Kirty,

I’m sorry that you’ve been feeling down over your work situation. You seem like the kind of person who looks and sees the best in people, which is awesome. My guess is that what is happening is you see a lot of beauty and connection happening all around you, and find it to be very powerful for you. Much like walking through a garden and really seeing the blooming flowers, smelling their fragrances… you are open and attentive. That is great!

Except of course when you don’t give yourself that same attentiveness. If you spend a lot of time looking and appreciating the people around you, but little time looking and appreciating the person that is you, of course jealousy will arise. The perception that you are an ugly duckling surrounded by joy and beauty… is hogwash, garbage. Its especially normal when we are in a fast paced environment, because we become stressed, and the inner warmth erodes. If it happened after three days, I’m guessing you don’t do a lot of self nurturing. That’s what releases the stress and refuels the inner warmth.

No amount of self help books or knowing spiritual ideas will help if you don’t self nurture. After the body goes through stress it has to be treated kindly to unwind, let go. Otherwise we begin to experience fatigue and burnout. Much like athletes stretch and massage their muscles before and after intense movement, our hearts need time and attention to unwind. We can’t just muscle through, we have to care for ourselves or we end up in a twisted mess!

You’re completely worth it. When you’re settled, you know how beautiful you are… you’ve been getting compliments the whole way. The stress has just closed the eye inside you which sees the beauty, hears the validation, and appreciates the camaraderie. The comparison and jealousy is a very natural, normal thing to be arising given your circumstances… perhaps you just need to find a way to let go, unwind, release the past, rekindle your sense of inner beauty. Zoning out in front of a TV or FB often doesn’t do that well (and depending on the show/post it can even add more). So, what kind of things do you like to do for yourself? How do you unwind after the hustle and bustle?

With warmth,
Matt

Do you do metta as well as breath meditation? Perhaps there is extra agitation that would be settled from some additional metta practice. Better than chicken soup!

With warmth,
Matt

Kirty,

The short answer is we stop comparing, stop grasping. For example, if we are in a group of friends who are talking about things we don’t have anything to say about, we just watch their joy. We don’t try to “be heard” or say “what about me” we just laugh along. Go with the flow.

To be able to do this we self nurture, so we come to see our unique beauty and place in the world. We become well nourished in that way, so attention or validation is irrelevant. For instance, I meditate and come to inner stability. Then when I walk down the street and see a guy with huge muscles and a tight shirt getting attention and breathy looks from women, I don’t feel jealous at all. Good for him! I know my value, my heart is strong and buoyant, I find myself to be a beautiful being… so there is no comparison that comes up. Its more just fun for me to see his dance and sway to the world around him.

If you’d like something more specific, feel free to elaborate your particular maze. Namaste.

With warmth,
Matt

John,

I read through the instructions Ajahn Brahmavamso is describing, and don’t see the portion where pushing against the mental chattering is advised. At the directness of mental awareness you’re describing, there is really no need to do such a thing.

Imagine the mind as a mare in a tiny barn, and the mare is unsettled… kicking and bucking. As it bashes up against the walls of the barn, it becomes scratched. The more scratches, the more kicking. The more kicking, the more scratches. Why would we stand at the door of the barn and chide the poor animal for being an animal? Why would we say it is mean? That it doesn’t love itself enough, or respect the barn enough? That isn’t compassion. The horse doesn’t need to be tamed, it needs to be free. We don’t try to whip it into shape, we remove the barn. Then the mare will perhaps go nibble some grass or smell a flower… the scratches and kicking naturally go away.

Removing the barn is done through the gentle moving of our mind back to our intention. In Brahmavamso’s instructions, this is done in stages. Present moment, breath, full breath and so forth. The intention never arises as “chiding the chatterer”… rather “what the mental energy is intended to do”.

What do you think? The mind is not the thoughts… it is the container the thoughts bounce around in.

With warmth,
Matt

Ke,

There does seem to be a lot going on, and it is natural and normal to feel confused about what to do with the unknown. You said you’ve been diagnosed as having BPD, was that clinical? Do you have a treatment regimen that you’re following? Do you make space to accommodate as best you can the tendencies of your mind and emotions?

Its plausible that your ex is responding to you as though he is being emotionally abused, and you are the abuser. Of course that’s not your intention, but with wild swings, being cold, expecting him read your mind… that’s a lot to put on an intimacy. Have you been working with your doctor to develop coping mechanisms for your difficulties? It is one thing to accept you are afflicted with a certain tendency, and quite another to to just expect others to accommodate them. It leads to a lot of imbalance.

For instance, if we are a great cuddler but a not so great communicator, then the cuddling needs are met well in the intimacy but the communication needs are not. So we cuddle over and over, and don’t communicate as much. This works for awhile, but eventually the unsaid things on both sides interrupt the joy of cuddling… there just too much sitting between us in the mind for the closeness of bodies to be relaxing and warming. Lasting intimacy has to address all of the main needs the partners have.

Another thing that I wondered about is the way perhaps you’re placing responsibility for certain difficulties in the relationship on his shoulders unfairly. If, for instance, you blow up at him when he tells you a difficult truth, and never give his heart space to express and be real, then of course he is going to lie to you. Not only have you shown him it is not safe to be himself, but that being himself is toxic. He sounds like he has a lot of empathy, which makes outbursts especially painful. This would only be compounded by the fact that he is grieving his father, and feels additional guilt and sorrow for being preoccupied by the relationship during his father’s passing.

That being said, there is, of course, a delicate and gentle heart within you that is looking for your path toward joy. Considering the difficulties you’ve mentioned (and the past you’re carrying around, that you can talk about if you wish/when you’re ready) it is not surprising that some things are more difficult. You’ve had to fight to be heard, seen, felt, and so you sing loud and strong. This is vibrant and beautiful when the emotions are stable and you sing from the heart. Of course, when you’re a little wound or have a wound, that vibrancy is painful and unsettling to you and others. This can be very isolating, and often produce waves of loneliness. If you have those, I am very sorry, because I know how painful they can be… my heart goes out to you.

To help with the stability of mind and emotion, consider doing some metta meditation. There are a couple different kinds out there, and my guess is your cycles will be more affected by ones that involve repetition of words such as the following. It helps thoughts dig deep into the subconscious and helps calm the outbursts, letting the mind be more gentle and smooth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M1hP4RfS-c

With warmth,
Matt

Allie,

Post relationship friendships are difficult, and it really depends on you and your heart and him and his. Communication could be kicking up extra painful feelings, which is why many people wisely advise a no-contact rule. For me, its too subjective to be a rule, but remember that grieving takes time and space.

When my father died, I told my teacher that my emotions had become incredibly unstable and I didn’t know how to find peace. He said to me that wisdom is not in being stable, but in allowing big things to be big and small things to be small. Stability arises on its own. Said differently, we don’t make mountains out of molehills, but we don’t try to make mountains into molehills either.

Patience, gentleness with yourself. You can’t wish a broken ankle knitted, the heart is the same way. Metta will help, breathing will help, but its still not a quick fix. The heart needs time. I know when we’re in pain we want to be fixed now, healed now, but it almost never happens that way.

If you’re used to watching thoughts in meditation, you can open up the spaciousness around the thoughts by just seeing them as ripples. Don’t mask them, or suppress them, just notice and move back to the breath. Don’t be agitated with yourself, aggressive with yourself… that just creates more ripples, more painfulness. Just gently move your awareness back to the sensations of the breath. “What about Christmas” yes, ripples, breath. “Oh, I dreamed of having a baby with him” yes, ripples, breath. Settling, letting go. “This hurts” yes, ripples, breath.

Don’t forget that bath!

With warmth,
Matt

Allie,

Your pain and confusion is very reasonable, and I’m sorry form your grieving. It makes sense why you would be in the habit of wanting him to be happy, and spending your time thinking about him being happy. You were together for a long time. Now when your heart wants him to be happy, “SHE” is intermixed, and the jealousy and hurt feelings come along.

Which is normal for grief, and it heals over time. I think you’re mistakenly assuming that he is just “over it” and has moved on. The odd texts and emails prove otherwise. However, it also seems clear he doesn’t want to reconcile, and also is wishy washy about his grieving. The drugs and alcohol and new girl don’t make it any easier, and probably means he is suppressing emotions, but that’s his dance, his karma.

For your side, you can approach your grief in a few ways. One is you could do metta with him as the recipient, spending time wishing him happiness even if it means he is in the arms of his soulmate, and that soulmate is not you. It will be through gritted, jealous teeth at first, but with sincerity and persistence your attachment to him will settle.

Or, you could just keep self nurturing, following your passions, and it will also erode with time, perhaps a bit slower. When painful feelings arise, try not to be swept into them (after all, you deserve to be happy) and do something nice for yourself. Sing your favorite song, take a bath, go for a walk in nature… help your body let go of the pain and move on.

With your connection to rituals, you could also get closure on your own. On a piece of paper you could write out (in your own words, your own hand) “while he and I were together as partners, we interwove and shared and experienced karma. Whatever the conditions are now, I seek to allow the debts on both side to be settled, so that healing may flow into both of us, so that we can both be free.” Then say a prayer to the karmic council and burn the page with gratitude. After all, it seems that you’d like both of you to be free. If free flowing the ideas isn’t your style, I seem to remember seeing a “silver chalice” ritual that might be found on Google. Namaste.

With warmth,
Matt

Sai,

I’m sorry for the difficulties you’re wrestling with, and at such a young age! Your courage to dive deeper and deeper into the nature of reality is inspiring. That being said, you’re very young to be trying to look at some of these ideas, and your brain is still developing the capacity to see the interweaving. As you grow, the frontal lobe develops, and makes a lot of what you’re exploring easier. A few things came to heart as I read your words.

Perhaps what you’re experiencing is sometimes called “emptiness sickness” or looking at reality and harvesting a sense of meaninglessness. This is often troubling when an unprepared mind begins to try to understand some of the ideas you’re talking about. It is easy to think “yes, it is all illusion, therefore nothing matters” but this is inherently false. One of my teachers said “it might be illusion, but if you step in front of a bus you will still experience pain.” There is still cause and effect, even if what we experience is empty of inherent meaning or lasting qualities.

For instance, look at hunger. Our body needs food to survive, and when it doesn’t have food it feels a desire to eat. If we start thinking “oh god, I am so hungry, I am miserable, there is no food I want in the refrigerator, this is endless” then it is good to look at the emptiness of the hunger and see it is just impermanent, here because the body needs food. However, it is not good to apply it to the food and say “that is empty and meaningless, it can’t help my hunger because it is illusion”. The food is not empty… its empty of additional qualities, such as “pizza is good food” and “lima beans are bad food” but it is genuinely, truly food.

The path away from your maze is to drop the maze. Let go of the philosophical words you’ve been reading, for now, and begin to self nurture. Be kind and gentle with yourself. It matters, you matter. Go for a walk in nature, take a bath with soft music, go find a game you enjoy and play it. If we spend too much time in the mind, cycling around difficult unknowns, we burn out the warmth inside us and become sad, depressed, sloven, uncomfortable, and nihilistic.

One of the most nurturing things I’ve personally found is metta meditation. Ajahn Brahm has a great guided meditation on YouTube that helps develop the warmth inside. Metta is wonderful, because it does two things simultaneously. First is it revitalizes the warm spirit that is inside each of us, the divine spark, which is deeply nourishing to our body. Second, it dramatically reduces the mental agitation we have. It is important for our mind to become settled enough that we can concentrate on what is important. For instance, in algebra class it is much more important to focus on algebra than maya. Sure, you might not use algebra long term, but it provides you what you need in the moment. Similar to the way that after we eat food, it becomes poop, but still provides us needed nourishment, helps our body prepare for the journey ahead.

Finally, please be patient with yourself. Our curiosity naturally moves us to want to “know what it all means”, but that is something that grows slowly over time. There’s no rush, you are really young. Take time to play, to connect with others, to see the beauty in the world around you. Your body has genuine desires and needs, and it is through honoring them, not denying them, that we find the truth we seek. Namaste.

With warmth,
Matt