Though it still has me questioning whether or not I am doing something wrong and more specifically but maybe I’m trying too hard and that’s what’s putting people off and they disappear.

Hi Sofioula

I very much relate, and wonder myself if my own attempt at finding better ways to relate to expectations wasn’t really a attempt to manage them and avoid disappointment.  As in all things I guess a balance and healthy bounders are required. To have reasonable expectations without allowing those expectations to close the door to other possibilities.

I don’t know why it so difficult making and keep in friends. Why for some people it seems effortless while for others nothing seems to work. I hope you find your tribe and wish you well.

Hi Greg

It sounds like your really struggling and I’m sorry to hear that.
You may be surprised but I’ve meet many people who have had similar thoughts and feelings. Praying, wishing, longing to ‘just disappear’. I wonder if we all at some point in our lives haven’t had that thought as well as that longing to find the right person who will fix everything for us and make us ‘happy’. Its not a great place to find oneself but perhaps there is some comfort in that your not alone.

Am I correct is implying you are a person of faith? Early on in my own experience of belief I feel into the trap of magical thinking. I trusted that If I followed all the rules, did everything ‘right’  God would magically fix my life as I desired it. When things didn’t work out, well I must have broken a rule and was being punished. Life was not going as I hoped and I began to feel very bad about who I was. I couldn’t like myself so how could I expect others to like me… even God.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t working towards my goals and dreams so much as I expected God to do most of the heavy lifting.  I wanted to “win the lotto without buying a ticket”. I wasn’t saying No to life but I wasn’t saying Yes either. I was trying to fix life… well praying that God would fix it for me. The theology of reward and punishment was not working and I needed take a closer look at what I believed.

I have since come to develop a better relationship with Life, God and myself. My prayers tend to be more about listening then pleading as I attempt to enter into the flow of life. We are I think co-creators in our experience. We are influenced by life, often in ways that we wish were otherwise, but we also get to influence life. The intention is to spend more time focused on what I can influence.

So here is the question. What would life look like if you were able to stop pleading that it be different then it is and instead engage with it as it is in the moment? Eyes open for the path G_d is providing you? Could you take a breathe, accept were you are and take a step towards your dreams without forcing life to conform to our ego desire that it look and be a certain way? Open to possibilities to arrive at a place totally unexpected? Like will attract like and others are attracted to people who are able to flow with life while at the same time engaging it. That may sound like a contradiction but it isn’t.

The art of doing by not doing. The engagement between Contemplation, mindfulness, stillness and Action.  The holy grail. Imagine being able to fully engaged in the whirlwind that is Life and in the same moment be still, quite, content… God and life will provide plenty of opportunities the practice, more then we may want.  What we practice… is ours.

Thanks Anita you have caught my intent

I know that many teachings talk about climbing the mountain and finally reaching some “enlightened” state, or a completely healed state. I don’t believe that, because we’ll never be perfect human beings, there’s always room for growth, so I don’t believe that we can reach some ultimate state of perfection.

The Zen quote I was referencing agrees. We climb the mountain, and the mountain becomes more then a mountain,  after achieving the view (can’t live on top of the mountain though we may be tempted to try) we return and the mountain becomes what it always was, a mountain (seen as if for the first time).  Returning life asks of us to proceed where their will be other mountains and rivers. That is the human ‘tragedy and gift’

My observations was that many people get trapped in a cycle of retuning to the same mountain and climbing it again and again.  I was trying to explain through personal examples that I understood that temptation to return as I have in the past done just that. Realizing that tendency to return in myself was part my journey in learning to ‘let go’.  My intention was to encourage  those that may find themselves in that predicament. That they might ask themselves the question and not to panic if they find themselves stuck.

The mountain and rivers will always be part of our scenery. Depending on the lighting somedays these mountains may appear wonderous and beautiful and on others daunting and dangiours.  Actually they can appear as both beautiful and daunting, even horrific in the same moment. That is the nature of mountains.

Using Anita example part of the process of healing is getting to a place where we can look at those mountains as they are, without becoming desperate about it.  That is no small thing.

This has been very helpful.

I know Felix is feeling alone and is looking for a specific kind of relationship to help heal that hurt. I hope he finds what he is looking for. I also hope he can see that as Anita said he is not alone. Here in this odd ball community are people that he may not know but that generally care about his happiness and progress.

Hi Teak
I didn’t understand why I was giving you the impression that the realizations and lettings go I experienced wasn’t complete or real. I know that wasn’t your intent but I felt that you were trying to push me back into re-analyses and put in doubt my experiences.

When you were asked the question ‘how do you know when you have let go’ you avoided any personal information about the experiences that were related to that.  When I talked about my parents I opened the door for you to question my experience of letting go. I thought adding some personal information would help the point I was trying to make and that seems to have been a error.

Anyway all good

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Peter.

Nice. You focused on the outcome and avoided giving to much detail about which specific wounds you had to deal with. I see my error. Thanks

You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path. – Joseph Campbell

Hi Felix.

Campbell has been one of my guides. A question behind the hero journey is how are we to respond to Life. Life as it is, the wonder and horror. Yes we flow with Life, No we can/must fix it, No get me off this ride…..  Were indeed to find the strength? That is the call.  (Google Bill Moyers interview with Campbell if your interested in a summary)

We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. And where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world. – Campbell

Everything you express about your experience feels very much like a call to enter dark woods which we each do alone. If, and I believe this, we heed the call and enter the wood bravely (feeling the fear) we will come across those that would aid us. In the myths these are often the “small animals” (unexpected sources that before the call we would overlook but heeding the call and keeping our eyes open we might notice)  This may sound like a paradox but “Entering the woods” and the practice of being “Still and waiting” are related if not the same thing.

I wish you well, something tells me you will find your way.

FYI I very much liked  Campbell book “Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation”

TeaK

Re-crossing the river would be not trusting the ‘realization’ that led to the moment of letting go.  Its a personal experience that may be best left at that. When does the seeker become the finder the realizer and makes it theirs? truly, authentically theirs? Only they can now.

Like the person that succeeds in losing weight there will be those that are close to them that won’t like it. For their own unconscious reasons they may try to get the person to go back to how things were…

How to explain the raft. There is a saying that to Find God you most Lose God. The Raft is the organization that my help you get you across the river but should not be mistaken for the goal. The Goal was to cross the river and once crossed to continue on the journey.  The Organization designed to help you across is also designed to keep you on the raft. To avoid the uncertainty of what’s might come next the temptation is to cling to the raft. This is when religion can become fundamentalist’s. It isn’t about growth anymore but staying safe with in the boundaries of the organization. In the Zen quote it isn’t’ the Raft that is important but what you leaned by building it.  Letting go of what you build is difficult. Letting go of therapy after the realization can be difficult. Its ‘safer’ to hold on.  Sometimes letting go of the raft feels like losing community so its understandable that we cling.  I know this is abstract

I responded to Felix because I felt he was entering into a ‘Dark night of the soul’. If such was the case I was hoping that what I said might make sense to him and that he wouldn’t panic.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Peter.

TeaK

San is correct. Its difficult to put into words a realization that leads to letting go thus the change to the ‘philosophical’ or ‘mystical’ where words are intended to be experienced as the symbols that they are, symbols that point past themselves.

I was once involved in a debate about weather a person was truly capable of of performing a selfless act. It seamed that any example of a selfless act could be dissected were it was eventually ‘proved’ that the act was not selfless. The selfless act it seemed could only exist when expressed in words.  Similar to the experience of happiness becoming something else in the act of measuring and labeling happiness.  Better I think to “treasured up all these things and pondered them in ones heart”. Some experiences shouldn’t be shared, and or their is a time to share and a time to treasure and ponder.

The inner child exists as part of me but I am not not that child. His experience of quilt and disappointment are no longer mine, thought the experience still needs to be honored . Buddhism teaches that we have experiences and emotions.. but we are not our experiences and emotions. We are not a moment in time, We can allow them to flow