Hi,I am writing this because I am f**ked
i had an awakening and came into lots and lots of self love and happiness. Fell apart in March, couldn't handle the anxiety. In April tried to meditate my way out of it and went way too deep, into my crown, accidentally DISSOLVING MY EGO
so since then, relentless anxiety, neurosis about everything, terrible emptiness, feeling next to dead, dissociated from my body etc.
i do believe that awareness alone allows for growth. However, I feel things are worsening/ since my healthy ego has died, my judgmental ego patterns are working even harder, making me feel more and more separate and fragmented.
this is super anti Buddhist practice but it's gotten to the point wejre I pray before bed to wake up with a restored heart and sense of self. Because nothing I DO helps anything, besides crying, for a few min. I am not healing, I am being more shattered and I want to dissolve these layers and re-realize my true self but they are only solidifying.so yes..... I am asking, pretty genuinely (denying the truth that I know) if we can pray for equanimity, for love, for balanced minds, for the ego structure to return. I believe in angels watching over us but I'm not so sure they can meddle in our minds.
i just don't know if this will pass on it's own, I feel like I fucked myself over badly. I don't sleep without meds, I don't feel like doing anything , or seeing anyone, I've become a zombie, whereas a mere 4 months ago I was singing. Dancing, flowing , feeling. Crying , admiring beauty , basically in my feminine essence. I want to be there, I want to be happy, and my ego can't seem to find it in the present moment.

Thich Nhat Hanh said something like "in Buddhism we do not believe in salvation by grace. We believe in salvation by insight." Do you have the ability to generate feelings of lovingkindness?

Much love to you es pro.  I think the question now is - who do you want to be?  What is it that you are missing?  What did you never have but you want to have now?  I think all forms of intention, including prayer, can be very helpful now.  But you will have to go forward rather than back.  You can be your best self now - you just need to decide what your best self is, and pray for that.

With great compassion

Malcolm

I love this quote

BTW. To fix mind configuration by generating feelings it would be more efficient to query memory and find what normally functioning mind felt like, extract essence of it and generate it. Mind would then naturally follow it trying to match it.

In the middle of worst Dark Night and without much experience in influencing mind with mind state visualization I would assume it would be somewhat tricky to pull off =P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms6EylTW-2o Here's where I saw it. This video is long, please don't watch it all. But maybe watch for a few minutes starting around 54:00. The small explanation he gives culminating in "that is freedom by insight" about how to dissolve anger really rocked me. The best parts of that talk convinced me that Thich Nhat Hanh really is a genius teacher.

es pro, I'm no great expert. I'm pretty much a guy with a hammer. But if you want to try, the practice is to wish yourself to be well. When you feel loving kindness, mentally place yourself in that feeling. When the feeling fades, make another wish for your own well-being. You can wish to be well, safe, to have no harm come to you, to be calm, to be peaceful, to be happy, to be completely free from suffering. Smiling helps, even if you don't feel like it at first. "Smiling, enjoying loving kindness." Relax. Become like a hot metta stove.

I don't really have that ability, no...that's the whole point of my prayer :/ I've been trying to cultivate my heArt for months now.
I know it's kind of counter to Buddhism. But I just feel so stuck. If there is no salvation by grace I'm not sure that I can save myself

It's kind of a tall order of who I want to be. I want my heart to be full again, I want my sense of self back which I dissolved- the self that says "I'm a woman, I'm Canadian, I am my parents daughter, I like ___" etc etc. I want to feel social and happy again. Sometimes I try visualizing times when my heart was wide open. I really DO wish I could just extract it!

Es pro - my suggestions for what they are worth.

One important thing is try to stop recoiling from the experience -  as long as you fearful it is hard to change things. Find a little bit of calm, accept the situation a little, and from there you can form some resolutions.

I am filled with love and kindness
I value who I am, I value who I will be
I value being female, a daughter, a Canadian
I am constantly recreated from my history, my location, my relationships, my intentions
I will strive to act skillfully, compassionately, with good intentions
I am filled with love and kindness

Try to reflect on these two or three times a day - it can be through prayer. And it is ok to take refuge in Buddha, or Jesus, or another deity at this point. Then after a week, you should be calmer and able to reflect on who you want to be. There is a hidden jewell of great value hiding behind the experience you are having.

Compassion and love to you.  Let me know how it goes.

Malcolm

I guess that in Buddhism and especially pragmatic dharma circles it is more like: Whatever works works, just one should not get attached to it.

BTW. Buddhism have its own prayer-like practices eg. saying name "Amitabha" as a mantra.
Like you could construct mantra like "Om Amitabha infinite joy" and it should make you experience Sukhavati, a pure abode that monk Amitabha created for all sentient beings to experience.
As strange as it might sound it just works. It however works better when you have quiet mind. If you have noisy Dark Night mind then it might be less obious. You should not be discouraged when not much will seem to happen as it will still help you.

ps. Om can be dropped but it has its function so maybe best would be to leave it.

Thanks for these messages
its not so much that I am physiologically nervous .... well ok I AM but perceive it mostly cognitively in terms of worry that I'll be stuck in this forever. And it isn't just the worry- it's the emptiness. 
I will try those affirmations though thank you
as for accepting it, it's kinda like I have to accept the non acceptance, accept that my mind has been conditioned to be extremely reactive and aversive and craving.....
so just to confirm is it totally useless to pray for my heart to blast open in my sleep? Oh god I know it is
its just I have created such a grasping for love and given that love kinda only comes when you aren't looking....

I don't think anyone could evaluate it and be sure that praying was totally useless. Nobody can ever work out what the effects of anything will be. But it would be like praying that I would just wake up with some important insight rather than sitting down and looking and seeing something in a new way. The Buddha didn't advise "hope very hard that salvation will land on your head", he advised to meditate diligently to work out salvation for oneself. From another perspective, I think everyone knows that it's counterproductive to focus too much on a desired result -- actually the result will take care of itself if we focus instead on process.

If you have any ability to conjure feelings of lovingkindness, like by imagining playing with a baby, or a puppy, or hugging a loved one and expressing gratitude to them, you can probably manage to coax it from a candle flame to a big strong bonfire. Do whatever it is that conjures the feeling. Tune in to it. Smile. Mentally connect the smile with the feeling. Mentally place yourself in the feeling. Wish yourself well-being. You are not so different from the puppy that you have the best wishes for, you are just another small animal. When the feeling fades, bring it back. Dwell smiling in lovingkindness. If distracted from feeling lovingkindness, relax tension in the body. Feel the relief of doing that. Then smile again and go back to feeling the wholesome feeling.

Thanks so much Brian. this is actually what I have been trying, although it just led to more and more grasping for the feeling. I will keep trying 

Great advice here. It's also helpful and normalizing to know that what you're going through is not uncommon for those who journey the spiritual path. I went through this, many people on this forum have gone through this, and thousands more people throughout history have. It's also worthwhile to remember the first noble truth: The cause of dukkha is craving; craving for things to be and craving for things to not be. Your suffering during this process is proportional to the craving/resistance you present. So a little acceptance will help lessen your suffering, and if you can't accept things, accept your inability to accept things. 

well, es, you are fucked.

love, tim

there's no difference between a prayer and an intention. 

w/r/t intention, "may i be happy" is no different than "fuck this, i am fucked"

it's really just directionality.

send your prayers in the direction you want to move towards.

"fake it til you make it"

you got this. you are loved

Shit.....I can't . What do you mean there's no difference between those two ? Like you're saying there has to be intention behind it?
i don't think praying for love and happiness has been working when as you said I spend all my time thinking fuck this I am fucked. I don't know what to do anymore , accept this or try to generate the feelings of love in prayer or what. Tim is right I am fucked and I don't know how to not be 

yes, there has to be intention behind it.  substitute "intention" for "prayer" wherever i write it in this post.

it's a question of will.

we spend our days praying that x will happen z won't happen, etc.

hoping and fearing. craving and aversion.


saying "may i be happy" is conceptual but it points us in the direction of maybe actually feeling happiness.

of course if you mutter "may i be happy" all day and feel like shit and tell yourself stories of why you feel like shit and stories that reinforce the story that you can't feel any better and this "happiness stuff" isn't working, then your prayer to continue to feel shitty overrides the prayer to be happy.

there are reasons why giving up/surrendering/ hitting rock bottom is so important.  one is that our mind is temporarily free of juxtaposing intentions and our prayers are stronger and prayer really works because our entire being is praying.   (one pointed concentration)

surrender like REALLY surrender to the shittiness of this moment, don't fight it, don't change it, just give up and give into it.


a good friend told me, you have to get sooooooo tired of holding on that you finally let go.

most of us aren't actually tired enough of holding on. aren't tired enough that we let go.


also, are you spending time in nature? or with any animals?

does any of this resonate with you?

when i feel utterly hopeless,
i try to hold my inner child. visualize her in front of you. doing whatever she's doing
and comfort her. hold her. love her. be the parent she needs

3 minutes of this can make a huge difference

It all resonates, definitely the surrender thing, that is 100% what I'd tell my self. When I'm in a decent mood it is so easy to tell myself this. When I am not, it is near impossible . The nature of the suffering is resistance. I wake up and run my story- "I don't want to do anything, I didn't wake up feeling like myself again damn", "this is going to last forever" etc. If I surrendered to this, it wouldn't be happening. But again sooo easy to say, just be a witness. I feel like I am a witness, but am clinging. And sooo easy to say just to detach yourself from it, but it feels so real. The aversion to do anything , lack of motivation, emptiness, social withdrAwal and insecurity etc. It all feels real . If I could just watch it from a distance I'd be free of this. And I don't think this is something I can "do" , it's just something that would "be". I don't know I spend time in nature but probably not enough .
i would think I'm tired enough cuz every moment I want out, but clearly not..... or just ego is so strong it forgot how to let go. HOW??!!!!!!!l

like if I do try to just watch myself, I'm still waiting, I'm still feeling empty, waiting for that awakening, love, rapture etc. Then I guess I have to watch that too. Watch all of it. Again easy to do when I'm in the "craving" sort of mood but when I'm in the despair there's nothing that can take away the suffering .
again I have been thru this before. And surrender was way easier because the aversion was way less. I was just minding my own business after awhile, and living life. I didn't grasp for awakening every time tears came. I just opened up. I wasn't looking. But now my mind is conditioned to look look look and I'm concerned I can't stop that if I am unable to relax into life even a little bit. There are thought patterns I've had since April that I'm not a fan of and yet they still come back. My mind is in an extreme state of clinging. I know nothings impossible, but some things feel impossible , even with the right effort 

"like if I do try to just watch myself, I'm still waiting, I'm still feeling empty, waiting for that awakening, love, rapture etc. Then I guess I have to watch that too. Watch all of it. "


bingo!  

watch the watcher who is watching the one who is waiting...

it take a lot of wisdom to articulate what you did in your last post. you are already doing it. this is all part of it. and you're gaining insights even though you may not notice them.

Thanks. I guess so. I have the awareness, it's just equanimity which is lacking, I guess though I have a choice in each moment 

yes you do.

the more space, the more choice.   

go to the woods or to a field or to the sea.  breathe some fresh air.  watch the clouds.  get off the computer.

it'll help

Thanks  
I think it will be a miracle if I am able to let go even a small amount . It torments me that I don't have control over not having control. I feel like I'm telling myself not to think about purple elephants, every moment I have an obsessive loop saying "we need out we need awakening and love" it's uhhhhh not great... it would be ideal if I could just be content 

I would rather say your nervous system badly need lithium...
Just not too much like they have in medications that give people reasons to go to ER.
Pinch of normal lithium salt does the trick and is less toxic than cup of coffee.

This! 

Jarrett, with all due respect, I do think there is a difference between prayer, and all its vastness variety, and intention. An intention may be a prayer, but prayer cannot be reduced to intention. T^o do so is to leave out the best of it, as I see it.

The "really just" language is an ugly rhetorical trick. You blow a fart and call it the smell of reality. That you are unaware of any prayer beyond intentionality is what it is. That you chose to believe the fart you blow is the whole thing based on a co-opting of the word "prayer" and a "really just" with no basis is sort of contemptible. You're a good guy, but this is bad rhetoric. Do you actually pray, or are you a buddhist tearing the word from the context of your youth and fucking it over in the name of a new agenda?

love, tim

es pro is loved, and by you, clearly. i mean no offense. But your reduction of a beauty to an ugliness little thing is offensive to me, and to all who know the real depths of real prayer.

There is nothing small about intentions, and they are only ugly if they involve ill will. 

i never meant to sell intentions short. My point is that they are not the whole of prayer, as asserted.

Are you familiar with how the word intention is used in a Buddhist context, Tim? 

you're right tim. i should have said "to me."

i'm sorry. 

i go into greater detail about how prayer and intention are identical to me in my follow-up post.

i'm curious how they are different for you.

again, my apologies. i did not mean to offend anyone, and you're absolutely right that that was bad rhetoric.

i'm not using the word in a buddhist context, and from my Catholic context i am insisting on a qualification in the way you use it in this buddhist context, to someone whose context is blown to shit.

i am not catholic. and i apologize for blowing your context to shit.

i do not pray to a creator or god or jesus or buddha. 

my qualification is, as a buddhist, if i "pray" to anything i am praying to the potentiality of emptiness. given the potentiality of emptiness, i do not see a difference between intention and will and prayer.

i respect your context and framework, and again, i apologize for any disrespect, and i will try harder to remember that my perspective is simply my perspective and speaking about it as absolute truth is utter bullshit.

thanks for calling me out.

I really don't think there is anything wrong with you talking from your own context, Jarret. After all, this forum is closer to a Buddhist context than a Catholic one, and it's not like Tim expressed himself with much respect towards your context. Much respect for your graciousness, though. 

i don't see anything wrong with it either. i have no trouble holding back my opnions. lol

but there are way too many disagreements and debates where people *refuse* to understand what others are trying to say. and i really don't want to partake in that childish shit, and i'm new to this community and don't wanna upset anyone here.

it's not hard to apologize for my lack of clarity when i notice someone is upset because of my lack of clarity. 

thank you both!

Well, you sure made a good first impression on me. 

How you doing?
Just so you know, we all love you

What Ni said.

love, tim

Aw thanks for checking in. I'm doing....waiting

It's silly to talk with certainty, but I am sure you'll be fine .

Thanks 
obsessing about this experience of no self, or awakening, etc.
like I have mentioned my ego is only clinging harder as fear persists.....HOW to experience no self? Lol

Prayer did work for me during that time I had a similar experience of thinking about self,
I meditated on the first paragraph of the Book of John.

I got out of that particular analysis loop with the help of visualizing a labryinth. I realized I was looping around in circles
and with that visual aid teleported out of it. (or to be precise, the video I was watching showed a spiral going out and then jumping back to the middle 'go back to the beginning' and the maze fell apart. That and Tim nerd sniping me with images of an ouroboros - I just let the snake unbite the tail). I have no idea from what tradition labryinths come from, but I noticed one on a walk one day and traced it out with my fingers and it sort of stuck in my head and it was a useful visual and kinesthetic tool aftwards.

I also happened to remember a motif about a maze from the TV show Westworld where the robots are trying
to learn how to be conscious and stuck in their behaviour loops and discover the secret of the maze.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XTt2M7V7AE

There's lots of images on google if you search for "meditation labyrinth" so presumably some people use them for this purpose as well.
e.g.
https://www.wikihow.com/Meditate-in-a-Labyrinth

Anyway hugs, hope you find your solution to this puzzle!

Ok thanks. Really don't know if I CAN WORK myself out of it I mean anything is possible but each day I wake up and things are worse and I feel more empty inside and disconnected from myself/body/others etc etc. What work am I. Supposed to do?

Sounds like fun, vacation even
Why does this bothers you?

Perhaps you think that if you liked it it would persist and you would stay disconnected like that.
It does not work like that. There is zero valid reasons to suffer, especially because of brain that is merely reconfiguring itself.

Each experience stream creates various experience streams with different presentations. What is pain is always also bliss, even ecstasy. All the nice and pleasurable things you experienced in your life could be experienced as pain and make you suffer just as much as all the suffering that you experience now you could experience as pleasure. Different representations are not different experiences, it is the same experience.

Then again, mind which cling to idea of liberation from suffering does not have time to look around for different version of what it experiences...

Anyway, I will try to rephrase this same thing again and again. This is essence of enlightenment... at least Theravada (no it does not have anything to do with sense of self or ego, even if better representation of sense of self is somewhere else than we typically use), as in Mahayana the realization is "only helping others can make you happy". So help yourself and stop your senseless suffering. And no "but"s, just experience pleasure whatever your mind tells you if there is a reason for things to be experienced as pain or pleasure or whatever else. Do not listen to your mind. Once you experience the bliss mind will follow and change its mind about what is happening to you.

Hey, just want to resurface this...things are not getting better, still feel like I'm moving away from myself and the world, total apathy. I realize I am very far from surrender; even my breath I have gotten a hold of and am trying to control. Just constant grasping.
i remember my moment of surrender after my dark night, I became aware of the breath and all of a sudden my heart opened. I am worried that because of the constant grasping, this cannot happen.
is it that unreasonable to ask for my soul to go thru a loving experience overnight during sleep, during which I may have a better chance of surrendering ? This sounds wacko saying it out loud. But I feel desperate. I have been trying this for 2 weeks and obviously hasn't been working. I am worried I'll be stuck in this forever due to inability to surrender. Even last night though I had crazy dreams about chasing love and about my breathing so even at night my mind doesn't stop. But I still hope

If surrender does not work then maybe you should pick some weapons and go to war?
Cannot get hurt more when fighting than when trying to surrender to evil. Also demons tend to like people who resist and tend to usually leave them alone and after some fighting want to become their friends and are then more willing to change to become better themselves because they just like power and if good can be poweful then they will be good. Nothing is irritating demons more than the idea of "surreder". What the frack... it even trigger my nerve and I am not even a demon...

Do open heart if that is what you want. Keep nukes ready, just in case

 Ni may be on to something here! Enough with this passive night of the soul! Let's kick some ass!

Which ass should we kick?! Go team!

Ready to kick it, in any case, lol.

"Dear God, just tell me which ass to kick, and Thy will be done, and not I, but Christ in me will kick that ass thoroughly. Amen."

love, tim

Are you really sure you want to get involved with the likes of the so called "God"...?

this is epic. You guyz r awesome

ni, too late for me, lol, i'm all in on the so-called "God."

and i pray to that Divine Motherfucker that S/He bring es pro through to her dawn soon. in a transient, suffering, no-self fashion, per the three characteristics, of course.

Hi es,

I did want to note that acceptance is not a passive surrender thing. It is genuine alert looking into the face of nothingness and meaninglessness, as they seem to be revealed in this night, and finding a way to live with the loss of the everything, and all the particular things. That seems to be the basis for eventually seeing the particular things in their own real light. But acceptance, in this as in all grief, comes in its own time, and as grace. Where is Shargrol Of Course, dammit!? lol. He says what needs to be said here so gently and so well.

https://shargrolpostscompilation.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html#transitiontoeq

love, tim

It is never too late to find the real one inside yourself. Then praying to this Christian God, or however it is called, will be a bit more meaningful.

True Christian is not merely taking from God but is also actively giving to it. Otherwise how is Jesus Christ is supposed to be able take a needed break? My understanding is that this visualization is a shared effort

Ni, it's es pro's prayer that is relevant here. I'm already long since fucked, buckled down, and shipped off to the sewer grate at the bottom of hell to serve out my sentient time. I've got nothing to give to "God," and wouldn't have a "Whatever" that needs anything. Love is a free gift, in every direction. And Jesus Christ was a big mistake made by mad Jews getting mistranslated among the goyim, who went on to fuck the whole thing up royally and call it "Christianity." I am a true Christian, i.e., a Jewish sectarian. I'm still working on Jesus' great question, "Who do you say I am?" That's the real Jesus koan, unsolved to this day.

love, tim

I do not think you are supposed to serve time in hell...
...but if you do find yourself there then pick up some metta powered weapons and kill em demons with kindness

Jesus was not so much jew as he was human being and he was not so much human being as he was sentient being. We all are and we all can do the same discovery as he did. Whether you pray to Jesus Christ or want to reach Gautama Buddha then do not ask for favors but ask them at which direction they look at.

Somehow I do not worry about Sarah.
She seem to have her heart in the right place and after worse days will come better days.
Sending metta though