Strong disenchantment and difficulty integrating

Samvega, modified 3 Years ago at 3/20/20 9:44 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/20/20 9:42 PM

Strong disenchantment and difficulty integrating

Posts: 2 Join Date: 3/20/20 Recent Posts
Hi! 

I've been set on the spiritual path ever since a very startling awakening experience 5 1/2 years ago. Ever since, the issue for me has always been integrating into "ordinary life". 

How does one integrate into the world when one is quite disenchanted with the world?
By disenchanted I mean not really interested in doing stuff lol.

I find I most resonate with the dharma and the Buddha's teaching and I find it hard to not appreciate the Buddha's stance about things (renouncing the world, not partaking in worldly stuff)

Did anyone or does anyone currently feel this way?
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Papa Che Dusko, modified 3 Years ago at 3/21/20 2:55 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/21/20 2:55 AM

RE: Strong disenchantment and difficulty integrating

Posts: 2670 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent Posts
Welcome. Hard to tell you anything until you explain in detail what that awakening experience looked like, and also what is your current contemplative practice. 
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David Matte, modified 3 Years ago at 3/21/20 5:22 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/21/20 5:22 AM

RE: Strong disenchantment and difficulty integrating

Posts: 108 Join Date: 8/3/19 Recent Posts
Papa Che Dusko:
Welcome. Hard to tell you anything until you explain in detail what that awakening experience looked like, and also what is your current contemplative practice. 
Greetings. I first got thrust on this path taking psychedelics which really opened my mind to a different way of perceiving things. This was a huge blessing as there was a burden of psychological suffering in my life that started to dissipate as I started perceiving my experience more wholistically. 

I got really set on trying to find out what was true. I continued a psychedelics path for a two years. I eventually came to a place where I felt I "made it". That meaning there was no more striving for anything, any sort of truth; everything was just as it was. I had been meditating irregularly during this period but eventually begun to practice regularly with vipassana & mahasi noting daily.

Long periods of practice secluded in my room confirmed again and again what I suspected to be true: "In the seen, there is only the seen, in the heard, there is only the heard, in the felt, there is only the felt." No individual "I", but only a volume of experience happening, swirling, dancing, fluxing...what Daniel describes as sensate experience being causal, transient, natural, sensations aware were they are.
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terry, modified 3 Years ago at 3/22/20 12:30 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/22/20 12:26 AM

RE: Strong disenchantment and difficulty integrating

Posts: 2424 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
Samvega:
Hi! 

I've been set on the spiritual path ever since a very startling awakening experience 5 1/2 years ago. Ever since, the issue for me has always been integrating into "ordinary life". 

How does one integrate into the world when one is quite disenchanted with the world?
By disenchanted I mean not really interested in doing stuff lol.

I find I most resonate with the dharma and the Buddha's teaching and I find it hard to not appreciate the Buddha's stance about things (renouncing the world, not partaking in worldly stuff)

Did anyone or does anyone currently feel this way?


aloha samvega,

   Oh hell yes. I'm disenchanted with the world most of the time. Sometimes I am quite prostrate with frustration, anger, hatred and self-pity. Today, yesterday, tomorrow. All is suffering and unrest.

   The more I suffer the more I am forced to confront the nature of suffering and deal with it, if I am not to simply hang myself.

   Words and ideas don't wipe away tears, or assuage rage. It is love which binds and soothes.

   The futility and inanity of these emotions are indicators but not in themselves enough. It takes real insight into the nature of suffering.

   I was just thinking today, "What I want is love" and examined that thought. "What I want" is an indication of a state of want, a state of lack, a state of unfulfilled desire. "Is love" indicates a state of fulfilment, an absence of want or lack.

   Now and then I experience the state of love and feel perfectly fulfilled. All sentient beings seem friendly and striving to do their best, with their behavior understandable and readily forgiven. More often people seem ignorant, selfish and oblivious, as my state is one of doubt, fear, shame, anger, frustration and/or lust.

   In reality, at all times a just and moderate approach to human beings is appropriate. People do not really change in accordance with swings in my moods. Recognizing this, I have to think that when people seem wonderful and full of love, that condition, whether in me or them or both, will not continue. When everyone seems false and confused and uncaring, that too will pass.

  This struck me today not as a platitude, but as a constant condition. My unhappiness with a lack of love and my satisfation with a fullness of love are both present in all moments. It is the lack which makes love precious. In my lack I love love as much as I love love in my fullness. The cure needs the disease.

  Next step: try not to love the cure so much you embrace the disease.

terry




People Are Strange
(the doors)

People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down
When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
No one remembers your name
When you're strange
When you're strange
When you're strange
People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down
When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
No one remembers your name
When you're strange
When you're strange
When you're strange
When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
No one remembers your name
When you're strange
When you're strange
When you're strange

(sogwriter fyodor chystyakov)
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Papa Che Dusko, modified 3 Years ago at 3/22/20 5:07 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/22/20 5:06 AM

RE: Strong disenchantment and difficulty integrating

Posts: 2670 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent Posts
Hi David Matte. I could say this or that about what you stated but deeply I think you should listen to what Kenneth Folk has to say about it in this fascinating podcast emoticon  Make sure to hear both what he sais about CONR and Cosmic Joke. 

https://podtail.com/podcast/deconstructing-yourself/dy-002-the-cosmic-joke-with-guest-kenneth-folk/
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David Matte, modified 3 Years ago at 3/22/20 5:13 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/22/20 5:09 PM

RE: Strong disenchantment and difficulty integrating

Posts: 108 Join Date: 8/3/19 Recent Posts
Papa Che Dusko:
Hi David Matte. I could say this or that about what you stated but deeply I think you should listen to what Kenneth Folk has to say about it in this fascinating podcast emoticon  Make sure to hear both what he sais about CONR and Cosmic Joke. 

https://podtail.com/podcast/deconstructing-yourself/dy-002-the-cosmic-joke-with-guest-kenneth-folk/


Hi Papa! Thanks, yes, I already have listened to that podcast with Michael and Kenneth. It sounds like they share my view too -- that it feels amazing to be unconscious in deep sleep because there is no experience or suffering there.

I guess I'm just looking to hear from liberated people on how they experience disenchantment, to what degree do they experience it? I feel enchantment/disenchantment is a range for liberated people and I can't help but think I somehow ended up at the far left of the scale lol (strong disenchantment). How do disenchanted people go through with being surrounded by enchanted people in an enchanted society in a world that is ultimately unsatisfying? I'm reminded of the Buddha saying that if a layperson were to become enlightened, they must ordain and join the sangha or else they will die. Clearly the Buddha believed the world had nothing left to offer one who saw the dhamma.

P.S I am the original poster samvega
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Papa Che Dusko, modified 3 Years ago at 3/22/20 7:17 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/22/20 7:15 PM

RE: Strong disenchantment and difficulty integrating

Posts: 2670 Join Date: 3/1/20 Recent Posts
I'm having a funny feeling that awakening is also subject to the Big Mama we come to call Anicca/Impermanence emoticon 

I know there are folks claiming 100% Non-self/Decentralised/Emptiness/Non-dual perception but I'm not sure this means free from Anicca or/and Suffering. 

I mean each to their own of course. I can't get into someone else's mind and check. I can only know my own (even that seems not the easiest task). 

Buddha might have thought "cessation of suffering" as two things; one as cessation in form of Pari-Nibbana (gone, gone, never to become) and as "in seeing there is only the seen" as in Getting the Cosmic Joke, meaning there is no Anicca in THIS very Moment. For Anicca to be I have to self-validate experiences that passed. In seeing being only the seen can be no sense of Self as in that moment there is only the Sense of See, referring back to no one. Again there must be self-validation involved to get the sense of self. 
In this case, no Anicca and no Self = no Suffering. 

4th Noble Truth, thank you very much emoticon 
Simple stuff! I like simple stuff emoticon 

In sleep or when in coma or heavily sedated there is no self-validation as there is no experience at all. 
Suffering requires this organism to be conscious so to have experience and to self-validate. 

Let's say Samsara is constant self-validating of experience. 
Lets say Liberation is constant This-ness lacking self-validation as a result of "seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling" which in This Satipatthana refers back to no one. This emoticon 

Still I find that once involved in life with other beings this this-ness can get subject to Anicca and things go sideways. This is spoken from the stand point of Morality of course which again is self-validation. 

This brings me back to Buddha likely saying that only Pari-Nibbāna is the actual way to the End of Suffering and all else are just Interventions, to use Kenneth Folk's word. 
Until Pari-Nibbāna we have the tools to use, aka the Noble 8th-fold Path (constant bike shedding). emoticon 
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streamsurfer, modified 3 Years ago at 3/24/20 12:56 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/24/20 12:56 AM

RE: Strong disenchantment and difficulty integrating

Posts: 100 Join Date: 1/19/16 Recent Posts
Wise words, Terry

Fascinating how the world and people reflect back on us.. if I meet only unfriendly people all day, maybe I am the one who is actually unfriendly ??
Spiritual bypassing is greeting and much to learn from that emoticonemoticon
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terry, modified 3 Years ago at 3/24/20 2:59 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 3/24/20 2:59 PM

RE: Strong disenchantment and difficulty integrating

Posts: 2424 Join Date: 8/7/17 Recent Posts
streamsurfer:
Wise words, Terry

Fascinating how the world and people reflect back on us.. if I meet only unfriendly people all day, maybe I am the one who is actually unfriendly ??
Spiritual bypassing is greeting and much to learn from that emoticonemoticon


aloha surfer,

   Ever run across someone smiling like they just had a baby, or won the lottery, or fulfilled their deepest dream? One can't help but smile along with them. By the same token, depressed people make you want to turn away. Needy people make you think about your own security. Heartless people make you hard-hearted. Haters make us hate, the angered make us angry.

   Our doubts and fears conjure up their objects. Trust begets trust, love begets love.

   One needs to be proactive.

   Thanks for responding to my heartfelt outpouring. We spiritually bypass, greet, and learn.

namaste,
terry



from "the way of chuang tzu" trans merton:




THE EMPTY BOAT


He who rules men lives in confusion;
He who is ruled by men lives in sorrow.
Yao therefore desired
Neither to influence others
Nor to be influenced by them.
The way to get clear of confusion
And free of sorrow
Is to live with Tao
In the land of the great Void.

If a man is crossing a river
And an empty boat collides with his own skiff,
Even though he be a bad-tempered man
He will not become very angry.
But if he sees a man in the boat,
He will shout at him to steer clear.
If the shout is not heard, he will shout again,
And yet again, and begin cursing.
And all because there is somebody in the boat.
Yet if the boat were empty,
He would not be shouting, and not angry.
If you can empty your own boat
Crossing the river of the world,
No one will oppose you,
No one will seek to harm you.
[xx. 2.]

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