Emotion Forums

You seem to be at a point where every direction appears meaningless. This is a really valuable place to be. I spent years seeing everything become increasingly meaningless. But it wasn't really everything, I was limited to the possibilities I was aware of given everything I had experienced up until that point in my life.

Our culture advertises to us all the directions that are supposed to be exciting. We see smiling faces on people enjoying all the things that are supposed to satisfy us. Inevitably it all becomes increasingly meaningless. We seem to require something more or better or different to continue feeling the same amount of enjoyment. No one can enjoy watching the same movie again and again, no matter how good the movie is. We are left perpetually scrambling for more and more just to maintain the same amount of enjoyment. We become hamsters on a wheel that have to run faster and faster just to stay still.

When we can see that this isn't working out as well as we'd once hoped, we are in a very powerful place. We get to wonder why all those directions faded out and what do we do when nothing seems to mean anything anymore. From this place the most helpful thing I have experienced is honesty. I learned to admit to myself over and over that I am not as satisfied as I'd like to be and I don't know why. This opened my mind to seeing something I hadn't seen before.

Being honest as we can with ourselves brings relief. Instead of painting a positive or negative picture, we're simply saying here I am, at this point, and I don't know where to go from here in order to feel the way I'd like to feel. With each attempt to be honest with myself, the relentless push to achieve a vaguely defined path to contentment that never worked became replaced by clarity. Here I am. Here's what I know. Here's what I don't know.

In time I learn to recognize the urgency and not try to satisfy it. I begin to see any desire that comes from a place of urgency can never be satisfied for long and always needs more the next time. I learned to let the urgency burn itself out. As urgency fades, I slowly become more aware of what is most important to me. The urgency keeps a lot of stuff hidden. It is like having someone yelling "Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!" in your ear 24 hours a day.

A helpful step for me was to meditate, which really was pausing and just feeling the urgency pull on me and watching it pull and pull and pull. In time the pull fades because I'm not responding to it.

When I feel highly engaged in what I am doing, I can temporarily feel immersed in some activity or entertainment. Mental stimulation is my favorite drug. It comes with a sense of significance as richly meaningful events unfold all around me. But I can't stay mentally stimulated forever, and when the mental stimulation ends I may experience stimulation withdrawal. I can find myself craving any form of mental stimulation, but like a drug that has worn its use, temporarily I cannot achieve it and in place I will feel intense boredom.

It helps me to see this pattern which has occurred for me more times than I can count. We are taught to seek interesting things, to captivate our attention. And when our attention is fully captivated and we are completely mesmerized by something, we are taught to value this as the way life ought to be. But when the excitement is gone, right underneath it there is often a sense of urgency and compulsiveness. It is the need to stay continuously enchanted and the fear of disenchantment.

The disenchantment phenomenon tells me that I do not care at a deeper level about what I am experiencing on the surface. If I could force myself to care, I would. But this is outside my jurisdiction. What matters to me isn't really up to me to choose, but it is my responsibility to find it. No one can ever tell another person what deeply matters to another. We can't even tell ourselves what deeply matters to us. But we can find it. We are given a clue when something that we want to enjoy becomes meaningless. This can be depressing when we feel it is futile to find something we actually care about, but when we do find what we deeply care about we then have the possibility of aligning the surface of our lives with the depth of who we are.

We then experience the same sense of being highly engaged, but this sense reaches even deeper. It is even more full. Now we are mentally engaged in a direction that has deeper meaning to us and it feels much more enjoyable and delightful as we are able to bring more of ourselves into whichever direction we choose.

Life often feels like an onion to me, and for a while a path may fulfill me, but in time the superficial layer wears off and I am left feeling directionless. I am forced to reach deeper and as I find something that matters to me at a deeper level I can feel engaged again, but even that direction might wear off one day as well. The journey of life leads me to knowing myself at deeper and deeper levels with the result of feeling more deeply fulfilled then I ever thought possible. But I also get to experience the emptiness when my activities don't really reflect my values. I can only fool myself for so long.

It has helped me to let go of what no longer engages me rather than trying to bring it back to life. When I was little I used to enjoy playing with all sorts of toys that are meaningless to me now, and if I were to attempt to keep myself entertained by them, in time it would all become frustratingly meaningless anyway.  This isn't a problem, it's a blessing. I can't stay stuck when something within me wants so much to grow and experience bringing the depth of who I am all the way up to the surface.

This post is a description of how life became meaningful for me.

Growing up I naturally fit into the left brained category. I was skillful with math and computers. I was comfortable with knowing if my answer was right or wrong, and as long as I was getting right answers, I felt satisfied. Other subjects, like English or History, often felt more vague, more open for interpretation. I didn't like that. I just wanted to solve a problem and get a right answer, and I wanted to do this methodically. So I would prefer Physics over Chemistry, because it was much more methodical: Learn a few simple rules and practice applying them in different circumstances.

My jobs were always the same left brained type. I worked with computers and would do desktop support, programming, and systems management. I enjoyed getting different platforms to work together. I worked with Windows, Mac, Unix, Sun, and AS/400, interfacing and supporting many different systems. I did very well. But still I usually disliked going to work every day. It felt mundane and unsatisfying, but I couldn't really imagine any other option. I was well liked, but I always felt like I didn't do enough.

About 13 years ago I went to Florida on vacation and was in the middle of the Indian River on a small boat. The river was very wide and I imagined it to be at least 100 feet deep. In fact it wasn't really a river, it was a bay that was about 4 feet deep separated by an enormous sandbar that stretched for many miles, so large that houses were built on it. Thinking I am in a deep river, I spontaneously decide to dive backwards off the boat. My plan was to just relax and see how deep I can go.

Suddenly I'm hitting the sandy bottom and I am in shock. Time slows down enormously. I still remember the red tinted color and salty taste of the water. I feel certain that my life is about to end. The moment seemed somewhat casual. There were no trumpets, no grand finally, just the thought "So that's it, what did you think of your life?"

I suddenly feel intense anger and frustration. I felt like my whole life was a joke. None of it meant anything at all to me. I was convinced that if I am a good employee one day I won't have to struggle so hard and I will be able to relax and be able to enjoy life more. But that day didn't seem anywhere in sight. I saw that I wasn't really getting any closer to it. I felt tricked by a carrot at the end of a stick. I saw my whole life as an attempt to please everyone around me, and in that moment I saw that no one owes me anything. I was the person I had chosen to be, and that person meant absolutely nothing to me.

Then as suddenly as it started the enormous pressure of being upside down on the sand is gone. I stand up and the first person I see is my wife and I know that I didn't really want to be married, I just didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings and getting married seemed to make everyone happy. The x-rays show I am fine. There is just some vertebrate compression but that takes care of itself.

I go back to work two days later. I can barely turn my head or swallow, but I never would allow myself to take sick days because I never felt sick enough to warrant it. After the accident I start seeing through myself and the false person I pretend to be hoping to impress others. It was the only person I knew how to be, but it felt empty and meaningless now. I felt like Humpty Dumpty, having a broken shell and trying to put it back together, but I am not convinced of who I am anymore. I try harder than ever to become the only person I knew how to be.

For 4 years a sense of emptiness and meaninglessness grows steadily worse. Every day it becomes harder to see anything but the meaninglessness I experienced in the diving accident. Eventually I was divorced and alone and felt like I had nowhere left to turn. Nothing mattered at all. I could no longer convince myself that any of my dreams mattered to me in the least bit. And I gave up running and just decided to let the blackness I had been fighting off with all my strength swallow me whole.

That moment was the most beautiful moment I had ever experienced. Suddenly the blackness is gone and is replaced by a gentle white light that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. I am enmeshed in it and it is enmeshed in me. I wasn't looking for this. I had no idea what had just happened. I thought the blackness was going to swallow me whole, and here I am experiencing a deeper sense of peace than I ever imagined possible.

I realized the depression I had fought was just the dim awareness that none of my dreams would ever really satisfy me. There's no place I could go or thing I could do that would make life deeply meaningful to me. It was all an act, a performance. None of my dreams could possibly reach any deeper than the surface, because the surface was all I knew and all I was attempting to address.

From that moment on life became much less painful. Instead of trying to make my empty and shallow dreams more meaningful, I started asking myself what it is that I do care about. What is most deeply meaningful to me? I didn't have an answer, but the question felt so good. It felt much easier than trying to make myself find hope in things that I didn't even care about that much.

When I try to find depth in superficial things I often end up feeling disappointed, and I'm okay with that. I now have the option of asking myself what it is that really matters to me. Every time I ask myself this question it seems to grow in strength. I am not so much seeking an answer as I am recognizing that at this moment I don't really know, but I do know that something somewhere is deeply meaningful to me, and it has been obscured by all the superficial things I thought I wanted. As I become less convinced in the possibility of superficial things becoming deeply meaningful, I start feeling the sense of deeper meaning drawing steadily closer, as if in some other dimension I can't clearly point at.

A sense of deep satisfaction grows steadily within me. A satisfaction that addresses all the subtle senses that something here or there might be missing. It's very relevant. It addresses everything. It leaves no loose ends. I realize every subtle sense of loss or incompleteness or vagueness or confusion or meaninglessness can be perfectly addressed. Instead of looking away from these things I invite them, knowing that underneath the fog all is well.

The emotions I used to experience all become intelligent messengers. They have a message and until the message has been received they will try over and over in all sorts of ways to get the message through. The moment the message is received they vanish in a moment of peace and relief. I learn to have patience with my emotions and my ability to receive the information they contain. What once appeared to be a world of persistent and threatening enemies becomes a world of devoted friends, incapable of leaving a single message undelivered.

I like the idea of this site being more active too. The topic seems to be a very relevant one. When I was young I experienced life as being an endless sequence of meaningless tasks. I didn't enjoy much of it but I was able to complete my tasks. It wasn't until about 30 years old that I discovered that it is possible for life to be deeply meaningful the whole time. The difference is like night and day. An intense feeling of meaninglessness can become an intense sense of aliveness. The question is less about what shows up and more about what I am really looking for.

I don't see much activity here. Is anyone actually wanting this site to become more active?

All inner conflict expresses itself through the medium of emotions. It is the shallowness of our perception of life that creates the sense of perpetual struggle. Frustration transmutes into joy when it is seen that there is no arrangement of circumstances that has the capacity to offer a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. Joy arises naturally when we no longer waste energy investing in what cannot possibly achieve anything.

While it is possible that health anxiety might literally lead to some sort of illness, the immediate effect of being anxious can be much more intense and uncomfortable than many illnesses. In a sense anxiety is an illness because it prevents a sense of wellbeing. Diseases seem to have degrees of severity, and it is often assumed that the severity of a disease implies how severe it is for each person. In reality some people have life threatening diseases and seem hardly concerned while others may have very minor health inconveniences and can be traumatized to the point of PTSD. It is helpful to recognize that it isn't the illness that defines the intensity of disturbance, but what it means to a person.

There is always good reason for anxiety, even if we are unable to see the logic behind it. For example at some level you may believe that it is only possible to be happy if you are healthy, and to be sick would ruin your chance of enjoying life. Given this belief, you may become necessarily hyper vigilant because sickness is endowed with the power to determine whether or not life can be enjoyed. The solution is not to convince yourself that you will never be sick, because no one can guarantee this. Rather it is possible to see that sickness or health doesn't really have the power to enhance or detract from life all that much. When we realize not so much is at stake, then the anxiety no longer has any reason to remain.

It has often helped me in life to see the rationality behind how I feel rather than assuming emotions are random phenomena like the weather. In seeing that my anxieties and fear always stem from a very logical but often hidden foundation, I may become able to see what my beliefs are and question their validity. As I see that I have arbitrary associations, such as health is required to be happy, often a sense of relief occurs as I realize I that this is not necessarily true. This sense of relief is familiar to all of us at one time or another, when we realize that a grave area of concern is not really as important as we once made it out to be. Whenever I experience anxiety I seek to find the relevant thought that provides some relief, and follow the trail. In order to do this I have to legitimize the anxiety. If I assume it to be a purely medical condition it becomes nearly impossible to find the root cause because I have placed the only addressable cause out of reach, and can only hope for a medical solution which is usually somewhat inconsistent.

When I was little I remember Christmas and my birthday were my favorite times of year. I was very excited about what new toys I would get. In time the things people could give me became less and less fulfilling for me. Eventually special occasions became unsettling for me because I would feel as if something precious was lost. In time I realized that these occasions are often falsely represented as having some special ability to bring joy and peace into our lives. Of course we have the power to choose to live a more joyful life if we want that, but there isn't an occasion that can reliably bring it to us.

Holidays do not disturb me so much anymore, though I see much less value in them now. Each day is an opportunity to connect to life in a way that is more deeply meaningful to me and more fulfilling. As I consistently choose to live a life that is meaningful to me, even if I'm not quite sure how to go about doing that, in time I become aware of what leads me a little closer and what leads me a little further away from my goal.

I also relate to the idea that happiness cannot last, and for me it was because a sense of happiness used to be mostly happenstance that may or may not show up. I couldn't really appreciate it because I knew it wasn't reliable. Eventually I decided that happiness without reliability is worthless to me, because it only reminds me of what I do not have. In choosing to find a way to be reliably happy and peaceful, I realize it is possible if that is what I choose to do. Not all at once, but in making a decision to pursue it I am also acknowledging that it is possible, which is a prerequisite for attaining almost anything in life.

There is no day better than today for choosing that we want to be consistently happy. There is a pathway there. For me as I become more consistently content I am able to consider those parts of life that I used to want to just turn away from because I assumed there was only hopelessness to be found. But with each time I find wholeness in life I become increasingly certain that I can find it in those darker areas of life that seemed unreachable at first. Instead of pulling away and closing my eyes, I become curious and look to see what is going on. This thread about Holidays is a wonderful example of being willing to look at something that perhaps for years conjured a subtle sense of emptiness without really being noticed.

In my experience it seemed to take a lot more effort and willpower to manage while being depressed, and no amount of effort or willpower seemed to have any lasting result. The effect of depression was a greatly reduced sense of available energy for anything. I equate emotions with the mail and they always have a message. Sometimes I go far out of my way to avoid the message because I don't want to hear it. For me the idea that superficial things cannot make me happy was a message I didn't want to hear, but when I finally got the message I saw that there is a far more meaningful and purposeful way of engaging with life. I had to give up on the hope that someday my superficial dreams will come true. Holding onto superficial dreams was depressing. Letting go of what can't work anyway led to a new sense of lightness that I did not know was possible.

This link appears to not be working. My assumption is that it would show the most recent posts. Perhaps it only checks posts based on some condition such as subscribed threads?

This is familiar to me as well. Sometimes I feel the physical sensations of hunger and do not feel compelled to eat. The sense of hunger increases for some time and eventually decreases even though I haven't eaten.

Being hungry often helps me to reconnect with what is most important to me. When I am hungry and I don't want to eat it is usually because I am living a pattern that is becoming increasingly meaningless to me and at some level I am ready to change but I don't know how. The slight discomfort of hunger helps me to keep in mind this willingness to experience a more deeply meaningful life, and a sustained will to connect with life in a more purposeful way eventually results in a new perspective.

Historically speaking the concept of intentional fasting has been found in many cultures all over the world for thousands of years. I believe there is value in dropping familiar patterns as a catalyst in helping us to discover what is most important to us.

My depression that ended about 10 years ago was a growing sense of futility about the future. I dreamed of having lots of money and a perfect relationship, but in practice it took all the energy I had just to stay still and I felt myself slowly running out of motivation. It was increasingly apparent to me that my approach to life was not working well. The bright possibilities I hoped to achieve one day slowly dimmed I was unable to achieve them in practice and became increasingly frustrated at my inability to attain the life I wish I had.

I repeatedly attempted to find new and better ways to achieve my dreams and sometimes had temporary success but in time I would always find myself in the same familiar place of struggling and getting nowhere. A permanent sense of relief occurred when I finally accepted that I am unable to achieve the life I thought I needed in order to be happy. The moment I gave up I accepted where I was, not in a spiritual sense so much as a recognition that exactly where I am now is all I have left. As I allowed myself to be here, I saw that this moment was far more then a chance to get somewhere else. There was something alive about it, something alive about how I feel and what I think and what everything around me means to me. All of it was alive and moving. With this recognition the illusion of being stuck vanished. Life is and always has been living itself fully and dynamically in many ways at all moments, but it can appear to be blocked when it is seen as a means to get somewhere else.

The feeling of emptiness described here is familiar to me. It seems to be most intense after being highly engaged with an activity or connected with a group of people, and after all the excitement is over there is sometimes a temporary sense of loss. It seems to be part of a cycle of engagement/disengagement where I connect with some direction and feel a temporary and specific sense of purpose in it, but eventually the loss of a specific sense of purpose can be uncomfortable.

My initial tendency when I feel the sense of emptiness is to want a specific direction to engage in, but this would lead to an oscillating pattern that became increasingly uncomfortable when I eventually felt no longer compelled to engage in any of the directions that used to excite me. The feeling of emptiness is useful to me now as an indicator that temporarily it is okay to disengage. It feels like breathing out after breathing in. As I learn to go with this energy instead of opposing it, this flow of engaging and disengaging is becoming more natural. The sense of emptiness is becoming less intense and activities that had all lost meaning seem to be gaining there vibrance again as I allow myself to temporarily stop seeking engagement.

Intentionally disengaging can feel painful at first because my mind sometimes craves something tangible that will bring about a specific sense of meaning. It is helpful for me to allow this craving feeling to occur and just let it be what it is until the craving subsides on its own.

A difficulty for me is clearly recognizing what I feel. Today I was speaking to my brother and his lack of response appeared dismissive. I believed I was being ignored or unacknowledged or disrespected in some way. But being ignored isn't an emotion. Disconnected feels closer, but still isn't an emotion.

I'd find it useful if there was a category for the purpose of identifying what is felt and once I feel clear on that I could post in the appropriate category.

I forgot about this site and I appreciate the reminder that it exists.

I click on find new posts to see what is recent and I get no results, but it looks like there has been some recent activity.

I was just browsing a philosophy forum and I really couldn't connect. I realize my purpose is more practical. I don't care about the technicalities so much as achieving practical results. To me motivations and emotions are tangible enough that I put them in the practical category.

I am an idealist. When it comes to all matters of my experience, I like to be able to identify where I am and where I would like to go from here. Emotions are often seen as vague and transient, while logic is seen to be more objective. However, I believe emotions are very logical and are based on solid experience. Whatever we feel it is often not hard to find real experiences that back it up. In choosing a direction, we often get a feeling related to what we expect to happen, and we have lots of evidence to support it. I see motivation and emotions as inseparable. Emotions tell us what we honestly expect as a result when we consider going in any direction. They will either stop us or propel us. If we push against them we will eventually run out of energy, so clearing up conflict is essential to getting anywhere.

I just signed up for this forum and found my activation email sent to the spam folder in gmail with the message:
[b]We've found that lots of messages from server.davesnetwork.ca are spam.[/b]

Perhaps a letter to google would convince them of your legitimacy? Otherwise maybe you could change your email service to one google is not filtering.

The presence of a few active people is often reason enough for people to join. The first thing I do is scan the last post date of all the categories to see if they are recently updated. The reason I decided to stay longer is the name of the site is so perfect that I want it to become what it obviously intends to be.

I'm considering writing some posts myself with the ulterior motive of making the site look a little more active. On the plus side I did find this place by a google search. My interests are emotions and motivation.