Combating Depression and Dissastifaction During Transition

Q&A: I’ve made all these life changes, but am still in transition. I’m dissatisfied and I don’t know what to do sometimes. What do I do when I can’t think of any reason to get off the couch?

Master Culadasa talks about accepting things the way they are, not how we want them to be. Emphasis on how we grasp to things that we think will make us happy when they won’t necessarily do that.

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Student: And still have this big transition where why wanted to change things in my life. So I left know job. That's been city, everything, and I'm still floating about. And part of me wants to just anchor myself in all the snakes again. I also don't want, it was causing a lot of emotion. Yes.

So about again, wining identity, it's whining, all sorts of public identities. Yeah.

Culadasa: But public identities, like

Student: I want to be at my right after my child. Okay. Yeah. But satisfying.

Culadasa: This defending that

to do that. Everybody has to deal with it and they react or react to in different ways. It's and it's part of the idea. If out of the south, I, there, there is this me and what is my life about to ammo? What am I going to do type that's really what you're talking about.

It has that dimension to, how am I going to, how am I going to pay my bills? And of course there's a whole idea of what level of bills do you you aspire to.

That's it, man. There's some people who are now to the last couple of million and they're absolutely miserable.

And then there's others who only had a quarter, but that they're, they feel like they're still in pretty good shape, but it's what are these your ideas? Are they not an idea of who? Who am I? What kind of a person am I. That's w that's a story. So what you're telling me is you're going around telling yourself the story of who you are and writing the story of who you are spending a lot of time writing the story of who you think you should be.

Perhaps finding out that there's several different versions and some of them are totally incompatible with each other. I should be a happy wife. No, I should be a free person who lives her life, the way she wants it. And all kinds of other conflicts. I should be a writer now I should have food.

A lot of conflicts there. All right. So these are all thoughts and ideas. And if you, to the degree that you let yourself believe in it they'll make clear. They can make you pretty miserable, right? Creates a lot of conflict. Now, what you really are is.

You are consciousness experiencing what your consciousness is experiencing. And this moment, which includes being here rather than being somewhere else, being in the VAT body and rather than being in some other body. Your mind, rather than some other lie with its set of wants and wishes and views and ideas rather than some other set of wants and wishes and views and ideas.

But what you all are, is the experience of that in the moment, the content of that experience, the content of that experience is. The particular set of ideas and inclinations in your mind, the body with this particular state of being at the moment and the location and the circumstances, that's all content of momentary experience and as possibly changing, is it not constantly changing?

What is constant. And all of that is that there is a reality, and that's the reality of the present moment that this whole movie is playing itself out again.

And to the degree that there are things that you would like to be different in that the starting point is to accept what it is and the present. Yeah, not let emotional reactions to that. Get in the way of you being able to hat to St. Can speak and do things in ways that create a more positive experience and future.

But nothing seems appealing and you can't get off the couch. Nothing seems to feeling and you can't get off the couch.

What does that feel like? Okay. I should do some. Nothing seems appealing. Yeah. But I should do something. Yeah no, I don't want that. I need to get off the couch. I don't want to get off what's the purpose in doing so in those moments, out of the totality of what makes you up, you've got.

You've got two or three things doing a little dance for each other, and they've totally so on the stage and they're not letting anything else happen while they do this dance with each other.

What amp enables these things to do that? Any idea?

Yeah, you have. So Y you empower these different call them voices in your mind, the different dancers and the drama is unfolding. And the moment you empower them by identifying with them. This comes from that. All of these. I, hi, I shouldn't. I knew this I, that,

what would the one way there's more than one way roads. You'd one way you could think of put it into the melodrama. That's all based on I should. I shouldn't. I want, I don't want. I started that to just get away without thinking 30 something. As a matter of knowing that is a very good in that kind of paralyzed, depressed state, the best thing to do is no matter what you did, doesn't matter what you do.

Don't bother deciding what to do. Anything you do is better than doing nothing. So that's true, but there's something even more powerful than. And that's to get out of the, I, if you're going to do something, how about do something for somebody else, do something for somebody else? The

it's like a log jam, you just can't get anywhere. Cause there's all these different. Views and ideas that are associated with the idea of outsell. And, by the time you spent the first 10 minutes, not able to get off the couch, let alone, repeated the experience over and over again.

It should be obvious if you think about it, if there's too many as yet unresolved and an irreconcilable points of view going on in your mind is not one day it's many different things and got many different minds. We've got many different personalities as a matter of fact, in. With different views and aspirations and hopes and everything else, and they're in conflict with each other.

And if there was one sec, that was completely dominant, you wouldn't be in conflict. So if you recognize that, then the solution is

move away from being preoccupied with. Have you have you tried that or, experienced that maybe you'd been reflect without intentionally, have you reflected where you've been able to get away from your problems somewhat when somehow your attention went towards someone or something else other than yourself?

I'm thinking that I haven't made myself clear because I would expect you to say yeah, of course it happens to me all the time. But I'm probably thinking every time. Yeah. It's really, it's part of our nature as human beings, that if something comes along where we can become, we can do something for someone else.

We can care about some, somebody else we can become involved with somebody else's problems or achieving helping somebody else to achieve their satisfied. Relieving somebody else's suffering or helping somebody else to find happiness, all that stuff about our own needs and desires and suffering and happiness.

Just at least for the time being becomes a whole lot less relevant. It gets a gift. It gives you a way to get up. Yeah, it's energizing. It's like a lot of volunteer work with refugees and I felt really happy. And like afterwards, yeah, there you go. So that's what I was talking about. Yeah. The total opposite of the feeling that spark a good start is to just try to turn yourself, turn outward.

To, to others, this, to lead, relieve yourself of this internal conflict of these different aspects of your, all of mine that are trying to eat, trying to dominate the other and leaving you. Locked up and not sure where to go. It's been a problem with me my whole life, but nothing ever dominates all these conflicting voices.

And I can't, it seems like everyone else. I know something new. Yeah.

Yes. I know what you mean. I do.

If you, now, if you can open yourself up to letting the universe show you a direction

and trust that

that should be. To do that. You need to be out in the world, interacting with people. And the best way to be doing that is volunteer. We're helping people service, being a friend, listening to somebody else's problems, things like that. Find yourself out and let the universal. Points and ways to you let the universe see what you resonate with inside as to what circumstances present to you.

But except the way that you are right now, just accept don't judge it. Don't say I shouldn't be this way. What's wrong with me? Don't let those kinds of thoughts.

Making problems for you. You're perfect. The way you are. You're perfect with all these conflicts. Yep. Perfect. Not knowing which way to go. That's exactly where you should be right now for the simple reason that's where you are. And if after you are, you might as well accept it. That's where you are.

And except that you are there. But then you can go ahead and do the things to help you move yourself in that direction.

So you really try, applying what we were talking about. You will, you have amongst these things ideas of, I should be this. I want to be sorry. I'm going to try doing this and you have expectation of certain outcomes. The try, practicing what we were talking about it of, okay, I'm going to do it, but I'm going to try not to be attached to the outcome, okay. I feel this way right now, but I'm not going to, I'm going to accept the way I feel. I'm not going to resist that. I'm not, how are you going to, even if you feel yourself desperately wanting to be something. Except that's where I am right now. That's what I meant desperately wanting something different.

Now, just try to get to that place of being with the reality that years, stop resisting that and see where you see where it can take you from there. But there's nothing. With anything, you don't need to be anything in your life other than what you are. We don't need to be famous. You don't need to be a dancer or a writer or a politician or rich.

You don't need to have kids. You don't need, none of it really matters. It's all stories. And the idea that one story is better than another. Is just total nonsense. Th they're not any better. If you could be a wealthy, famous writer with lots of kids and be absolutely totally miserable, there's nothing about any one of these stories that makes it for the slightest bit better than anything else, because that's all it is it's just.

It's empty of being anything, but what your minds makes it into game.

And if it if you can go up nine different ways and that's fine.

You could die tomorrow. That's all right. I know. Okay. So probably doesn't seem that way.

There is, or there is a way of saying things Same things as they really are, which is that's just the way they really are and seeing yourself as what it really is, which is just one of those things that make up things the way we really are and discovering that it's all hazardly. And so Zahn about them instead of complaining about the choreography, you just join in the dance, and if you're part of the script, as you're doing some things that, make you the

Not the most glorious looking person on the stage. So part of it is you're a part of a dance series where we just resist dancers. And when you take the mask off and when you take the costumes that's all, any of this stuff is just masks and costumes.

When you accept what is in the present moment That allows you to discover the reality of why you are, who you are, what everything else is out

as wonderful.

Yes.

Go for it.

Yeah, no. Listen to those inner critics tell you it should be different.


Added at Sept. 26, 2020
Original file name transition26mar09.mp3

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