quite identified with myself as an easily depressed and melancholy person.
I've been through the "American Hindu-style master" syndrome myself, some twenty years ago now. It took a few well placed words by Gotama (and, truthfully, one or two others) in the form of the
Kalama Sutta to help me to begin the journey to break all this down into something that was more acceptable and realistic. It would seem as though you may be at the beginning of just such a journey yourself.
Emma ---:
These feelings of depression hit me very strongly again the other day in a "here we go again" kind of way, and I found it very difficult to meditate. Sulking around on this site though, I had the perspective-altering realization that all my depression and existential dread, just like everything else, was not really me and not permanent. That it was mainly just a pressure in my chest combined with a slightly nauseous feeling in my stomach and a lot of negative thoughts.
That's an important insight to have arrived at, Emma. If you explore "feeling" (
vedana), and how phenomena affect the way you feel along with the subsequent volitional tendencies that are produced, in a deeper way and consistent with what the Dhamma teaches, you should be able to discover for yourself the origins of this
dukkha, how it arises, how it subsides, and the way leading to its cessation. In that process, you will learn how to liberate yourself from such potential dissatisfaction.
Thank you for sharing a part of your story with us. All the best to you on your journey.
Ian