What Is Your New Spirituality?

[Antlerman]

Yes, I think this very much reflects a Western mindset. What exactly is it we expect? To be saved from the experience of living?

 

No but somehow to be better able to cope with it. I remember hearing some stirring speeches about people in Soviet gulags that came out due to faith - or at least that is what they attributed it to. Similarly - religious people surviving various terrible situations and not being permanently embittered or unable to function.

 

Also, yes I suppose that is the expectation - that at least it will provide some comfort. One part of me sees how that is bogus and yet I still wonder.

Clearly environment is a factor in all areas of coping in life. That we can draw from what we have developed in adverse situations is going to be much more difficult, much more a test if you will, than when we have more conducive circumstances. As much as I see that that strength and light and peace comes from within us, I see that its inaccessibility also rests with us.

 

It is not some external thing that if we only believe in it, it will give us what we are looking for. That is that whole, externalized, 'out there' dualistic mindset that places it outside us. Of course then, when it fails we can blame it 'out there' for failing. It is a relationship between ourselves and our environment. It doesn't give you comfort, and I think its an entirely wrong expectation. At best it may offer inexact tools you can develop that help you to deal with it. To me the whole West issue is this whole externalization of Truth. Promises of gurus, and every manner of would be saviors, be that pop psychology, religious hacks, science as the beacon of hope, etc. It's all just experimental Christianity. Same mindset, different saviors.

 

I suppose we could put it in this light. Do you think the various understandings you gained growing up all go flying out the window when you encounter adversity? Do we suddenly forget everything we've learned and fall into a state of absolute chaos? If so, can't you also conclude that your entire experiences of life themselves are worthless?

 

Yes to the first question, it does seem that way. One step forward and two steps back when circumstances change. No to the second. Not absolute chaos but just requestioning everything again.

You should requestion everything. Are you still doing the same thing, just in a different way? That's a question I constantly need to ask to avoid an easy trap.

 

Again, to me its not about freedom from pain. The 'suffering' we become freed from in spiritual realization, in enlightenment if you will, is the suffering of existential angst; freedom from the search, the anguish of longing and desire for awareness of Self. With that then, we face life.

 

I can agree with that, but sometimes I feel there must be something more.

At that moment, it is us being in our separate selves again, both desiring and avoiding release.

[Rev R]

The only teaching that I have ever heard that never breaks down is "not always so".

[Antlerman]

My incessant need for "security" (salvation) in itself blocks the trans-rational(understood as anti-intellectualism by my dualism) and the trans-intellectualism which would bring transcendence and inclusion(Enlightenment) is as illusive as the wayward wind.

This is a couple interesting statements. First your saying you have an incessant need for security. What do you mean by that? Are you saying you are looking for some sort of assurance of immortality? Some sort of protection from harm?

 

Assuming from the context this is what you mean then in this sense of 'salvation' which you appear to equate with security, I can see what you mean by resorting to intellectual suicide. However that in not at all the same as transrational. Transrational means to go beyond rationality, incorporating the rational but never violating it. (I'm not sure what trans-intellectualism might mean as you put it).

[chosendarkness]

 

No but somehow to be better able to cope with it. I remember hearing some stirring speeches about people in Soviet gulags that came out due to faith - or at least that is what they attributed it to. Similarly - religious people surviving various terrible situations and not being permanently embittered or unable to function.

 

Spirituality doesn't do anything FOR you, but it shows us how WE can better deal with problems. Everything is a vibration - matter, thoughts, even faith. To me that means life is about movement. I need to be moving in the direction of my goals and inner desires or else I'm just dead. I feel alive when I'm vibrating higher spirituality, which I don't really understand what it means or how it works, but I can sense it when I feel more connected to the universe, like I'm in tune with life. Meditation causes you to vibrate higher, also faith or belief. Sound is a also powerful and can be used to change things. Or even just taking a walk outdoors can dramatically change how you feel, because of your movement and the vibration of life all around you.

[Deva]

You should requestion everything. Are you still doing the same thing, just in a different way? That's a question I constantly need to ask to avoid an easy trap.

 

That is excellent advice. It is absolutely amazing how the childhood Christian conditioning manifests itself even after one has completely thrown out any conscious belief in it. It is just incredible. I have worked on de-conditioning myself for 20 years - it is still there in very subtle ways on an unconscious level, yet I can honestly say I also see the tremendous progress I have made.

 

I know I am not special and I will never be exempt from suffering.

[Deva]

Spirituality doesn't do anything FOR you, but it shows us how WE can better deal with problems. Everything is a vibration - matter, thoughts, even faith. To me that means life is about movement. I need to be moving in the direction of my goals and inner desires or else I'm just dead. I feel alive when I'm vibrating higher spirituality, which I don't really understand what it means or how it works, but I can sense it when I feel more connected to the universe, like I'm in tune with life. Meditation causes you to vibrate higher, also faith or belief. Sound is a also powerful and can be used to change things. Or even just taking a walk outdoors can dramatically change how you feel, because of your movement and the vibration of life all around you.

 

This is very true. You can feel how things can change in an instant. I think there are different energies out there we can tap into. I will never give up moving in the direction toward freedom from compulsive thinking and beliefs which were drilled into me as a child. I am not sure - maybe only people who came out of highly repressive churches or cult situations can actually understand how difficult this is.

 

What I found initially fascinating about Buddhism,and still do, is emptiness. Hand in hand with impermanence. That nothing stays the same and nothing is permanent. It certainly diminishes the solid wall of some of these concepts that were brainwashed into me, and that I know I still have to deal with. It is really the most helpful view (and true in my experience) that I have come across.

[Not_Scarevangelist]

My new spirituality is Unitarian Universalism.

[asanerman]

This is a couple interesting statements.

 

 

That statement was a total debacle. I apologize.

 

What I meant was: My unceasing need for freedom from feelings of anxiety, apprehension, and insecurity (the fear of being abandoned) concerning the phenomenological experience of my own existence, has blocked the development (growth) that carries with it the potential to relieve the suffering, not the pain, of my angst--the trans-rational experience of nondualism--nondualism as a permanent trait.

[i’m still not making myself clear!]

 

When my conventional structures and the old myths that supported them began to crumbled, radical change was of the first order.

 

Spirit became something nonrational. My knee jerk was that every trans-rational event was reduced to pre-rational impulse, a regressive holdover from the “oceanic days of infancy.” I ended up a grand reductionist collapsing transrational to pre-rational, thus reducing the spirited life into something I simply would outgrow and dismiss.

 

I am guilty of taking, as you say, the “subjective and making it nothing more than a feature of the objective” and calling it nondualism. Couple that error with my pre/trans fallacy and there in you have part my difficulties.

 

My pseudo nondualism has prevented the development of any genuine nondualism. I have spiritually bushwhacked myself!

 

Thanks for your time Antlerman!

 

saner

[Galien]

I have just finished reading a book of comparative religions. My conclusion is that human beings are full of shit. We think we know it all, but we can't even solve basic problems like poverty and hunger. As long as we remain slaves to our ego, things will never change. They haven't thus far, so I'm not holding out much hope really. We make vague attempts, but overall, we suck. Really.

[Deva]

This may bear on some of my views -I realized today that one of my very favorite stories as a child was "Sredni Vashtar" by Saki. For those not familiar with it, it is a very short story about an oppressed child who is tyrannized by his aunt, and who worships a ferret, who he keeps secretly.

 

It is here http://haytom.us/showarticle.php?id=26

 

It is beautifully written, which belies the horror of the story. Yet it impressed me tremendously, and I related so much to Conrad. I know revenge is wrong, and does not help in the long run, but still... the idea that a God would actually do one's bidding if one had enough devotion is a powerful one to me. The idea of devotion being important.

 

Also the fact that so much had to be kept secret. I knew early on that my ideas and my loves of nature and beauty were not acceptable to my fundamentalist parents. That is another reason why I related so strongly to the story.

[foolish girl]

Right now, I just walk in the woods.

 

Promise me that you will read some Mary Oliver.....just google and read...and you will understand.

[Antlerman]

This is a couple interesting statements.

 

 

That statement was a total debacle. I apologize.

 

What I meant was: My unceasing need for freedom from feelings of anxiety, apprehension, and insecurity (the fear of being abandoned) concerning the phenomenological experience of my own existence, has blocked the development (growth) that carries with it the potential to relieve the suffering, not the pain, of my angst--the trans-rational experience of nondualism--nondualism as a permanent trait.

[i’m still not making myself clear!]

The great irony is that it's not something you work to attain. You already have it. All you really do is clear the debris to see it. It's your Nature. What growth there is becomes more moving beyond the conventions of our understanding, all the seeking is to essentially exhaust all the efforts of what will never work. At the end you do nothing. It's not a mental exercise, it's not even a heightened state of awareness. It is simply recognition, a recognition that encompasses the whole of being. In other words, you already have it, no matter what your stage of growth is.

 

Transrational by the way, doesn't mean nondualism per se, as transrational may be theistic in nature. Transrational simply means to move beyond just understanding in rationalistic ways. It includes rationality without violating it. A non-literalistic theism does not violate reason. There are distinctions between prerational, rational, non-rational, irrational, and transrational. Each are spoken of in relation to rationality, but are different things as a whole.

 

When my conventional structures and the old myths that supported them began to crumbled, radical change was of the first order.

 

Spirit became something nonrational.

Technically it is. But that does not mean irrational. Nonrational simply means it is not accessed, understood, or experienced through the tool of reason, anymore than love is. When was the last time you processed your way rationally to experience love? "I hereby deduce the facts to indicate love in called for. Therefore, I conclude I shall now experience love." No, rationality tries to 'explain' love, but it cannot and does not define it. It's nature is not reasoned.

 

My knee jerk was that every trans-rational event was reduced to pre-rational impulse, a regressive holdover from the “oceanic days of infancy.” I ended up a grand reductionist collapsing transrational to pre-rational, thus reducing the spirited life into something I simply would outgrow and dismiss.

I absolutely understand this. This is the main problem that has been happening ever since the Enlightenment. It's the confusion of anything that is nonrational with irrational. It's the chucking out of the baby of Spirit with the bathwater of myth. And to me, despite the high forms of rationality, that is an act of the highest form of irrationality.

 

How I've come to see the whole enterprise of "debunking" is on one hand a valid and helpful tool in moving us from prerational, mythic structures into necessary and essential rational structures, but in taking what is not prerational at all and pounding the pulpit of rationalism saying, "Evidence! Where's the evidence?", to things which are symbolic in nature of things that are existential, is to fail to recognize the categorical differences and in essence irrationally deny them. I think to begin to move beyond it we have to first recognize the differences in order to loosen that rationalist grip on defining the world so narrowly. Those who functioned as a whole in mythic structures saw their reality as "the way of things" in exactly the same ways.

 

My pseudo nondualism has prevented the development of any genuine nondualism. I have spiritually bushwhacked myself!

Like I said, understanding there are differences in how someone understands and relates to the spiritual is what is at question. In a way you 'free God'. I love that quote from Meister Ekart the best as it really says it in a expression beyond rationality, that makes perfect 'sense', to me:

 

“I pray God to make me free of God, for [His] unconditioned Being is above God and all distinctions.”

 

God beyond God. Ponder that.

[chosendarkness]

"I pray God to make me free of God, for [His] unconditioned Being is above God and all distinctions.”

God beyond God. Ponder that.

 

Nice! I think one way to understand spirituality is by the results in your life. Since I've allowed the idea of God to open up to new possibilities, things have changed. It's almost like I was forced to set God free because my life depended on it. What I'm starting to see is 'you do this and this happens'.

[lynx]

I have just finished reading a book of comparative religions. My conclusion is that human beings are full of shit. We think we know it all, but we can't even solve basic problems like poverty and hunger. As long as we remain slaves to our ego, things will never change. They haven't thus far, so I'm not holding out much hope really. We make vague attempts, but overall, we suck. Really.

That pretty much sums it up for me. I don't really have any new spirituality. I desire something more than this miserable physical existence, so I find a place to go within myself that takes me as far from it as possible, but I don't know if I'd call that spiritual. At this point I'm just a wanderer. I only know that I don't want to borrow or adapt it from other human beings or their teachings. I have an interest in philosophy and find it fascinating, but more as an exploration of thoughts and ideas that are similar to my own ... nothing more.

[sovereign]

My new spirituality is largely based on the teachings of Osho, and I'm beginning to contact and channel spirit guides. In the mornings, I do grounding work, which involves standing and imagining myself to be a small tree that grows roots and branches until there is ample room for birds to come and make their home in me. It helps me to connect to the life all around me. Life gets so fascinating when you move into your own spiritual space! This spirituality feels just right for me.

 

 

 

[DesertBob]

I have just finished reading a book of comparative religions. My conclusion is that human beings are full of shit. We think we know it all, but we can't even solve basic problems like poverty and hunger. As long as we remain slaves to our ego, things will never change. They haven't thus far, so I'm not holding out much hope really. We make vague attempts, but overall, we suck. Really.

That pretty much sums it up for me. I don't really have any new spirituality. I desire something more than this miserable physical existence, so I find a place to go within myself that takes me as far from it as possible, but I don't know if I'd call that spiritual. At this point I'm just a wanderer. I only know that I don't want to borrow or adapt it from other human beings or their teachings. I have an interest in philosophy and find it fascinating, but more as an exploration of thoughts and ideas that are similar to my own ... nothing more.

Galien and Lynx, you two rock :-)

 

Yes, we're all full of shit and the more I read philosophy the more I regard it as so much circular self-referential navel-gazing. Intermittently interesting, but not something I would pursue in-depth with any expectation of great revelations. When I first left the faith, I thought there was some Eureka! moment I had been looking in the wrong place for, but I now realize that life is just life, nothing more and nothing less. We find ourselves here, we make the best we can of it, we disappear from the scene, we are forgotten. As my fiancee describes it, we are of no significance whatsoever and the sooner we figure that out the better off we will be.

 

Oddly, for me this isn't a philosophy of despair ... although it does not flatter me it does not needlessly inflate my expectations, either.

[Antlerman]

When I first left the faith, I thought there was some Eureka! moment I had been looking in the wrong place for, but I now realize that life is just life, nothing more and nothing less.

You've defined life, nothing more, nothing less? How did you do this without a philosophy, which you claim you find no use for?

 

As my fiancee describes it, we are of no significance whatsoever and the sooner we figure that out the better off we will be.

No significance? Then why not just eat each other? Why bother to live at all, since we've figured out the answer philosophically that there is nothing significant to anything at all?

 

I would say we are better off to recognize everything has significance, everything is a precious gem. Doing so increases the health of the world, and the quality of each individual life. Getting over the childish notion that some sky-daddy loves us and thinks we're the prettiest bauble in his magic garden is the first step to being a mature, loving human. Taking the opposite stance that once we can't find support for that notion that we're super-dad's super special toy he promises wouldn't ever be mussed up, that therefore nothing is valuable and we shouldn't care, is really still thinking exactly the same way, just an unresolved answer to it. It's just flipping the switch in the opposite direction, rather than opening the door and stepping out. "I tried a different deity, same difference...." Exactly.

 

Oddly, for me this isn't a philosophy of despair ... although it does not flatter me it does not needlessly inflate my expectations, either.

I agree it's not a philosophy of despair. It's through despair we find release and freedom. It sound's more like simple resignation after futility trying the same thing from a different angle enough times to know that doesn't work. You're right to not try that again.

 

And by the way, to continue our last discussion... yes, you absolutely can change how you perceive something, and do so without being lying to yourself, shutting off fact, your mind, or any other such thing. There are many faces of truth.

 

Honestly, don't take this as me being disrespectful. On the contrary, I feel a great connection with you, and a drain listening to your pessimism, which this is. Again, you absolutely shouldn't go off chasing some other promise. That would be a huge mistake. That's doing exactly what you did looking for salvation in a religion. Don't follow any teacher, don't follow a philosophy, a new religion, or any of it. But I think you conclude an awful lot more about reality than is justified, or supportable. You do have a philosophy, and it's what you are turning to to find some solace in.

[DesertBob]

When I first left the faith, I thought there was some Eureka! moment I had been looking in the wrong place for, but I now realize that life is just life, nothing more and nothing less.

You've defined life, nothing more, nothing less? How did you do this without a philosophy, which you claim you find no use for?

I didn't say I had no philosophy, only that formal philosophy tends to overthink and overreach and over-complicate.

As my fiancee describes it, we are of no significance whatsoever and the sooner we figure that out the better off we will be.

No significance? Then why not just eat each other? Why bother to live at all, since we've figured out the answer philosophically that there is nothing significant to anything at all?

I am of significance to myself, and imperfectly, to a handful of others. I speak of my significance in whatever great scheme of things there may be. In that sense I am as insignificant and fungible as some random atom that makes up my body. Much human suffering comes from imagining something more than that to be the case, and/or needing it to be the case.

I would say we are better off to recognize everything has significance, everything is a precious gem.

I'm unique, just like every one else? It would be more pleasant but that is not congruent with my consistent personal experience. What makes one significant, is to wake up each morning knowing you are loved and valued in ways that are concrete to you personally. What gives one purpose, is to have a stable and necessary and useful role in improving the lives of others. Pursuing one's own interests in a vacuum can take you only so far.

 

We all have an inherent need for connection and connectedness. We get dribs and drabs of that connectedness from a few people around us, who are themselves broken and preoccupied with their own issues and concerns, and thus are very limited in their ability to either receive from us or give to us. We hope for commitment and loyalty and stability and always get something less -- usually much less -- than that. Eventually you settle for what you can get, when you can get it.

Oddly, for me this isn't a philosophy of despair ... although it does not flatter me it does not needlessly inflate my expectations, either.

I think you conclude an awful lot more about reality than is justified, or supportable.

What I conclude is what I have been running from my entire life. I am trying a different approach, which is to embrace what has always been intuitively so about my reality.

 

What was unjustified and unsupportable was the whole religious milieu, plus the idea that one can hope in relationships for comfort and companionship, plus the idea that what matters to me actually matters to anyone or anything outside myself, or comes from anywhere outside myself. That I wasn't born alone, don't ultimately live alone, and won't ultimately die alone.

 

I am simply trying to deal in reality for a change. I think I am actually assuming / concluding much less, not more.

 

I don't particularly care for what I am left with, but at least it appears to comport with what is actually true. The only possible basis for progress is to work with what is actually there, not with what I wish would be there.

[Antlerman]

I didn't say I had no philosophy, only that formal philosophy tends to overthink and overreach and over-complicate.

To me a good philosophy at the end of the day is nothing less than profound simplicity. The key being profoundly reaching within simplicity itself. Being simple alone does not make it good.

 

I find what can seem tedious and overly-complicated is really more a matter of unlearning fabricated systems to see the world in a different way, and in a way that often fits new realities better, and more necessarily in order to support and integrate a growth within it. In a simple analogy when I was young and working in a convenience store some young woman I was working with got frustrated with me when I was simply talking about things with her and she expressed to me, "Why do you have to use such big words all the time!?" I was a bit dumbfounded by her and just simply answered, "Because some words have greater depth of meaning than simply pointing at something and grunting 'uggggghhh'". She punched me. Yes, 'ugggghhhh' communicates simply, but doesn't say much.

 

Once a new vocabulary is mastered, it opens and supports whole new understanding, which, once it is recognized into real, everyday life as it appears not just for you but most everyone, then the understanding of it is simple. In my philosophy all the words, all the vocabulary is to move beyond simple conventions of what is presumed truth, to the point where there are no words left and they are emptied into experience itself. But it is not an experience devoid of understanding.

 

I think you conclude an awful lot more about reality than is justified, or supportable.

What I conclude is what I have been running from my entire life. I am trying a different approach, which is to embrace what has always been intuitively so about my reality.

 

What was unjustified and unsupportable was the whole religious milieu, plus the idea that one can hope in relationships for comfort and companionship, plus the idea that what matters to me actually matters to anyone or anything outside myself, or comes from anywhere outside myself. That I wasn't born alone, don't ultimately live alone, and won't ultimately die alone.

 

I am simply trying to deal in reality for a change. I think I am actually assuming / concluding much less, not more.

But yet you just said 2 paragraphs ago, "We all have an inherent need for connection and connectedness." Recognizing that says something rather reaching beyond just being swallowed up into our own protective cocoon we create around ourselves, which is in effect doing the exact opposite of what, "We all have an inherent need for". But here you are saying that reality is that we were born alone, live alone, die alone. Concluding the latter is assuming something that life itself denies. You are in fact concluding more than what is presented, not less.

 

It is not possible for you to be born alone, as for one thing you came out of your mother. It is not possible to live alone, as you interact with the world every nanosecond of every day. It is not possible to die alone for that very same reason. At no moment is anyone alone. But what I hear in that expression of yours is that your sense of self feels isolated and separated. And that, is entirely a perception, an interpretation of reality, a sense of a separate self. A sense of disconnect. Rationally, that is completely unsupported. Cognitively, it is a created reality of thought.

 

Where do you identify your "self" at? Your body? Your body is not the same body you had when you were five, or 15, or 25, or 35, etc. Not one cell is the same. Is it your brain, your collection of neural programs? I've been joking lately that even though I don't literally believe in reincarnation, in reality, I have lived life as many different "me"s in 'my' lifetime. I saw the world through different sets of eyes, different understandings, different realities, is the years of my life. And in each one of those, I experienced reality. I experienced life as a fundi, as a moderate, as a liberal, as I am today, etc. Each of those were and are valid realities. But yet, who am "I"? Clearly, I am not the sum of those worldviews. I am not defined or grounded in my beingness in my understandings.

 

So then where may I ask you are you putting that locus of self? And in where you put that locus of self, can you possibly see that how you understand something surrounding that, is what in fact creates that sense of isolation? Can you see how that if you start at one assumption, then layer on expectations to support that assumption, that you are the beginning and the end of your own separateness? And then recognizing that in the face of what you yourself observed that, "We all have an inherent need for connection and connectedness," that a separate self is a bold contradiction with reality? And if so, then what is the source of that contradiction?

 

 

 

I don't particularly care for what I am left with, but at least it appears to comport with what is actually true.

And this makes me very sad when I hear this. To repeat, I absolutely agree it would be a huge mistake for you to try to find fulfillment in yet another promise, from yet another teacher, from yet another religion, etc. If you start from the same starting point, you will end up exactly what you are left with. You have made the rational choice in not trying to go that same path again. That's positive. But I think to then just find a 'comfort zone' to just ride it out is likely not satisfying to you. I say that because of what I hear you blatantly say here and elsewhere that, "I don't particularly care for what I am left with, but at least it appears to comport with what is actually true." That is not fulfillment.

 

The only possible basis for progress is to work with what is actually there, not with what I wish would be there.

And we conclude these things how?

[DesertBob]

To me a good philosophy at the end of the day is nothing less than profound simplicity. The key being profoundly reaching within simplicity itself. Being simple alone does not make it good.

FWIW, I don't see your particular philosophy as being in that class of philosophies I find ponderous and ultimately devoid of much value. I was referring to what I see most formal academic philosophy devolve into. I am a fairly intelligent and experienced person but have not been rewarded when I have bothered to grok the arcane terminology of, say, Freud or Nietzsche.

 

I find your personal belief system fairly accessible even though it strains at times to describe things that, apparently, are not easily described. :-) There appears to be a requisite "Aha moment" that I would need in order to really make use of it, is all.

 

On a related topic, I found the technical details of Benetar's treatise on the harm of existence that is under discussion at this time in another thread, boring and his conclusions erroneous even while I found that his basic premises resonate with me. So it goes with philosophers and me. I borrow a bit from here and there and draw my own conclusions but the vast, baroque bailing wire and twine that make each belief system hang together is then largely of no use to me. My bailing wire and twine is the test of experience -- it works for me, or not.

But yet you just said 2 paragraphs ago, "We all have an inherent need for connection and connectedness."

I believe that loneliness is an inherent component of the human condition and the fairly universal desire to connect reflects this loneliness. Saying that does not do any of the following:

 

* Confuse loneliness with aloneness

 

* Equate not being alone with not being lonely

 

* Suggest that a seemingly almost universal need or yearning is the same as its fulfillment or means that its fulfillment is adequately accessible

 

* Suggest that the cost and difficulty of obtaining and maintaining meaningful relationships is non-trivial

 

* Suggest that all relationships are attainable, healthy, satisfactory, or reliable.

So then where may I ask you are you putting that locus of self?

Locus? What do you mean?

To repeat, I absolutely agree it would be a huge mistake for you to try to find fulfillment in yet another promise, from yet another teacher, from yet another religion, etc. If you start from the same starting point, you will end up exactly what you are left with. You have made the rational choice in not trying to go that same path again. That's positive.

Don't worry, there isn't a snowball's chance in hell of that happening. I am not at all conflicted about rolling my own beliefs.

But I think to then just find a 'comfort zone' to just ride it out is likely not satisfying to you ... That is not fulfillment.

No, it's not fulfillment. I basically am an idealist whose idealism has been exacerbated by having my expectations set way too high at a primal level -- partly by Christianity and partly by other mentors. Every ounce of progress I've made in the past twenty years has been due to tempering my expectations. Oh, alright, lowering them. In some cases changing them, but mostly lowering or discarding them altogether. It seems inescapable to me that to increase one's satisfaction one must either improve one's circumstances or lower one's expectations (or both). My situation is basically that I have done all of both that I know how to do.

 

I have learned to live with a number of things that I was determined not to be part of my life, e.g., divorce, bankruptcy, disease, bereavement. I have learned to live without things I assumed would always be part of my life, e.g., faith, given reality and purpose, a particular story arc that I found compelling. I have absorbed harms I foolishly assumed I would be exempted from and I have discarded things I foolishly assumed I was guaranteed. At this point it's all a sunk cost, and all I really want is for it to fucking stop. I just want it to be enough, already. I don't want to be living some arbitrary idea of a life, I want to be living my life while there is still some of it to live. I'm not asking to go back to the cradle / nursery of fundamentalism, I am simply wanting my life to Just Work now that I have reinvented myself forty-six times. I suppose I'm being foolish again but I feel I have accommodated life, the universe, and everyone else and I want it to accommodate me for a change. My primary feeling is fatigue. I just can't do it any more, or at least not much more.

 

The thing that keeps driving me nuts is that, professionally, my life Just Works. I don't understand why the heck my professional life is an embarrassing cornucopia of enjoyable work, respectful colleagues and clients, and high pay, when I basically did nothing I'm aware of to make that happen other than put in a few thousand honest day's work, and when it is hands-down the least important part of my life to me. I'd gladly dig ditches for a living if my personal and interior life would go half that smoothly. I did not aspire to six figures and annual world travel, but thankfully I have it to keep me from going completely insane with frustration, because at least in terms of what I actually hoped for, everything else has been and largely still is, either an outright clusterfuck, or something that is very high-maintenance and/or seriously under-performing and/or under substantial threat from unaware people with Stoopid ideas lodged between their ears.

The only possible basis for progress is to work with what is actually there, not with what I wish would be there.

And we conclude these things how?

I have no idea what you mean by that. It seems like mine was a reasonable statement. Do you have a better one? Or are you suggesting that I misapprehend what is actually there? If so, enlighten me.

[Margee]

No, it's not fulfillment. I basically am an idealist whose idealism has been exacerbated by having my expectations set way too high at a primal level -- partly by Christianity and partly by other mentors. Every ounce of progress I've made in the past twenty years has been due to tempering my expectations. Oh, alright, lowering them. In some cases changing them, but mostly lowering or discarding them altogether. It seems inescapable to me that to increase one's satisfaction one must either improve one's circumstances or lower one's expectations (or both). My situation is basically that I have done all of both that I know how to do.

 

I have learned to live with a number of things that I was determined not to be part of my life, e.g., divorce, bankruptcy, disease, bereavement. I have learned to live without things I assumed would always be part of my life, e.g., faith, given reality and purpose, a particular story arc that I found compelling. I have absorbed harms I foolishly assumed I would be exempted from and I have discarded things I foolishly assumed I was guaranteed. At this point it's all a sunk cost, and all I really want is for it to fucking stop. I just want it to be enough, already. I don't want to be living some arbitrary idea of a life, I want to be living my life while there is still some of it to live. I'm not asking to go back to the cradle / nursery of fundamentalism, I am simply wanting my life to Just Work now that I have reinvented myself forty-six times. I suppose I'm being foolish again but I feel I have accommodated life, the universe, and everyone else and I want it to accommodate me for a change. My primary feeling is fatigue. I just can't do it any more, or at least not much more.

 

 

DesertBob - I just couldn't resist writing..............These 2 paragraphs above!! I swear I wrote the exact same words somewhere not long ago!! I am also around your age. I have been through and also accepted most of the same things, good and bad, that you have. Part of the journey for me that kept me going was waiting for that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Now I know that I must create it myself.

 

I started looking at all the things that make me smile and all the things that make my blood boil. It's almost as if I have an invisible checklist right now.I have complained about being tired quite a bit in the past couple of years.

 

So - I have determined that in the next year, I am going to do a lot, lot, lot, more of the things that make me smile. My motto for this year would be classified by many as very selfish - but I do not care - I have spent a great deal of my life (especially as a christian) being very unselfish. So my new motto is,: ''IT'S ALL ABOUT ME NOW! - IT'S MY TURN!'' That doesn't mean I will neglect what needs to be nurtured among my loved ones - it's just means that I will be saying NO a lot more than what I have done in the past. I have already made some really neat changes.

 

I have warned them all........................

 

This may be my new spirituality - looking a little bit more after me!!

 

Off to create the life I want......... and best wishes for you also................................

[DesertBob]

DesertBob - I just couldn't resist writing..............These 2 paragraphs above!! I swear I wrote the exact same words somewhere not long ago!! ... So - I have determined that in the next year, I am going to do a lot, lot, lot, more of the things that make me smile.

:-) I knew full well I'm not the only one who has lost some identity in my own misplaced nobility. My greatest problem is twofold -- I'm a genuinely good person, an empath, really, and I tend to cut everyone else way too much slack and myself too little as a result. I care too much and try too hard. The other side of it is that, apparently unlike you, the list of things that make me smile are way too short and way too dependent on others coming through for me in certain ways. I am mostly working right now on finding things that are (1) compelling to me and (2) require no one else's participation. I am not expecting this to be easy, because I am really a people person, but I realize that I can't count on anyone else to be there for me when I need them, not reliably. People have too many of their own issues, too much need for their own space.

 

One of the things I'm working towards -- and this will be good for my fiancee, too -- is to disentangle us from Nowheresville, Indiana, and move someplace more stimulating, where there is more to do besides join the Rotary Club or play Bingo and where we can more readily form like-minded friendships. We are both odd ducks in that our heritage is classic midwestern, but our life experience and aspects of our interests are far more eclectic than that. My fiancee for example grew up in Berkeley during the Vietnam era and her middle school was once evacuated during a protest, amidst tear gas. She landed here because of a combination of random circumstances got her stuck here, and I'm here because she's here. Once her kids are established in college, we're off to a college town ourselves, and maybe ultimately to an interest-based retirement community where we can find a better focus for ourselves. I hope that will help us both make more friends and have more to look forward on a day to day basis than work, worrying about the kids, and living amid the ghosts of the past (we are still in the house she shared with her late husband).

 

Doing *that* will demand that a lot of annoying, slow-moving tedium be handled over the next couple of years, including selling my own home in the desert southwest and much of its contents, but hopefully once it's done we'll have a bit of a fresh start and doing what I personally need to do to take care of myself will be easier. Or at least that's the theory.

 

Best of luck to you, Margee -- you've taken care of everyone else, now take care of yourself :-)

[Margee]

DesertBob - I just couldn't resist writing..............These 2 paragraphs above!! I swear I wrote the exact same words somewhere not long ago!! ... So - I have determined that in the next year, I am going to do a lot, lot, lot, more of the things that make me smile.

:-) I knew full well I'm not the only one who has lost some identity in my own misplaced nobility. My greatest problem is twofold -- I'm a genuinely good person, an empath, really, and I tend to cut everyone else way too much slack and myself too little as a result. I care too much and try too hard. The other side of it is that, apparently unlike you, the list of things that make me smile are way too short and way too dependent on others coming through for me in certain ways. I am mostly working right now on finding things that are (1) compelling to me and (2) require no one else's participation. I am not expecting this to be easy, because I am really a people person, but I realize that I can't count on anyone else to be there for me when I need them, not reliably. People have too many of their own issues, too much need for their own space.

 

Ditto! This is it for me Desertbob! Best to both of us!!

[DesertBob]

People have too many of their own issues, too much need for their own space.

 

Ditto! This is it for me Desertbob! Best to both of us!!

Best to both of us indeed.

 

It makes me rather sad that we're reduced to this, though. My vision of home life and intimacy was that everyone would be present and available for each other pretty much at all times. When everyone is fully functional that becomes a very appropriate, healthy interdependence. When everyone is beat up and damaged then there are problems with trust and commitment and so forth and people end up withdrawing and avoiding. I never wanted to spend my dotage playing solitaire or spending time with shallower friendships or pointless hobbies or traveling alone in order to give the people I really care about and would rather hang with, "space" and spare them the horrors of someone else counting on them for anything. Seems contrary to the whole point of intimate relationships. I've always felt that the demands of work and the overhead of living take you away from the people you love enough, and that the time you actually can relax together is precious and not to be squandered. But what can you do. Not everyone sees it that way, at least not in our culture.

 

Just having come back from Vietnam I note that family is everything to them, largely because it's all they have. I used to feel that way myself, but I grew up in an intact nuclear family and we were not that affluent. Sometimes I wonder what affluence and technology have done to me and mine ...

[Vigile]

One of the things I'm working towards -- and this will be good for my fiancee, too -- is to disentangle us from Nowheresville, Indiana, and move someplace more stimulating, where there is more to do besides join the Rotary Club or play Bingo and where we can more readily form like-minded friendships.

 

Bob, your frustrations are painful to read as I can easily place myself in your shoes had I made other choices or were I able to step back into my past. I can't know or tell you what will work for you. Personally, living as an expat largely does it for me. It's not a cure all to the frustration that comes with the banal, but it certainly goes a long way, at least for me. When I talk to others who wonder why I don't want to return to the US, my honest answer is I spent more than 30 years there and it no longer holds any mysteries for me (at least none of the profound kind), while every day I seek to unwind mysteries that surround me and learn to see the world from a perspective I'd not contemplated.

 

It's my hope you can find that niche/trigger/what have you that will finally make you feel like you too are home and where you belong. I wish I could point you in a direction, but likely you are wired differently than I so what works for me will not for you.