“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, 4 months ago by Peter.

Dear Nomad:

In the beginning  of  your post you wrote: “I was often kept  in near complete isolation as a  child”. Later in your post you wrote about your current state, at 28: “Anxiety has turned to panic, panic into depression… I look ahead and I see slummy apartments, jobs I hate… I look at what my next step should be and there’s no ground to stand on.”

We, people, keep living as adults the same experience we had as children. Even if you lived in a huge apartment and had a high paying job, you would likely experience the same “near complete isolation” that  you experienced as a  child. There will likely be a period of “high”, or temporary relief of anxiety, followed by same-old-same-old isolation, anxiety and depression.

Unless you heal from that childhood experience.

The “no ground  to  stand  on” is  that isolation, being  alone, a scary experience  for a child. We are  born needy of  others, of our caretakers, to be there for  us emotionally. We are  not capable of feeling that  ground underneath us in isolation.

anita