Am I deluded?

I've been doing a lot of research on the topics of spirituality and metaphysics. For three years now I've been looking for answers to my questions about the infinite mystery of things. It all used to excite me, but...

The more one researches, the more obscure the path comes. With every answer comes several more questions it seems. Even with all the information available I feel like I've just been reading the same material over and over again. After so much experimentation with my personality and psyche I feel I've changed in a strangely unpleasant way. I can hardly feel anything. All my searching has lead me to many places intellectually but nothing has really made an impact on my life. A familiar old sense of something greater and more true always taunts me.

I feel like what I'm looking for is deceptively simple, and this is what I've based my search around. If a philosophy of life is not extremely simple and extremely effective in bringing inner acceptance and peace it simply wont cut it. I don't even feel like I'm asking for too much, like what I'm seeking is really out there. Meditation, Reiki, lucid dreaming, all of these sorts of things just make me ask more and more questions.

Please offer some words of advice, I really need guidance from strangers right about now.

What is the secret hidden behind the surface of these lifestyles/philosophies? Or am I just kidding myself? Do you at least know what I mean?

Peace, Shepp.

P.S. Sorry if you got confused, I am aswell.

P.P.S. If you post, be ready for a relentless barrage of questions..

it can not be known with the intellectual mind. what you are looking for is in you,when the yearning is intense enough you can become it

reply to post by biggmoneyme


I know it must be within me. But there must be a way to see it partially intellectually, so one can actually know what one is experiencing. I believe nothing happens in this world without a cause. Could there something "wrong" with my core assumptions about the nature of things?

I went through this a number of years ago, the old "searching for the meaning of your existance" thing that most people go through at some stage in their lives. I gave up when I started coming to the conclusion that there is no "ultimate purpose". You live, you breed, you die and the Earth keeps rotating completely ignorant of your existance and departure from the mortal coil.

I think the key to a happy life is to simply be content with what you have (easier said than done). Live in the moment, enjoy all of lifes adventures and don't linger on the should have/could have/would have's. The harder you look for the ultimate answer or your true purpose, the more it's going to elude you and the more confused & unhappy you're going to be.

reply to post by LordGoofus


I know there's no fixed "purpose" for life, what really is life anyways, right?

Aren't you still seeking answers to this day, though? That, and beyond, is where I'm heading.

Lord Goofus, I'm sorry but I couldn't disagree more.

I learned a LOT about the meaning of life and our place in the cosmos by reading Near Death Experiences (NDE's). I recommend these for anyone searching for truth.

Here's the site with the most information: Near Death Experience Research Foundation

reply to post by Shepp


Know what ya mean...you must take the great leap into the spiritual abyss. Otherwise, this will remain simply an intellectual exercise for the ego, IMHO. Nothing wrong with that, though, if that is what one desires.

After a point, there is no going back to the old way. One can take a break but eventually something will trigger your desire and you'll be back in that rabbit hole all over again.

Take care

As humans make larger and more powerful telescopes, the universe will progressively become bigger from our perspective.

The more you search for some great truth in your mind, the more you read, the more people you talk to, the more the truth will keep its distance. This is satori, a quick flash of enlightenment, and how elusive it is to those who yearn for it. When one grasps at smoke, the smoke goes away. When one tries to get a grip of water, the more it leaks through their fingers.

The greatest wisdom one can realize is that this is all just as it is. When you stop running toward it, then it will come to you.

reply to post by alliswell


Even when letting go of all inhibitions and desires just puts me to sleep or compels me to do a stupid dance and make stupid noises?

HAHA, knowing this world... Maybe that's it. Thank you.

You will find many different responses to such a question.

Through some eyes, it would appear that it is the act of life itself that is the purpose. "Being," not as a noun but as a verb, as they would say.

So, the same thing could be looked at as its not what you do, but how you do it.

Nothing changes, except for the perspective. Its all there, here. This is it. Perhaps the very idea that this elusive truth is not present is only in your mind. The very notion that it is not present sets ones own perspective up to see it "out there," something which is not Here.

You will always have questions. That is part of the beauty of being limited constructs, at least as we currently know it.

reply to post by ManjushriPrajna

Is there really nothing I can "do" at all?

reply to post by Shepp


You can try as long as you want to. God bless you if that's what you desire. But there are a lot of people in this world who are running in the proverbial running wheel, looking for truth, happiness, love, other things like this. But the harder you try, the more it will escape you.

You could go to a guru, but he will just make you realize that yourself eventually. You could read a book, but you'll probably end up having to read other books afterwards to supplement what the first book has given you. You could meditate until you're blue in the face, but you'll have to do some more meditation.

In other words, the answer is simple: Don't try to do, just do.

reply to post by Shepp


Read this...

Who am i...

It might help...

reply to post by Shepp


You need too understand what yoru looking for... and what you SHOULD be looking for.. before you can come to a non-deluded answer.

What you want often taints what you see.

reply to post by Shepp


I feel the meaning of our lives are individual to the person asking. What those of us who do not know our purpose are always seeking is that purpose that has been hidden from us. The things you mention and so much more are ultimately ways we attempt to rediscover why we are here and who we are.

But there are many reasons why we are here, and those many reasons potentially different for every person, though some of the more direct reasons will be similar. IMO most people are embroiled in religion come back time and time again after dying to meet their deity, only to have that deity tell them to go back and do it again. Others are addicted to being human, as bizarre as that might sound to some of us Others are committed to some cause, to change something, to fulfill something that they did not in a prior incarnation, etc. The reasons are going to be very varied.

While the surface reasons for why we are here physically will differ widely, I think ultimately the highest of reasons to "exist" as an eternal and undying spirit, is to experience joy in the infinite ways that it can be experienced, and in that joy, creating more of the creation that we are both the created and the creators of.

How so many of us have gotten stuck in this mire here, is up for debate. Perhaps after aeons of heaven, some choose to do a stint in a place like here to refresh themselves on just how good they have it elsewhere, which makes that elsewhere all that much better.

Id recommend rediscovering your past lives, which may narrow your search for meaning some. At least you will know what youve tried in the past, and might be able to find a theme, a pattern, or even a distinct reason for why you are here. You say you can lucid dream; thats a good way to find out what your past lives might have been, depending on how much control you have when you are LDing, as while dreaming, you have mostly full access to your "subconscious", where all your memories reside in perfect form. Perhaps that will help you, at least, to figure out where to go/look next.

Also if you can LD, you should try to get into astral projecting, or simply training yourself to leave your body while your body still remains alive; conscious OBE. Its much easier to access information in your subconscious while not integrated into a physical form. The physical limits our perceptions and memories. Out of body, itll be much easier to remember/discover the answers to your questions.

Whether youll be able to remember once back in physical form, is another matter. It certainly can be maddeningly frustrating knowing you DID know, and have now forgotten, whether through fault of your own, or by design. Some things, if we knew, would ruin the experience here, and we are unable to know them while incarnated, except for vague fragments and memories of greater knowing.

Thats the best advice I can give. Try and unveil some past lives (not only on earth), and try and establish a pattern or theme. To know where youre going, its very beneficial to know where you have been. You might even find some of the answers you seek. At a minimum, youll know better who and what you are, and youll be closer then to your goal, than you are now.

A Buddhist Master once told me...

"You cannot fill a cup which is already full"

I'd never heard the term before.

3 years later I found the answer.

Don't fill the cup.

reply to post by Shepp


Just wait patiently....
It will come to you when you need to know.......
and then you'll have more questions.

reply to post by Shepp


BTW, be very leery of those who TELL you what "the meaning" is. Perhaps it is THEIR meaning, but only you can tell us what YOUR meaning is.

The truth of you, lies within you, and no one else is within you but you.

reply to post by Shepp


What are you looking for?

It seems like you are looking for yourself in this knowledge. But, really, you are just learning about other people's experiences through research. You can never know another person's experience.

Life is the experience.

You are spending so much time "looking", and not enough time seeing.

Close your eyes, open your eyes, go outside, look at the sky.

You are the sky.

Be.

reply to post by Shepp


" While living be a dead man, be thoroughly dead. And all will be well" To many questions will bring to few answers. Only ask the questions to which you truly desire an answer.