Ok, maybe this is coming straight from dark night territory, maybe being compounded by dark night territory, but in any case, I want to share because I've known the members of this community to be very empathetic and wise.

I'm moving out of my parent's house soon, and it's starting to hit me that my upbringing has been "locked in", meaning, I never got the chance to make things right, never got the chance to express emotions to my parents, never had the chance to have the closeness that I imagined one day would naturally and inevitably come. I'm having a lot of trouble with feelings of pain and depression. A few years back, I used to experience all kinds of anger, anxiety, desperation, guilt, and such, because of the way I've been raised. I've already hashed out these things in another thread in the past, so I don't feel like going into the whole story, but I'll just sum it up.

My parents both come from "broken" households, both had dads that left when they were young, both grew in poverty. I don't know how that plays into who they are, but I'm sure it does. Anyways, my mom is basically a narcissist. She is completely obsessed with her own beauty, getting botox and always obsessing over the way she looks. She's obsessed with image in general. In fact, I think that when she considers me as her son, she considers that I'm just an extension of her, an accessory to her status. She has constantly been horrified by my acne growing up. To this day, I may have one almost unnoticeable pimple every now and then. My mom will come up to me, grab me and start applying medicines. When I object, she'll tell me that it's not my fault if everyone is disgusted by the way I look and that I'll never get a job. I've grown up with so much hate and negativity, fear based thinking fed into my upbringing. Growing up, I don't remember getting hugs, I don't remember anyone asking how my day was, I don't remember anyone comforting me in hard times. I just remember constant paranoia and suspicion, constant bombardment with accusations of drug use, sexual sin (aka anything sexual is basically taboo and sinful in the Mormon church), and even threats of divorce being mine and my sisters fault. At a young age, I even remember my mom threatening to put me up for adoption since she said she felt the threat of rape because I had been caught masturbating or something like that. She's constantly complaining about how awful her kids turned out and pointing out how successful others are in the church (which I quit, fairly early on, due to the injustice and closed-mindedness that was obvious). My dad is more reasonable, but he has never been willing to defend us, because when he steps in and tries to defend us, my mom goes through long (months long) depressions, where she'll tell us to hide the gun and weapons in the house. She'll remind us all how we think she's the worst mom ever and how she's a failure to us.

A common theme of my life is getting no love or attention, or care. All my weaknesses and sad moments in life added up to personal faults to my parents. "What do you want or expect me to be able to do about it?"... Some love and care, just even saying sorry would have been better than constantly being punished for feeling sadness. No one really listens to anything I say, so I'm a silent person around my family. It isn't necessarily that they're harsh when I try to talk, they just don't listen. It's like a massive adhd of sorts. People will just talk over me, after vaguely listening for a few seconds. However, my mom has no problem walking in the door after work and unloading all sorts of hateful gossip from work for long periods of time, without listening to anything I have to say. I'm amazed when I talk with most any other adult and they listen to what I have to say without turning away, and actually ask questions, like they're actually interested. I was honestly under the impression that adults simply didn't tune in to children/young adults. It is ridiculous though, to be 20 and have more of a college education than my parents ever had, and still be belittled and treated like a dumb kid. "You're too young to understand 9/11. You're too young to understand why we have to fight the war on terror. You're not old enough to know how much it hurt us as a country to have terror start happening. You're not old enough to understand love. You're not old enough to talk about politics". My parents are obsessed with money, and fairly well off with it, yet still stingy. My mom won't hesitate to drop thousands on furniture/jewelry/useless junk on the weekend, but when it comes to buying food that I can cook (since everyone is always gone at work, I'm alone most of the time anyways), she'll cringe that I want to buy vegetables, saying that they're too expensive. But then she can go out to some $100+ a plate dinner with my dad and complain that the spices weren't totally right or whatever. Completely self absorbed and completely negligent to the emotional needs of her only son. Completely blew the chance to provide a loving and supportive atmosphere for her only son. Paradoxically, family is the #1 focus on in her church.

Anyways, enough bitching about my life, it obviously has pain and there's really no chance of ever fixing how things have been, and now that I'm moving out, that's not my concern anymore. I'm just concerned with finding a way to deal with this pain. Vipassana does seem to be a path to understanding, but I still don't understand the implications of wisdom on pain. I've heard the doctrine that after a path or two or three or four, sensations (of pain) still arise but don't stick, aren't sticky, or whatever. After getting what I think is first path, I see some truth to this, but still see problems. For me, I've definitely noticed that the mind is inventing at least 90% less things, spinning far less of the time, and not taking the effort to extrapolate from thoughts and stress out. But the problem to me is that my family issues still seem real. I still have to feel the way they treat me, and it still causes so much sadness and depression. No self is apparent, but I'm in so much frustration now because it feels like the pain is just there, hurting on it's own. It seems like the Dalai Lama feels a lot of pain for his nation, and I'm assuming his attainments are greater than mine. What are we to do with the problems that don't come from excessive thinking, but from the immediate external world? When a 4th-pather loses love or loses a close friend or has a crisis, does the pain really not hurt? I thought that by getting path, the pain would just not arise, like it wouldn't be a reaction I could have. But now, I feel a sense that pain is incredibly real, and the circumstances that lead to it are real, and that I'm trapped in them. I also see how I have more trouble in the real world, dealing with people, because the way I've been raised is so ingrained in me that it's instinctual to be scared of people, to think that people are judging me and looking for faults, to think that no one truly loves me, that no one can truly love me. I'm generally feeling worthless and purposeless, and also very bummed that initial insight into no-self doesn't mean that the pain isn't painful. I'll wait to see if higher paths can help.

So there's the duality that exists between practice and real life. On one hand, I can't deny how vipassana and 1st path has changed the tendencies of the mind, leading to much quieter mind and thoughtful actions. Basically it seems that the mind isn't inventing problems in it's idle state, which is a great change. But on the other hand, my external problems still be able to cause so much pain, and it's very discouraging to see that these problems still seem to be extremely real and painful, in the same way that Daniel talked about his attainments having no effect on the severity and pain of his sickness. So I'm wondering what the hell there is to do, or what to attain to, to fix the pain of being raised in such a horrible way, and to help undo the tendencies of the way I've been raised, as I don't want to be doomed to being a silent, distant loner type, who can never find love or support from anywhere. Just get higher paths? I've seen a counselor and I've figured out that counseling is not for me. I get to feeling so good when I'm just left to do my own thing, with a lot of natural equanimity, jhanas arising on their own, metta seeming to flow naturally and with a lot of strength, but despite what I think equanimity is supposed to mean, it still feels like it can all be ripped down just by hateful/manipulative things said to me by my parents, or being completely neglected and belittled, or even just from realizing that I have nothing remotely like metta coming in from anywhere, no people to go to with my emotions, no people who I know care about my thoughts. I don't know if these things just have more weight in dark night, or if the dark night serves to exaggerate and magnify the issues that seem deeply rooted inside myself.

If the point of enlightenment is to come to a point where repressed emotional pain and lack of any solid, loving human support are not necessary, where even the worst, deepest wounds don't hurt or bother you, I'll proceed with going through more insight cycles, but if it's not, I'm still in the dark on what I'm really looking for or how to go about finding it.


Edit:

Another way to look at this... I approached vipassana thinking that it would be the solution to my life problems. But when I got path, I realized that my problems were still intact, and that I was still living where they could influence me. I see benefits of 1st path, but I thought that the problems in my life would be less painful. It feels like they're still painful. I don't know if this is simply not an effect to expect, or if maybe this isn't the 1st path that I thought it was.

So... complex stuff, obviously.

However, the way I see it, the work of removing past conditioning is something different from insight meditation, in a way that is similar to how shamata is different from vipassana, and yet they can be done together.

My idea is that you can get good results if you split the two, meaning if your intent is no longer in seeing the 3C, but in removing past conditioning.

How do you do that? My theory is something like this:
Our conditioning are stored in a number of ways, the more obvious being:

-muscolar contractions
-repressed emotions
-energy blockages
-thoughts/memories

They are very much connected, but not the same thing, i.e. is possible to release an energy blockage and having a parallel release of a muscolar contraction but not an emotional discharge, or having emotions, energetic release but not thinking associated, or any other possible combination you can come up with.

So, basically, the more you work on them, the more you become light, in the sense of "not constantly bearing a burden".
I'm doing something like this in this period, and I have to say it's quite effective.

As for pain sticking: doing some kind of energy work, wich you did as well in some way if you practiced Goenka, I noticed that emotions, and sensations of whatever discomfort flows throught me in away that is much more intense than before, and the more fully they can express themselves, the less sticky they are, so that you can feel horrible in one moment, making it flow, and then being perfectly ok about 5 minutes later without any sense of something slightly irritanting still being upon you, wich is a very nice way to live. Also, strange thing, the more you can experience theese things fully the less they are painful, for some strange reason. It seems to me that a huge wawe of whatever is much better than a slight irritating sense of something uncomfortable bein on you most of the time...

Hope that helped somehow... however, good luck!

Edit
As far as interaction with others, an useful tecnique is the one of breaking things down: basically, you train yourself in seeing the things that gets the strong emotion going one after the other in sequence, i.e. you see first the sound of other people's voices, then a pulse of something uncomfortable, than a thought arising, then some kind of emotional thing... by doing this way, to me it feels something like "peace-slight discomfort-peace-thought-peace-slight emotion, and so on, until the situation is over; basically, you don't allow things to get big by getting themselves together, you stop them in the very first moments of arising by seeing them clearlyone ofter the other.

However, I should probably mention that my claim is just SE, so Icannot really talk for highter paths...

Bye!

Hello,

My deepest wishes for your happiness.

Too be honest it sounds like you're doing a lot of complaining, and now that you're 20, you are a man. The solution is to "man up". You're going to have to sit your parents down and have a long talk with them about how they have disrespected, neglected and ignored you. At the same time you will have to sit them down and explain to them how much affection you have for them, and how perhaps in the future (if you wish) you would like to have nothing to do with them. I am actually, quite shocked that you do not see this type of interaction and emotional-exchange as part of spirituality.

It appears that you have compartmentalized your life to the extent that Vipassana gives you some sort of escapism. This is not the case, when I experienced my depression, I confessed, apologized, made vows and did all sorts of social things, righted wrongs etc. To everybody! And as a result I'm no longer depressed and well respected by my family. Do not demarcate spirituality as having nothing to do with daily life, this is far from the case.

I would rather you be normal and happy, then be spiritual and miserable. Thus I say to you: man up, talk to your parents. This is your duty, now do it.

Sincerely,

Jonathan

P.S:

On a side note the greatest virtue that the Buddha praised was appamada which means conscientiousness, heedfulness or diligence. Practice this greatly, do your duty, take care of your social duties and requirements, take care of your personal life, this is what leads to happiness. Not escaping your problems.

Metta,

Jonathan

Hey man,

That sounds really tough.
- Have you considered going to see a therapist? That would help you get it all out, understand a bit more what has happened to you, and find ways to go beyond this. In particular, I'm thinking of what you said concerning being scared of people, having difficulties trusting them, etc. I'm also thinking about what Jonathan mentioned around compartmenting your life and your practice. Compartmenting your practice was probably a very helpful way for you to create a space for yourself that your mother and her church could not get access to, and a good, person-centered analyst could really help you find ways to bring things back together.
- Have you tried metta? As far as I understand what meditation does to pain, noting does a lot of good at the level of the sort of pain that accompanies perception in itself, rather than the perception of x or y. You've healed the fundamental pain, but then relative pain, pain that comes from stepping onto a nail or being raped will still take place. Metta helps a lot to deal with that second sort of pain.
- DO NOT TRY TO "man up". You'll most likely end up blaming and punishing yourself more, and that never helps. Be gentle.

V

You're not the only one. I've had to deal with a narcissist sibling. I cut off the relationship with him. It was difficult but I researched what other people had to go through and it was simply this:

Make your own life positive and make the choices you think are right. Live with an attitude that is always about avoiding self-inflicted pain and pursuing positive choices. You should not feel guilty to live the way you think is best. You don't have to imitate bad behaviours of family. The only way to do this is to live with action that is different than before. The more you do this more confident you will be because you've done it before again and again. It's like any skill. You have to keep doing it until you get better at it. Just like with meditation, regular practice, and daily life practice yields more brain changes. Not enough changes in behaviour = less brain changes.

Make no mistake. Most people will continue their mental habits and deepen them with age, precisely because of how hard things are to change. Do not expect them to change ever. If they do it will be a pleasant surprise. We live in a world where if you better yourself it will cause envy in those close to you and people at work. Envy and narcissism work hand in hand. You have to keep plugging away no matter what anyone thinks.

To deal with bad memories and old conditioning I still think vipassana in daily life is important and to keep doing it with enough consistency to see the old mental habits of angry memories get weakened. By being away from your parents long enough that will also weaken the hatred. The most imporant lesson from vipassana is not to force anything away in your mind but to just watch it naturally dissapate through non-clinging. (Non-clinging meaning not adding thoughts about why you like or dislike something). The thing you want to learn is "how do thoughts feel like?" Treating thoughts like sensations makes them feel less separate. Consciousness knows thoughts like it knows sensations. It just knows you're thinking.

The most important thing no matter how hung up you get is you need to keep making good decisions for yourself. As time passes those good decisions and new habits will give you more happiness.

Good luck!

Yeah, dude, I hear 'ye.

I have noticed personally that development of the energetic body (which I personally have always equated with vipassana, though I'm not sure that is technically 100% correct) eventually helps with pains of all kinds.

Also worth looking into physical health: what you eat, how often and well you exercise. That is a real pain-soother.

As for the life you had, I retain the spirit of what I posted back in January on your "painful home life" thread: you seem to display a ridiculous amount of maturity, just by the way you write and in the way you describe stuff. That you retained such honed sensitivity while being subject to the psychological violence you describe is beyond me, but speaks volumes about your natural abilities.

The way I see it, from the place where you started, you have already achieved way more than I would have ever expected, and in less time than it takes most people.

Your situation must be very difficult for you. I have noticed that most people relate to themselves more or less in the same way their parents related to them — I guess we have to learn that somewhere! But I have also learned that it is possible to change this — in my case it is happening slowly, over time, but I'm certain you will do it much better and much faster.

You probably don't believe in yourself, but I am highly confident that you will be able to solve many of the problems in your life by yourself, and that you will learn a lot in the process, and I am looking forward to the day you will teach us how you did it.

Take care

Tbh, I can't say I've ever known anyone in my life as messed up as your mother sounds to me. Conversely, you always come across very well to me in your posts. I've certainly found it possible to make a personal hell of an outer paradise in the DN, but if what you say is true, it actually sounds like you're doing a very impressive job of keeping your head and not getting wasted every night in an attempt to drown the pain.
Take it from someone who's completed ~15 full cycles at this point that SE is nothing compared to being post-MCTB 3rd path. Imagine 'Celebration' by Kool and the Gang playing in your head on repeat for the rest of your life... except, not hellish! Check out Shinzen Young's video on what it's like to be enlightened, saying he wouldn't give up a day of this in exchange for a lifetime of being some world-famous millionaire athlete. Watching that I used to think he must be delusional... and I'm still not there yet, but I can totally see what he means now, and agree with him. That's how great it can feel - practicing vipassana I can safely say is one of sanest things you could possibly do with your life. It's highly admirable that this would be your reaction to the circumstances of your life.
Just let go of your parents (definitely don't try to sit them down and reason with them anyway - it's going to take a lot more than man-ing it up to get through to your mother, unfortunately), or even better, see them as a source of motivation - how miserable one can be trying to find happiness in money, beauty, or some nutty religion. Getting enlightened is an infinitely more sane, and ethical, means of finding happiness.
I used to feel similarly frustrated with the kind of suffering and misfortune that befell me. I remember accumulating these favourite phrases that seemed to encapsulate my misery: "hell is my life", "every waking moment is utter misery", "if only I had the courage to end my life"... this kind of shit. But now I consider myself enormously fortunate for every moment my ego was frustrated, every failed attempt at clinging to something pleasurable, every humiliation.
On your thoughts about pain: in terms of the pain that comes from holding a lighter to one's skin, it's the aversion to those sensations that cause suffering, not the sensations themselves. With later paths (assuming we're using any sort of legitimate model at all), it's the sensations that would once cause suffering that still arise, the suffering less and less. ...not sure how apt an analogy the 'stickiness' thing is.
I can also relate to the anxiety you have around people, but can happily report that a lot of what I once thought were deeply ingrained issues around dealing with the world have now fallen away.
In summation, you come across as a wonderful person, certainly worthy of love, who's extraordinarily fortunate just to be here, never mind be probably beyond the point of no return with this. So... quit complainin' and continue the path!

OK... now a less meditative answer.

My familiar pain in the ass is my mother, wich is bipolar and so displays different kind of challanges than thoose you describe, but still, not so nice.

"Manning up" didn't really worked for me.
What worked were tons of metta&compassion before interacting with her, but I noticed that the benefits were practice-dependent, meaning when I was not full of metta&compassion old behaviour pattern kept arising just as before. So, in my experience metta worked wonders, but had clearly some limitations.
What had a more profound effect was expressing my feelings, not fully, 'cause that would have been disruptive, but I noticed that some kind of assertiveness, of non-explosive anger eventually led to a more balanced relationship -not like all problems are over, but somehow something good happened.

However, though it feels really bad to say that, reading about your problems is making me me feel much better about my own, 'cause my situation is quite easy compared to yours... XD

Bye!

Thanks all for the responses. I have a lot of gratitude to this community for sharing wisdom and experience. I'm embarrassed because I was definitely in DN territory when I posted, and with desire for deliverance in particular, I think these kinds of thoughts and feelings can be especially strong. The issues are still real, but definitely appear worse in that territory. I've also come down with the flu or food poisoning, which is also quite draining. But in any case, I do feel better today. I think the mind is quick to drop emotional weight as soon as it naturally starts to pass away, but I'm hopeful that one day, after enough practice, it will come to the point where these feelings don't arise with so much strength, and can be dropped even quicker.

I'm starting to use metta as an object for jhana, and I think this is a good thing. Sometimes, it's clear that we're all basically in pain and dealing with issues, and there's definitely some compassion in that realization. It seems unfair to have others act out of that pain and cause more to others, but I think that mindfulness offers a way to at least prevent the pain from leading to more unskillful actions.



Problems are problems, 20 or 50. I've been in my house for a long time, and trust me, I've been interested in fixing things the whole time. Unfortunately, you learn that communication consists of two sides, and the best, most reasonable communicator on one side doesn't change the fact that a bad listener will still not have any of it. As I got at, my mom started making suicidal threats the one time when we really tried to communicate about these issues. Sadly, but not surprisingly, not all humans are open to conversations, especially those conversations that threaten one's sense of self worth and image. And as much as I would like to try to just put it all on the table again, I'm avoiding doing something that once almost lead to my mom's suicide.





You're making claims about what I believe that are frankly not true. I'll also point out that you're essentially criticizing me for taking up spiritual practice in order to lessen my pain. I did come to the party because I was told that this path was the one for ending suffering. So pardon me while I take account of the suffering that exists in my life and contemplate how I can deal with it. Also, let me know why a practice of bringing mindfulness to all my experience could be considered escapism. Escapism is getting drunk, bullying others, retaliating against others, and denying that issues exist. I'm just here talking about pain I have and trying a method that was said to eliminate suffering. I'm trying to deal with my problems.

What were your problems that you had? I don't have things to apologize for, I haven't been wronging my family, I don't have any vows to make or any roles that I haven't lived up to. I don't argue, I do the dishes and clean the house, I don't criticize my parents, I get good grades, I work. I don't know what you're suggesting, but I get the impression that you're equating your situation to mine, which honestly doesn't seem to be the case.


I was already normal and miserable. "Spirituality" didn't create my problems.
(sigh)... One of the most common reactions to pain is criticism. Pain doesn't always indicate fault of the person in pain. Sometimes shit just happens, man. If my car breaks down, I'm not automatically a bad driver, and if I'm outside in the miserable heat with my head in the hood, maybe I'm actually trying to fix the car so I can get up and going. If I have family problems, it doesn't automatically make me a bad family member or unmanly or otherwise faulted in some way because I can't just change everyone's paradigms by telling everyone how things are. I've tried that method anyways, well before I was a "man".



That is reassuring. I've noticed that physical pains and mental stress can often be dealt with almost immediately by crossing the A&P. Thanks for your post; you are very kind and this is all very motivating!



That doesn't sound hellish!
This is also very motivating.

I suppose, practice makes perfect is what I take away. I'm looking forward to going on a 10 day retreat soon, and hopefully I can make further progress at that time. Just keep practicing, it seems like that's always been what it comes down to.

I can agree with this. After seeing money, vanity, and blind faith all fail to bring a real sense of family and happiness to the picture, I'm probably never going to base my life or well-being around any of those things.

Please then, accept my apologies for criticizing you unjustly, I was projecting my own issues.

All the best,

Jonathan

Hi M.O.E.,

I've enjoyed the music of yours I've watched on Youtube. Thank you for sharing that and the causes that gave rise to that music practice and capacity.


In regards to all the comments about parents, it's natural. In the conventional view and possibly your own view, you have been the apparent child in this relationship and now you are apparently growing up in this biological life. "What I am not", "Who I am not" is a key phase of self-study.

The notion of "opposites" going on here --- am not this/am this --- is natural, part of untangling and developing discernment. And when a person can study just "own dharma" this sheds a lot of light of holding notions of opposites.

Best wishes :]

I'm always impressed by the honesty and maturity of your posts, particularly for someone coming from such a dysfuntional family situation (I'm also very inspired that you managed SE under these conditions!). It really sounds like you're doing all the right things.

I've no idea how serious your mum is with her suicide threats, but it sounds to me like there's some seriously manipulative language going on there. It helped me a lot some time ago when I realised that my mum was only wearing a dragon costume, and underneath was just a very frightened and vulnerably little girl. I think it's great you're moving out of your parents' home. The sooner you're financially and emotionally independent of them the better, and I'm sure time and space away from them will give you a clearer perspective on things. Perhaps spending as much time as you can around wise, kind and positive friends will help begin to heal any damage that's been done, and might in some way help your parents too eventually.
Anyway, all the best for the move,
Martin

P.S. Sometimes parents just don't get it...

Written in Latin in Mary's book is, "Son, why have you dealt with us like this?"
Simone Martini - Christ Discovered in the Temple, 1342

Ha, that's a great picture! They're all so angry at each other, and they're all human, and they're all saints! Thanks for this!