note: The idea of this thread is to get out some of my psychological problems which have really built up and although I usually return to attention to sensations type practice, investigating my problems in a more discursive way seems like it is required at this point. However if people think I should just go back to sensations I am still open to that idea and some of the people I respect around here more than anyone else and whose practice results i'd like to emulate indicate that sensation-watching type stuff is all that is ever required. I want to emphasize: if people think that what is best is that I shut up in practice, I think I am ready for that.
note 2: this might be really long but I'd really appreciate help where possible.
note 3: some relevant history of my life is that I am 19 and most of my life for the past 3 or so years has been really strange, I don't think I ever really developed an identity the way people around me have I don't feel like I connect with people at all in real life, I fit all the symptoms as described by Erik Erikson as failure to develop an identity. Many times in the past few years I have tried super hard to commit to a certain identity, mostly via arguing with people about random stupid theories of what the "final answer" should be i.e. "fuk u, if u dont want no emotions than i am better than u." Or trying to commit to beliefs about the Buddha being super-awesome and omniscient and you can't disagree with him etc. I have tried REALLY hard to commit to these things and find some sort of "security" or "liberation" in organizing/stabilizing the world through these sorts of views.
Several times I've gone through the experience of having my identity shattered due to having soteriological views shattered, that's the thrust of my problems at the moment. I think the thing that really got me started with these questions was a comment Jake made on a different thread:
the thing to watch out for is if one is entering practice with subconscious blocks around experiencing the instinctual and emotional and relational aspects of life. The transpersonal identity can be a dissociative escape from earthly felt experiencing and relational complexities.
So if you feel committed to encountering and living your life fully, in a human and relational way, then you have little to fear about getting 'stuck' in a transpersonal identity
I don't really have any human or relational aspects to my life... which is probably not so good. Does this mean that:
. Jake .:
for some folks it could be a totally valid transitional mode of being between the ordinary default personal identity and a more open-ended, less-identified in general way of being.
Sometimes I think that this is where I am going, but it tends to contradict some of my instincts about psychological development - namely that avoiding things such as problems with social relationships with people means that you won't get past such psychological blocks, i.e. the only way out is through. An aspect of this has to do with the goals I have in life to begin with, what I want to be honest is to have no problems of life, to "perceive" perfectly and be perfectly happy I really don't want anything else. I am not really sure what this means, does the Dalai Lama have this with his total openness to his emotions, his unrestricted joy or unrestricted sadness and tears? Is this more like what Tarin Greco talked about with his "self going to oblivion and being fine with it" what I really think I want, and I don't think this is scripted, it is just coming out spontaneously - is some sort of permanence, a sort of unchangingness to something, anything, some ground to stand on, security. I have tried to make soteriological views into this but they obviously don't cut it, they are really wobbly, they aren't the sort of permanence I am looking for.
Maybe what I am looking for is not clinging to views, over the past few days when I started seeing this in a real, experiential way I looked at it at first as simply terrifying, nothing less than the end of the world. Right now I am thinking that I'd like to find something more like that in my life. It is really obvious to me that a lot of well being can be found over there, in the sort of lightheartedness about life and practice and liberation which I recognize moments of in my own experience and in other, more advanced practitioners.
The usual thing I go with in times like these hardcore content-ignoring, I'm really an expert at it. Every time my mind would start up thinking about my practice and wellbeing I would just return attention ruthlessly to sensations. No breaks, no conscious exceptions. (and I see a variety of sources, practitioners here and thai monks who suggest that this can lead to the sort of "permanence" I am interested in.)
What I really want is to be able to just walk around and live without feeling closed off to everything and every body. To not feel super anxious about just walking around through my college campus and imagining people judging me and shit. I want to send out a sort of universal apology about the hideous negative 'vibrations' I feel like I have spent so much time sending out. At the worst moments there are spontaneous mental images of my body exploding and letting all this tension out. I turn everything into a super-hardcore practice including "do nothing" or "relax" or "be equanimous".
I feel like what I should do now is something like just be happy not as a practice, no goal, I can't "practice" things anymore, they never work. Hard to explain what I mean by this. Application of a "technique" just feels like an incredible burden perhaps what is required is a 'lifestyle' approach (practice is taken as the goal itself, i.e. you do it because it is pleasant) but I can turn that into a "technique" I have to work at pretty easily.
I should probably note that I have gone through cycles of this before, and next week I will probably be back where I started, I don't see where "progress" comes in. In fact just while writing this I felt jubilant and now I don't really remember why. FUCK. What do I do. Enjoy the "lowness" accept the "lowness" investigate the "lowness" stop treating the "lowness" as a problem? Do nothing? Focus on the breath? Chant a mantra? Watch a movie? Jack off? Eat some ice cream? Laugh? STFU and go back to observing sensations? Read some random dharma because it will inspire me for 5 minutes? Go on the forums and whine about it all? I think I could list all the potential solutions I am not taking for the next 10 minutes but I'll stop here.
Where is the fundamental problem, O enlightened folks, I don't know. Is this just pussing out? Do I go back to sensations? Wow my thought loops are so blind that I actually write them down like 5 times in one post.
I should probably edit this but I need to take a break, though as mentioned before I don't know how to do that.
metta,
Adam