snowyowl

@RoerAmit if you're feeling suicidal or this seems too much to handle by yourself please see a professional like your doctor or ring one of the suicide helplines. It sounds like you're going through a process of the suppressed trauma coming to the surface and the emotions need to find expression, but if you let it move, cry or whatever you need, it should gradually subside. Like the five stages of grief: emotions: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. For now I'd recommend just focusing on your emotional healing and taking care of your mental health, with whatever support you've got available. Build up a strong healthy happy self. The spiritual work of deconstructing ego needs to wait imo.

What we have is sense perceptions, and stories (thoughts). That's it. There's one story of my dog on the leash, another story of my dog not on the leash. The second story is in accordance with my visual perception of seeing it. There's no real vs unreal distinction, because that's just another story: that sense perception implies an objective reality "out there". At least that's the phenomenal perspective: everything is appearance. The flip side is the noumenal perspective: everything is real in itself, independent of mind. There's still an illusion, but in this case the illusion is that mind exists independently of the objective reality. The secret I can't talk about however is when the phenomenon and the noumenon both collapse, are both seen to be stories.

"I wouldn't diagnose me at all. But I'm sure doctors could give me several diagnoses, I don't want to name which." Sure the doctors don't always get it right, but you know you've got a problem otherwise you wouldn't be reaching out to us in the forum. I totally understand if you don't want to have a mental health label on your head, but you're stuck at the moment suffering the loneliness without seeing any way out. "I finished the book. It was good but it didn't help me. No book has ever helped me, or video or any advice from anyone." That's true in a way for all of us, we're not directly helping each other just giving pointers. We've all got to take the initiative ourselves and make a commitment to something. Even if it's just acceptance and making peace with how things are. "It's ok, I kinda appreciate that someone writes something to me." Thanks, I also appreciate the chance to write and have people read me. "This is unrelated to this stuff but.. Man.. there's a woman at my work who has beautiful eyes, and when I talked with her about work-stuff she was looking laser-focused into my eyes all the time. That was all it took for me to get feelings for her. I need to see her eyes and face again. And she's so kind too. Anyways.. that was off-topic. I know you will say that I should talk more with her and yadda yadda (no offense) but I wont. I can only hope that I have to talk more with her about work-stuff " "I felt like crying when I was looking into her beautiful, loving, blue, soul piercing eyes. I wonder if she noticed that. Imagine if I had lost it at that moment and started crying.." Oh man, of course it's related, this is the whole point! Why not "lose it", what have you got to lose? Is "losing it" a Freudian slip for letting go of control over your bottled up emotions? I'd be surprised if she didn't notice it and your difficulty talking, women are generally a lot more emotionally intelligent than us guys and tuned into our signals. Even if you only talk about work stuff for now, I'd say take the chance and practice talking anyway.

Yup, we've been there too. Transition from blue to orange is a dangerous time for a country, there's all the extra power and wealth from industrialisation, but still within a blue totalitarian mindset. When my country (UK) was at this stage, we went around invading many countries and creating an empire. But now there's the benefit of hindsight to not repeat Europe's mistakes, if anyone wants to listen. But power is sooo intoxicating ...

There's cold war already with the cyber sabotage and espionage, but proxy wars are more likely than direct war between the superpowers. Eg weren't the Viet Cong supported by China?

I find this language very challenging to understand (perhaps that's the point). If nothing's happening from the start, how can there be a stopping? Isn't it easier to say that an illusion is happening, which then stops happening, in the sense that it's seen to be an illusion. But the true reality, which was being misinterpreted in the illusion, continues, seen clearly.

I think anxiety collapses the different between mental and physical illness. The fight, flight and freeze response is a combination of brain functions, hormones and feelings. I've started using headspace.com for my guided meditations, they have a module on managing anxiety which I've started, will let you know how I get on. It's on a paid subscription though.

How is it difficult to express yourself? Is it a feeling like fear, anxiety or depression getting in the way of saying your words out loud? Or that you don't know what to say, as in not knowing how to have a regular conversation with your workmates? I'm getting a picture of your being lonely at home by yourself, then feeling excluded in work and social situations by something like social anxiety. So there's nowhere you feel comfortable. How would you diagnose yourself if you're ok to share that? By the way, how's it going with the book you were enjoying, Perfect Brilliant Stillness wasn't it? Is it any help? Sorry that's loads of questions isn't it. If it feels better to just vent, then please ignore me and have a good vent

@Blackhawk so if you unpack this a little, what's actually happening when you go to work? Why is it such a struggle? We all need money so will need to keep working in any case.

@Stovo Yes I'm English too interesting that we have our own tensions between the different nations here too, with nationalism vs unionism but that's for another thread. It's clear that we can't just go around parachuting in our version of democracy in other cultures. But from your experience of Chinese people, would you say there's any truth to my theory about the ethnic groups in China? Ie that the Han Chinese are mostly content with the way things are going, and it's the other ethnic groups who are rebelling, to the extent they can.

@Stovo my point isn't about telling them what to do, more about questioning the evidence of your suggestions that there is a mandate and general agreement with the status quo. If we don't ask them, how do we know what they want? It's apparent from our western media viewpoint that they don't have freedom to demonstrate and organise politically outside the official channels. But maybe the news I'm consuming is biased too, so it's not black and white. What's the alternative to the CCP? Well, I'm not convinced the Republic of China would have been much better had they won the civil war, but there was still chaos in the 60s and 70s during the cultural revolution. They need to develop and progress at their own sustainable rate, but I'm starting to worry about the Taiwan situation. You're right that it's been a dangerous part of the world though, China (like Russia) borders a lot of other countries so has historically had threats coming from all directions, and it's own borders moved around due to invasions. I must be lucky living in an island!

Sorry to hear you're feeling rough again I hope it gets better soon. Trying give you a glimmer of hope. The very fact that it feels like a struggle and a fight means there's a part of you which is resisting the loneliness and sadness, which believes there is an alternative. Then there's this other voice which insists there is no reward. So you're conflicted, split and fighting yourself between hope and hopeless. Please please don't give up on the hope. "and when you die, then what? You'll lose it all anyway." I've already lost my childhood, my youth, my parents, many friendships, etc loads of good things. But I've never lost the present moment. If we can find contentment in the here and now we can carry that with us even through death, if there is an after life. If not, then there won't be any awareness of loss anyway. Pure nothingness, pure everythingness.

Ok, there isn't significant protest among the Han Chinese majority (outside of Hong Kong) because the current system is, in many ways, working for them economically, tho didn't they have issues with the one child policy until recently? But calling the situation a mandate is going a bit far imo, unless they have choices via free elections or even opinion polls. Outside the Han areas, in the "occupied territories" (my phrase) of Xinjiang and Tibet (aka "autonomous regions") there have been protests suppressed by the Han imperialists trying to convince us that China is a unified country with a few separatist terrorist problems.

Being a top member of the CCP must be a pretty anxious position, trying to micromanage the lives of a billion people with no mandate apart from the power of the Red Army. Goodness knows what will happen when the economic growth stalls and they have a recession and high unemployment to deal with.

@AndylizedAAY what type of church is it, and what does the worship team do? If it's the music and visuals department for the church services, then if you're stuck with doing it, my suggestion would be to milk it for whatever practical experience and skills you can gain, until you're independent enough to make your own religious choices. For example there's been lots of professional singers and musicians who started off in a church choir.

@Someone here It seems like you enjoyed the religious experiences in the churches, temples etc but the belief side of it is absent for you. Me too. imo this is a big reason for the decline in mainstream religion here in western Europe in churches which stress beliefs and creeds over direct experience. Hence the interest in Eastern, Pagan and New Age spirituality, but there's no reason why the Christian churches can't adapt if they want to.

@Blackhawk ha ha yes, we kid ourselves about our motivations don't we, which are mostly based on feelings and desires like lust, fear (ie survival anxiety), greed, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain etc which of course we don't freely control. Also something highbrow like a rational search for truth isn't free, because we have to follow the logic and evidence in a mechanical way.

@Someone here I so empathise with your anxiety, it's like an invisible disability. My whole life I identified as being highly introverted, also suffering from anxiety. Only a couple of weeks ago (I'm in my 50s) I had a thundering realisation that these aren't two separate things at all, the social anxiety is the introversion! "how can I pray to God if I'm God ultimately?" Out of interest, how do you pray? The usual technique is talking at God, making demands such as 'Give us this day our daily bread', and hardly pausing to listen for a reply. But if there's no separation between you and God, then talking and listening is a single process. Have you tried a contemplative style prayer like Quakerism or Taize? Ultimately, pure listening becomes a nondual passive meditation like awareness of awareness. But combining that nondual practice with a dual practice like talking/listening to God sounds to me like it covers all bases.

So there is freedom, but no-one has it. It's God's will not my will.

If there isn't free will, how can we have an unfettered decision-making process to find out whether we believe in free will or not? How can we know anything if our thoughts are pre-determined and out of control? We'll never know if free will doesn't exist, only if it does

@Goldzilla Zen is a form of Buddhism isn't it? Filtered through the cultures of Chinese Taoism and Japan though. Don't desire not to desire either, so there's no shoulds and shouldn'ts at the end of the path.

The Great Awakening (a term borrowed from US Christians btw) is about the New Age movement trying to reboot itself after the New Age clearly hasn't arrived yet. Rather like in early Christianity, when it became obvious the second coming wasn't going to happen any time soon, they had to re-invent themselves with theology and the church.

Hi again Yeah, having a job you (mostly) like, and with prospects makes a huge difference to your confidence and energy levels. You've held down this job for a while now haven't you, so you'll probably get a decent reference to help get another job? Or maybe do some home study to improve your qualifications and skills to get a better job. What career do you really want anyway?

Nothing special happened for me at 33, apart from a relationship breakup, but in my early 30s I decided I wasn't a young person any more and was ready to be middle aged. If my lifespan is optimistically about 90 max then simply divide into 3 sections for young, middle & old age. What age does anyone else think middle age starts? Or is this whole way of labelling life not necessary?

@Ananta That's awful, but glad to hear you're making it through this. Sounds similar to PTSD, have they offered you any treatment as well as the diagnosis?