Trust your intuition. You may find the work of Clarissa Pinkola Estés helpful – ‘Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype’

“The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”

Open the door and walk through

“I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories… water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.”  ― Clarissa Pinkola Estés

The danger in projecting into an imagined future is that you forget how to be present in the moment. So even when you arrive where you dreamed of going you might not recognize it when you get there. Anger is a double edge sword it can help you identify what you want to change but also cut you off from who you want to be.

You can have what your looking for where you’re at… if you allow yourself to be where you’re at.

Experiencing Spiritual emptiness at times is normal. As for these intense emotions your feeling it sounds like you’re in a transition stage and have lost connection with your sense of self. During a transition it is also ‘normal’ to feel lost and irritated, and being lost and irritated lashing out.

If this is a time of transition is it possible that your experiencing expressed (and or unexpressed) expectations from family, friends, society… to be, think and act in a way that isn’t authentic to you. That could explain the anger and ‘hatred’ especially if you’re not sure about the path you want to follow. That anger and hate could be a projection onto others about how you feel about yourself.

A professional therapist could help you sort out your thinking and emotions as well as teach to techniques for dealing with anger and the like.

You did nothing wrong, absolutely nothing and in no way harmed your cousin

The history behind the word paganism is fascinating. From your post, I assume you are using the word to refer to spiritual teachings other then those of Judaism Islam or Christianity.

You may find Joseph Campbell study on Kundalini Yoga very helpful. “Masks of Oriental Gods: Symbolism of Kundalini Yoga,”  and Lecture II.1.3 The Sound Aum and Kundalini Yoga

The audio books are great and can be found http://www.jcf.org

We are overwhelmed and become stuck when are mind tries answer all the questions we have at once.

Change happens slowly then all at once. Change starts with focusing on one doable thing at a time.  My suggestion is that that first thing is not this fuzzy thing we think of as purpose.

I have read many books on the subject of purpose and have found that the question is a unskillful distraction. As Joseph Campbell noted its pointless to ask the question when you are the answer. You are the Answer! Your Being in all its messiness is Purpose. Life does not have some mysterious purpose that you must somehow find.  You are already purpose. Its not what you will do that will create a purpose but who you are, your being as you act in this world that will. From this perspective of being everything you experience is purpose.

TS Eliot wrote “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” You can choose to go down this road frantically, longingly seeking out purpose that is one path but there is another to go down this road calmly and with assurance that you will return home and see it for the first time as it is, for what it is. And in seeing it so find yourself able to say Yes, Yes to all of it.

I’ve been re-reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Today I read the following: “stuckness shouldn’t be avoided. An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all”. So Great News! You are just where you need to be to get to where you want to go! The first step towards change perhaps learning how to give egoless acceptance of where you are. No need for labels, like purpose, for your experiences. Accept where you are and you will know where you need to go next. One step at a time. Trust Life and trust your inner self and one day you will find yourself content that you gave life purpose and it being you is amazing.

We repeat the past in order to heal it. You can break out of the cycle when you make this truth conscious. Try to create some space where you can be with yourself without labels, judgments or measuring of your experience.  When you can sit with yourself without labeling your experience as this or that you will be less likely to get stuck living out the labels.

I found the following books helpful when I struggled to understand my relationships. ‘How to Be an Adult in Relationships’  and ‘When the Past Is Present: Healing the Emotional Wounds that Sabotage our Relationships’  by David Richo

Most people think of love as a feeling, but love is not so much a feeling as a way of being present.”  Richo offers a fresh perspective on love and relationships—one that focuses not on finding an ideal mate, but on becoming a more loving and realistic person.

• This reply was modified 7 years ago by Peter.

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Chaos is the law of nature; Order is the dream of man.” Henry Adams

“I want so badly to fight this, but I look ahead and I see slummy apartments, jobs I hate, being A 30 year old man who crises and never finds any kind of passion. I look at what my next step should be and there’s no ground to stand on.”

You have identified your problem and answered your own question. You know what your next step should be. The problem is looking ahead and imagining the worst. Living in this imagined future is leaving you with no ground to stand on because this future does not exist. How could you then stand on it? The first step then is to develop the skills to avoid this type of thinking/being.  (We create what we fear so we must be careful with what we imagine. The good news is that this truth means we can also create what we hope for.)

This tendency to look ahead and imagine a future and then living in that imagined future present is getting in your way of creating space where you can discover yourself and maybe even find yourself content to live in the present.

When you notice that you are projecting fear into the future and living it now try the practice of pulling your consciousness back to the present without judgments. Visualize your awareness as if it were a dog. Call it back from this imagined feared future and visualize yourself putting a leash on it. Practice training your dog consciousness. Learn when you can let the dog explore, run and play and when to call it to heel. Eventually you will learn the how to direct your consciousness instead of letting your consciousness direct you.

When you learn to create this space ask yourself what was it that trigger your flight into the future? Practice observing Fear without labeling it. How much of it was False Evidence Appearing Real? How much of your experience is a result of the labels you created?

Chaos does not mean total disorder. Chaos means a multiplicity of possibilities. Chaos is from the ancient Greek words that means a thing that is birthed from the void. And it was about that which is possible, not about disorder. Jok Church

A possibility that is birthed from the void! A “Life in complete chase” a doorway into possibility! Open the door and walk though.

• This reply was modified 7 years ago by Peter.