| | Hello all.
As the title suggests, I'm considering dropping out of college, moving away from home, and pursuing some kind of community where dharma practice as a valid "occupation" is facilitated, supported, encouraged, understood. This is obviously an extremely large decision, and there could be quite large implications for both myself, my family, and the communities I'm involved in. Making such a decision could indeed be inspired by being in A&P territory, or also from dark night territory. I understand that, having crossed the A&P in practice, I am susceptible to making decisions influenced by cycling, and the feelings and thoughts brought about in various nanas. I'm also 19, which many argue is an age at which the mental and emotional faculties aren't mature enough to make rational and sound decisions. They would perhaps also argue that being this age, I haven't seen enough of the world, haven't sent out enough feelers, haven't digested my options, haven't developed a sound base of rationality on which it is possible to make large, influential decisions. I can also see arguments based on the three trainings, suggesting that such an abandon of my current life-platter is radically neglecting the training of morality to pursue the other two. In particular, just leaving would upset my parents immensely, and waste their money, as they have paid for one year of college so far. A possible argument is that it would be better to finish college first before "setting off".
I think it is wise to give a short summary of my life up to this point, as these details have led up to my current position. As much as I feel bad about just shooting off a long list of "problems" in my life, I feel it necessary to do so in order to show where I'm coming from. I love my parents and my sister, and I'm extremely grateful for the quality of life I live, the food and money provided, and the general comfort of life.
My Family Life:
I was adopted, privately, a few weeks after I was born. My parents are Mormon. As much as I don't like to use religion as a way to criticize people, and as much as I don't like to generalize, it is possible that many will understand some of the characteristics I speak to, leading to a better understanding of my family life. Of course, the typical teenager will complain about their parents, but please read this for what it is, rather than as the stereotypical angsty teen complaining. My parents both come from low-income households, where the father was unfaithful and left the wife and kids. Now, the household brings in what I would guess is 150-200k a year.
My mom is watching television quite frequently. She doesn't like to be talked to, really. If I try to talk to her while she's watching tv, she'll not look away, give a brief answer, and be obviously annoyed. She'll turn the tv up, and say that she's trying to watch. She gets home from work, changes out of work clothes, turns on the tv, and turns it off when it's time to go to bed. I see her taking all kinds of pills for headaches, aches, sleeping, and all sorts of things. She seems quite healthy to me, but she's constantly talking about what she thinks is wrong with her. I suspect she is a hypochondriac, and I suspect that her medical knowledge from tech school enables her to worry about a vast array of problems she's learned about. She constantly self-diagnoses herself with problems and goes to the doctor, but it seems that her only verified problem is poor eyesight and chronic migraines, of which the doctors don't understand. I attribute it to constant stress and worry. She is always worrying. She will often come into my room at night and ask if I smell something burning. We live in a mid-high income suburb, in a city with low crime and, it turns out, one of the highest police-per-capita in the nation. She boards some doors at night for fear of break-ins. We have an alarm system too. She doesn't sleep well. I suspect she only gets 4 hours of sleep or so, and it seems to be extremely light. She has explained how her mind is constantly turning at night, how her worrying keeps her up. She has also expressed depression, which I will get to in a minute. When I talk with her, she talks about her and her boss, how her boss is like her son, how she is always getting compliments, and how much she hates one of her coworkers. She is constantly baking cakes, pies, brownies, and bringing treats to work, but doesn't seem to do these things at home. She has a tendency to unload for a very long period of time without any silent space, and then once she's done, walk away without me having said a word. If I try to tell her about my day, she will distantly say "uh huh, uh huh" as she walks away, turns on the tv, or does other things. When she asks me questions, they seem to be an attempt to prove my inadequacy. When I express having had a bad day, having felt poorly, having had a bad experience, she is almost certain to respond with "You should have...", making a point of how these things are my fault, some kind of shortcoming of my foresight or emotional strength. If I am to pursue it and explain how it's just an expression of the feelings that are getting to me, she may respond with, "What am I supposed to do about it? I can't do anything about it".
She has blatantly told me that she doesn't trust me or my sister, and often makes outright incorrect claims about knowing we are doing sin, often times because the "holy spirit" has told her. She has been known to literally run suddenly up and down stairs, and ask me, my sister, or my friends if we're doing something we shouldn't be doing. One time, she was pulling in the driveway as she saw me upstairs in the bathroom through the window. I went downstairs and played piano. She had seen me upstairs when she pulled in but then when she found me on the lower level when she came inside, she accused me of doing things I shouldn't be. She has stood outside my bathroom and accused me of masturbating. She has also told us of having, in her words, premonitions where we're drowning or dying somehow, at times when our family is about to go on vacation to places where there is water. When I was probably 13 or so, I had clicked into some sort of pornography, and she saw it in the history. Amidst days of tears and hours of talks, she told me that if I didn't change my ways, she would put me up for adoption since she didn't feel safe with me around. This is not an exaggeration. My take of my mom is this: she grew up in a miserable household, had the "born-again" experience, converted to Mormonism, married my dad, but never learned to trust men, or maybe just humans in general, never learned to love herself, and never learned a set of social skills that I deem vital to raising children.
I admit that there is intense resent, but I, honestly, don't express it. I've learned to be very quiet, emotionally detached, and generally absent from the house. I don't try to talk to her anymore. I don't share feelings, concerns, school life, thoughts, daily activities, anything like that, unless there is a compelling need. I'm not cold though. I try to be a good son, since they are providing for me. I try to practice metta. I do the dishes, occasionally buy treats, take out garbage, and do nice things when they weren't asked of me. I say, "hey, how was your day?". I ask how I can help. I try to avoid any sort of disagreement, even over simple things, since she seems to lack the ability to discuss differing opinions without raising her voice, claiming that I'm condescending, and telling me not to challenge her. She's like this with my dad too.
My dad is a peaceful man. His conduct is extremely humble, meek, and non-aggressive, although he comes off to me as emotionally suppressed, as when he does get worked up, he has bursts of anger, screaming, and throwing things. He attributes his peace in his marriage to his insistence on not arguing with my mom, who seems to enjoy instigating arguments out of anything. I'm not trying to skew this to my advantage. I think she sincerely enjoys creating contention, and I don't know why. I suspect its a way to feel in control of others emotions and actions, but maybe she really had such a warped perspective that she sees her methods as a valid way to converse. Anyways, my dad is home only on weekends. He works out of state during the week. He has to put away a fair amount of money, because he has a rare, poorly understood medical condition called ITP. Doctors don't really understand what causes it, but when he relapses, he's put away in the hospital, sometimes for months. This is expensive and drains savings, which makes my mom even more paranoid. To this day, she still makes statements like, "I still worry and think, how could I feed my family on a dollar a week". Of course, we have a big house and flashy things and flashy cars, but my dad insists that these things aren't large investments. My mom, who will go out and buy expensive flashy things, doesn't seem to see any dissonance between her frugalness, constant fear of poverty, and lavish lifestyle. Anyways, when contention happens, my dad is quiet. I consider what my mom does as bullying. When he's around, I'll sometimes say, "Dad, what's your take on this", but he doesn't do anything about it. He doesn't try to talk reason into my mom, although when we talk privately, he acknowledges these problems. She won't listen though. In fact, if we pursue trying to talk to her, she goes into depressions where she says she and the whole world thinks she's a terrible parent. She's even requested that we hide the gun before. Whether or not this is a way to try to get us to not complain, or a legitimate suicide threat, I don't know. But the point is that even the most empirical, non-emotional attempt at discussion with her will lead to her becoming angry, depressed, and even non-respondent, refusing to speak at all, ignoring statements and just walking away. I believe it has gotten to this point since he has always let her walk over him. She makes the decisions, wears the pants, has the power. My opinion is that he has made a fatal flaw by not asserting his opinions, not protecting me and my sister from this emotional abuse, and using "the gospel" as a safety net.
The Mormon Church:
I was as faithful as ever, more than anyone else. I could quote scriptures, defend controversial topics, and convince others of my religious views with charisma and logic. However, I began to see problems. The members seemed to add up to this facade of constantly happy, energetic, charismatic, and "perfect" people. When I would try to discuss concerns about the doctrine, teachers would get angry, tell me I was being disruptive, tell me I was being unfaithful, and tell me that I was being an intellectual. I don't know about the rest of the world, but people who questioned the doctrine and, in general, questioned anything were referred to as intellectuals. This was a derogatory term, which stood for someone without true faith, someone who tried to outsmart the church, someone who dabbled in what the church referred to "philosophies of the world". These members were talked about by other members. I could make a list of the people who others considered intellectuals and frowned upon in privacy. Being quite "faithful" to science, logic, and cold hard data, this was of great concern to me. Then, I ran into the anachronisms. The Book of Mormon claims that Native Americans were actually Israelites, led by God to the promise land, but science has proven that Native Americans came from Asia, through Alaska, southeast into America. Then, I ran into the notion that gays were going to hell. I pulled up some data and found what I thought was undeniable evidence that sexuality is genetic, but in any case, coming to the conclusion that changing your sexuality was as feasible as changing your eye color. Then, I found blatantly racist statements made by the founders of the church. Then, I was laying outside one day, and I believe I had a spontaneous jhanic experience, or something, at which point I just had this innate conviction that there was more to be done as far as religion goes. All of these things added up to me carefully construction a letter to my parents explaining why I wasn't going to go to church today, written in the most polite, logical, and respectful way possible. Of course, my parents were furious and reacted with anger, disappointment, and what I perceive to this day to be a certain "dis-owning". Our relationship was already not wonderful, but this really killed it. They think I'm going to hell now. They think I've turned my back on all spirituality, and have scripted a kind of descent into misery and a broken life, pointing this out to me often, at times of my shortcomings. When I try to express emotional trouble to my dad, he simply tells me that his heavenly father takes care of him and his troubles.
Depression and Suicide:
The family life up to that point would've been enough to create a serious depression, but with this added disconnection from the church and breaking up with a girl I had been quite close to for years, I felt like I had no one at all. I remember being intensely interested in psychic stuff, meditation, enlightenment, and spirituality from at least 7th grade, and I have a feeling that I was already cycling through nanas by that point, and it is possible that dark night stuff was involved. I remember feeling desperation, misery, helplessness, agony, hatred towards others and myself, and isolation. However, these fits of horrible feelings would usually lead up to this odd sort of compassion that seemed outside of myself, like a mother weeping over the pain of her child. From this perspective, I felt not only a sense of compassion for myself, but also for my parents and for what pain they must experience. I felt sorry for myself, sorry for them, and guilty for these feelings of compassion for those who I thought were causing me so much pain. I tried to talk to a counselor at school and she just told me that she saw it as a teen rebellion thing, and that if she were in my parents position, she would make me go to church. I gave up at that point, seeing nowhere at all to turn, and tried to kill myself by burning lots of charcoal in my car, while I listened to Chopin and read about his life. I took the missionary fund my parents had been saving for me, cashed it, bought some weed. Two miraculous things happened. One, I smoked a joint, figuring it would be a nice way to ease the stress of dying. Two, my friend skipped class and checked his email randomly, finding a suicide note that I had intended for him to pass on to my parents. Once I smoked that joint, something snapped in my mind. I just suddenly didn't want to die after I smoked it. I've heard similar stories to that effect. Then, my friend called and calmly but intimately implored me to keep living, to step out of the car and start over completely anew. I did that. I didn't tell anyone about this besides the friends who were involved in the phone call. I don't see how it would do any good to tell my seemingly unstable parents about this.
I rebuilt myself. I learned that I could be my own center of stability. I learned that even in pain, there could be peace. Equanimity, I suppose. I learned the power of emotions, the power of thoughts, the power of attractive thinking, and the value and vulnerability of life. I realized that I wasn't the only one in such a situation of pain. I began to look at others and realize that beneath the facade, there was a mass of unacknowledged pain. I realized that we never really "have it all together", that any kind of together-ness was absolutely fictional, even in times of happiness. I saw how new-age stuff was falling short of realizing this imperfect nature, this unavoidable chaos, this unfixable imperfectness in every human. Having dropped to that extremely low point and stepping away into some kind of peace, I realized that even in the midst of the most turbulent pain, one could accept it and find that peace. I realized that I had insight of some kind, but these insights weren't really mature, formulated clearly like this, or well-practiced. But these knowledges were certainly there, and I've spent that time up to this day obsessed with understanding them. Fast forward to a year ago, when I found this pragmatic dharma scene which explained all the Buddhist concepts and meditations I had struggled to understand and practice, in a down to earth and plain-english way. I immediately began practicing.
Where I'm At Now:
So I've been practicing meditation (jhana and vipassana) for about a year or so. I admit that it isn't a long time. However, I have the ability to enter (soft jhanas) 1-4, and seem to be able to get up to equanimity in insight meditation. I believe I crossed the A&P long, long ago, since I've been obsessed with meditation, philosophy, energy, chakras, enlightenment, suffering, self, and religion through basically all of my teen years. I've been working towards stream entry. I find myself mostly between A&P stuff, dark night stuff, and poking through to equanimity. Kenneth Folk said that once you cross the A&P, you're on the ride, and you'll make choices to pursue that ride at the expense of other things. I've found this to be extremely true. I'm busy with college, but dharma stuff just takes over my mind. More and more, I'm losing the will and desire to do homework that I see as pointless. I see rigid systems and unenlightened, unhappy people trying to explain what true happiness and success is, along with fellow classmates, turning from interest in the beauty of life, to stress of work, obsession of money, and a cold, almost manic attempt to tune out anything spiritual, philosophical, or suggestive of inner-peace, happiness, bliss, joy, that kind of stuff. I understand the whole A&P excitement and evangelicalism I may exhibit, but this seems different. Before college, these people loved to walk in the woods, speculate about the universe, try meditations, and contemplate the odd, frantic, posession-driven lifestyle led by the adults. Now, there seems to be some sort of cognitive dissonance, where these moments are in opposition to the ideas of success, wealth, power, "making it big". It makes me feel like I'm not growing up, like I'm somehow less mature, somehow less directed, somehow less successful, somehow less intelligent. This is reinforced by knowing that my parents have been talking to my sister in private, telling her that they don't think I'm going to succeed in school, don't think I'm going to find any work, don't think I'm trying, don't think I'm taking it seriously, don't think about anyone but myself. These are terrible things to hear, and they add up to, "we don't believe in you or feel supportive of your life". If they really cared, wouldn't they try to talk to me about it?
My parents are paying me through college. I've offered to pay but they have said that they want to pay. I've only attended two semesters, but to be fair, I tested out and substituted free college for high school for my junior and senior years of high school, accumulating over a year's worth of credits. As I grow more and more uncertain that college is doing something for me, I worry that the longer I keep attending, the longer I waste my parents' money. The urge to drop out is strong and growing, and I worry that if I don't do it now, they'll be thousands of dollars more upset if I decide to do it down the road, or end up pursuing something other than a career in my degree-field.
There's the dharma thing too. I'm under the impression that if I get stream-entry, I am likely to rid myself of a lot of suffering, remove a lot of the pain of self-referencing, and have a much more stable position to make life decisions from. The problem is, that I feel as though I don't have time to get the momentum to get stream entry. I'm busy paying attention to lectures, to studying and practicing. I've heard of people getting stream entry at home or at work, and I suppose it's possible to get it, but I just have the feeling that I can't build up enough momentum to do it. I note when I get up and go to school, but it's just impossible to pay attention to notes during lectures and homework, and impossible to pay attention to lectures and homework during noting. Sometimes I get home and fall asleep in the evening, exhausted, and don't get up until the next day, then do it all again. Sometimes the dukkha nanas will come on so strong that I fell as though I can't make it to the end of a hallway without stopping and trying to find stability. Doing homework in intense misery is an impossibility. I fall apart upon the work. Then, there's the emotional pain and insecurity that I encounter so often with my mom, which is also hard to deal with during dukkha. I've tried to avoid bleed-through but the bottom line is, my effort seems to not have been enough, since I'm failing two classes and not really making any new progress in insight.
I also have to consider this. Is my disenchantment with the life I'm living truly just because of the dukkha nanas? Will my concerns with the system of college just disappear once I get stream entry? Will I just be like, "Oh, its all okay now and I can do this without worrying about the stuff I used to"? I am only speculating, but I don't think the concern will just disappear. Perhaps someone has experience here.
Based on all of this, I'm considering deferring schooling, heading off to a monastery where I can focus all my efforts on stream entry and possibly beyond, and then deciding from that point what would be best to do with my life. I don't know though. I don't really have anyone to talk to about all this. I've thought of contacting various monasteries and seeing if there is anyone who would have this conversation. |