Viking

so there is only negative motivation to find a life purpose? because if i dont it will be bad? i think i created this topic because i never had positive motivation for life purpose, i wondered whether i should spend 20 years working in a life purpose i created only to start enjoying it. i never enjoyed studying, maybe sometimes dreaming about being this huge famous millionaire to please my ego but im past that. what i did enjoy though are friendships, and the last time i enjoyed friendships was about 8 years ago. now all friendships suck.

but i think theres also a biological component to this

I dont know shit but how i see it engage in sufism only if you have a sufi guru, or some sufi group nearby. otherwise its too unnecessarily hard and complicated. I also agree with Leo that one should explore all perspectives, so one shouldnt be studying just sufism, but all religions.

wasnt talking about meditation lol

Most of the time im feeling sad, anxious, i dont feel like doing anything that involves using my brain. Today I ate some dark chocolate and most of these symptoms were almost gone. my mood increased dramatically, though some of it was still in the background. the weird thing is that my diet is relatively good. I eat oatmeal with an apple, a grape and a banana in the morning mixed together, for lunch I eat a soup or rice with lentils, and in the evening i eat some meat with rice or pasta. but thats when im home, when im away, which is most of the time i almost always just eat rice with lentils for lunch and dinner. also lots of times i dont feel like studying, but i refined my motivations for studying and theyre very good. usually for people the hard thing is to start studying, but for me its to continue studying. starting is hard too, but the hardship doesnt go away throughout the time i study. can it be something related to my brain chemistry? what can i do?

not talking about how much time it will take, talking about how does it happen

i dont understand

more like how much clicks does it take for you to know something about the page you got. i clicked like 20 times and I didnt know any of those 20 things before, pretty amazing.

i have a feeling you misunderstand what that means. i dont know if i gained wisdom

hey exactly the same here, ill try to do the yoga too

personally ive observed no noticeable results from the kriya yoga ive been doing for ~3 months and from a 10 day vipassana course. im trying isha kriya daily now though and I feel nice after doing it. thats about it though. didnt have any noticable long term effects from any meditation yet and ive been trying out stuff for a year and a half. I will keep trying though.

i am experiencing a lot of emptiness lately. feeling of lack. ive had this for a long time and i asked on this forum how do i deal with this, also watched leo's addictions video. the solution i got is to observe the emptiness. ive been observing observing observing... its still bothering me. i cant seem to be able to just let it be. is it possible that the advice to observe it is wrong and that the real solution to it is that i truly lack something and the thing i lack is love? i lack emotions overall, and just observing stuff doesnt help because i start having less and less emotions when i observe. the lack of emotions comes about as emptiness and slight depression i think, i see very little meaning in life but since i just observe im sort of ok with it, nowhere near suicidal or anything like that. people (and leo) say that in order to develop love you need to create it. i can love my parents (or be grateful, i cant tell the difference), but only when i think of stuff they have done to me, i can relatively easy make myself cry slightly thinking about that, but besides that i cant create love. if someone hasnt done something for me how can i love them? on what basis? the love just doesnt happen. i also lack initiative, i dont care about anything and i see that in social situations i have no engagement, i just dont care about how things turn up to be. -oh, we go to that place? -cool, -oh, nevermind? we go to the other place? -great. -oh, those people got in a fight? thats cool i guess -oh, youre crying? -cool. i just dont give a shit about anything. am i doing something wrong? i dont feel alive. what should i do?

i guess what troubles me isnt the emptiness itself, but the desire i cant control to want some emotions or pleasure. or rather, that nothing satisfies me.

thank you I will look into it. although i feel like it may be something subconscious or physiological, not necessarily thoughts, because i also crave food, crave stimulation and become restless and bored with everything when i have that emptiness feeling.

oh that actually helped me a bit. I do get glimpses of the fact that the emptiness of the present is liberating, but most of the time I get back into logic and reason and get sucked into the story that includes the future and the past. (which to my understanding is the right thing to do)

i guess only sometimes im aware of it, sometimes im fine

so there are 2 types of emptiness? i thought the less deep emptiness is caused by the deeper emptiness. so is there a solution to the less deep sense of emptiness?

Approval is when people act in ways (including talking) which make you think they think you're good. Why does it make people feel good? does it reinforce their beliefs? does it divert them from negative beliefs? Why do people seek it so much?

I usually wake up at 7am go to sleep at 11pm. Most of the day im studying. The time I stop studying is at 8pm, then I have my free time, in which I relax. I usually watch tv shows, watch youtube videos or browse the internet. Though youtube and browsing the internet depends if there's anything in my recommended or if i stumble upon something. Mostly I watch TV shows, that's my default you could say. I start finding TV shows a little boring and unfulfilling, so im trying to find something else to do. I would read self help books but im afraid its too intellectually stimulating before bed, and it doesnt relax, i need to use my brain for it and i use it all day so its not a thing i should do in the evening. I would start reading regular story books, but isnt it like watching TV? im also mediocre at reading so it will be hard and I get bored easily, the meaning of sentences starts to make no sense and I start hating it. I dont know though, I havent tried it since a couple of years ago. I also shouldnt just meditate because im not gonna meditate 3 hours. Also its not relaxing, it requires a lot of mental energy to keep focusing on the moment because the mind runs away. What do you do in the evening and before bed to relax? Should I even allocate that much time to relaxing? or should I be working all day and stop an hour before bed?

I noticed this in my past self, and it a lot of others. people get motivated to pursue something to become someone great, to be remembered, to be rich, the best. for example i wanted to be an inventor with a billion dollar company because then i would be great and remembered. either that or i would discover something no one else discovered in physics and become someone great like einstein. these motivations faded as i developed more self awareness, but now nothing motivates me. im like stuck in the middle where im conscious enough to not indulge in ego aggrandizement but not conscious enough to see the beauty of the world and be motivated to help others.

i dont talk to people much so it kinda got there by itself I also meditate and work out.

even though i said tv started to bored me, still, i feel like life without tv is empty, like theres no point to it.

I think a certain type of social anxiety comes down to this: I care about how other people might perceive me (or what people think about me), therefore I have to present myself in the best possible way. many times when I talked to strangers I felt anxious. that anxiety i thought was due to me trying (subconsciously) to act natural, in order for them to like me, because then maybe they could be my friends, or something like that. I stopped trying to act natural sometimes, but still I felt uneasy. even with my close friends I felt often uneasy I noticed. Then I remembered that growing up, I had difficulties with friends. I had very few friends during elementary school, even fewer friends when I was in middle school, and no friends that I hung around with after school during high school. I watched tv shows and played video games most of the time alone. I had a few friends in school, but we rarely did anything together outside of school. I think in those middle school years when I started to have my friends slowly not want to hang out with me I developed my social anxiety (if you want to call it that). I tried to reach out to them and most of the time they declined and when we were actually playing together I remember now that I tried very hard to not annoy them, so they will want to play with me more. That didnt work and we stopped playing together eventually, so I found content in video games and tv shows alone. However, the fear of people not wanting to hang out with me didnt disappear, and to this day I find myself being uncomfortable around people outside my family. Whenever im with people, i feel uneasy because somewhere in the back of my mind I believe that any moment they will stop being interested in being with me. Or in case of strangers, won't start to be interested in being with me. That's why I try to be interesting hence the anxiety. I guess you could go even deeper and say that those experiences in my younger years made me believe that I am not interesting, that I am not good enough. I remember having interactions when it seemed like people really liked me, but still I believed that they're just faking to be nice, and when we went by each other again some time later and didnt start a conversation I had a feeling that my belief that they didnt like me was reinforced, because hey! they dont kiss my ass each time i walk by them, im not the most important person in their lives! I guess a lot of problems are connected to self esteem, huh. p.s. should I make posts like this or should I keep them in my commonplace book for myself? let me know if this post helped anyone

it will take decades doing that self inquiry bullshit to stop believing im that self image. i doubt i can even do it

wont work for me, because what my fear is not how they see me, but what will I get out of them using that image, will they want to hang out with me, etc. the problem in my case is with a different belief. maybe what you say does have a part in it.