Marcus's Introduction

[Marcus]

Hello,

I don't write much, so I apologize if this is scattered/long-winded. I much prefer to lurk. My name is Marcus. I'm 23 and I've had a lot of strange experiences in my life that lead me to this forum and the GWV. I had a very troubled childhood, diagnosed with PTSD at age 12 and lived in various foster and group homes for almost a decade. Lots of mental illness in my family, on both sides: multiple schizophrenics, bipolar disorder, lots of depression, substance abuse. I grew up going to Catholic schools and the dogma is deep in my psyche. Part of why I want to take this journey is so that I can finally face some of these things which have been forced on me. Even with all the contradictions in the book and the hypocrisy and abuses of the establishment, the emotional branding remains.

I've had some experiences which I've only told to a few people. Audio and visual hallucinations while under the influence of cannabis..very paranoid. I wouldn't mind sharing these stories in the future if there's any interest. For some time I sought out this experience because I felt some sense of courage in facing the fears. However, I found myself losing any critical faculties and I would be overcome with fear, unable to find my way out. I'm hoping that by pursuing this journey with more right action/thoughts, etc that I will remain clearheaded while facing my demons and thus be able to defeat them.

Right now I'm living with my family. Every day I think I need to find an alternative. There is rarely quiet. There is little to no respect for silence or one another. All of this is reinforced by my mother. She is incredibly selfish and emotionally abusive. On one of my weed trips I became convinced that she was in fact a devil worshiper and I shared this "revelation" with her. She informed me that my father had said the same thing to her many times (they separated when I was young and I didn't see much of him). She lacks any discipline and is in fact antagonistic towards expressions of discipline. This behavior she encourages among her children and it is therefore not uncommon for there to be yelling/screaming as late as 1am, often with her as the offender. In church on Sundays she portrays the hard working/Christ-focused single mother, a display which is at times laughable and at other times terrifying. One memory that sticks out was receiving a sermon about unconditionally loving our children, not calling them names, being there to listen to them without judging, etc. Immediately upon leaving church and the congregation, she began criticizing my 9 year old brother for being rude, ungrateful, disobedient, etc. She has spat on her children, said she wished they were never born, and then woken up, gone to church and been all smiles. She routinely calls me bipolar, although I was never diagnosed with bipolar and tells me take to my meds (I was taking ADHD meds for a few months). Truth doesn't matter to her.

As far as education goes, I skipped 1st and 12th grade and finished school at 16. I attended community college briefly but lacked the discipline to continue. Sometimes the thought comes to me that I could have a PhD by now, which can be painful but of course I'm learning to embrace that I am not my thoughts, or my "achievements" for that matter. A couple years ago I learned software engineering at a coding bootcamp - 1000 hours of study condensed into 3 months - but wasn't sufficiently motivated to find work. Failure to do that is what brought me back "home". Now it's even harder to motivate myself to find work. I'm 23.  No college degree. No work experience. I know I can do the work. At the coding school I received ample praise for my abilities. I was among the top few students in the first half of the program..unfortunately during the second half I faced pretty bad financial difficulty. My lights got cut off at home and I had no food left in the fridge.. This affected my performance and i wasn't able to build a strong enough portfolio to be competitive, especially given my lack of formal credentials. I can still code and I'm still one solid project away from having a hire-able resume, but at this point I just want to get away from society. The thought of being a highly paid slave is soul-crushing, but the reality of living with my mother means it's difficult to maintain the discipline required to attain the fruits of the path. The more I write about this the more apparent it becomes that I should must go. But it seems my only alternative is homelessness. I don't have a car or even a bike.

I'm in school now and receiving financial aid, so soon I will get around $3k. I have some debts I'd like to pay off but I'm considering letting them reach the seven year mark to debt forgiveness as they're already almost halfway there. Right now I'm considering giving the coding another push, getting a job and saving up for some time for a home somewhere affordable, all while meditating for as many hours a day as possible. I am sick of these lesser emotions - fear, doubt, jealousy... I even wonder how a worldly life would be if I could get rid of these. Some sort of half-enlightened life..idk. It is tempting.

Anyway, I am very new to this all. I've meditated before when I was studying. I found short meditations of about 10 minutes every hour or so would help me to focus through the next hour. The longest I had previously meditated was about 25 minutes. After reading through GWV materials, I did a lying down meditation for 1hr 22 mins 3 days ago. I must admit it took about 1 hour for my mind to settle. This is the hardest part for me. I keep losing concentration on my breath. I get pulled along by a thought and don't notice it. I tell myself "I will concentrate on my breath" and before long I'm thinking of something else entirely. I've since done 2 35 minute meditations and the thinking persisted the entire time on both occasions. At the end of them, I admit I gave up with the thought that I might try again later. What should I do in these situations? Power through and keep bringing attention back to the breath? I remember reading Eckhart Tolle's 'The Power of Now' where he mentioned concentrating on the space between thoughts. I admit i like the feeling of this focusing on the space. Is it sufficient to use this space as an object? Is it an object?

Also, I am new to Buddhism and have been looking into the Pali cannon on the site. Is there a page on the site anywhere with some foundational chapters? I'm poking in at odd places and there is a lot of terminology that I don't understand. I've been using Google/wiki as well as the dictionary on the GWV page. It's not that I don't know what the words mean, it's more I don't understand the terms/idioms used.

Lastly, on sitting still. I have upper back/neck pain from long sitting at my computer and looking down at my phone - all this with bad posture. When sitting to meditate various pains surface and a stiffness in my upper back intensifies (this stiffness is with me throughout the day unfortunately). I've been looking at some yoga books to download, but I am open to suggestions.

Loud mind, loud body, loud environment. I'm hopeful that it will work, given time and correct work.

Thanks for your time.

[Jhanananda]

Hello,

I don't write much, so I apologize if this is scattered/long-winded. I much prefer to lurk. My name is Marcus. I'm 23 and I've had a lot of strange experiences in my life that lead me to this forum and the GWV. I had a very troubled childhood, diagnosed with PTSD at age 12 and lived in various foster and group homes for almost a decade. Lots of mental illness in my family, on both sides: multiple schizophrenics, bipolar disorder, lots of depression, substance abuse. I grew up going to Catholic schools and the dogma is deep in my psyche. Part of why I want to take this journey is so that I can finally face some of these things which have been forced on me. Even with all the contradictions in the book and the hypocrisy and abuses of the establishment, the emotional branding remains.

Welcome to this forum, Marcus.  I is good to see you post here.  I am sorry that you had a troubled childhood, and received the PTSD diagnosis.  I too share that with you.

I've had some experiences which I've only told to a few people. Audio and visual hallucinations while under the influence of cannabis..very paranoid. I wouldn't mind sharing these stories in the future if there's any interest. For some time I sought out this experience because I felt some sense of courage in facing the fears. However, I found myself losing any critical faculties and I would be overcome with fear, unable to find my way out. I'm hoping that by pursuing this journey with more right action/thoughts, etc that I will remain clearheaded while facing my demons and thus be able to defeat them.

We could entertain the idea of discussing altered states of consciousness derived from drugs.  My original goal here was to distance this forum from the drug-induced altered state of consciousness, because it was my concern that bring in drugs here would all too easily marginalize the experiences that we have here in meditation, as they were all caused by the drugs.  Now that we have some distance here from drugs, with a focus upon deep meditation, then we could embrace the drug induced experience of altered states of consciousness to compare and contrast it with the experience of altered states experienced during deep meditation experience.

Right now I'm living with my family. Every day I think I need to find an alternative. There is rarely quiet. There is little to no respect for silence or one another. All of this is reinforced by my mother. She is incredibly selfish and emotionally abusive. On one of my weed trips I became convinced that she was in fact a devil worshiper and I shared this "revelation" with her. She informed me that my father had said the same thing to her many times (they separated when I was young and I didn't see much of him). She lacks any discipline and is in fact antagonistic towards expressions of discipline. This behavior she encourages among her children and it is therefore not uncommon for there to be yelling/screaming as late as 1am, often with her as the offender. In church on Sundays she portrays the hard working/Christ-focused single mother, a display which is at times laughable and at other times terrifying. One memory that sticks out was receiving a sermon about unconditionally loving our children, not calling them names, being there to listen to them without judging, etc. Immediately upon leaving church and the congregation, she began criticizing my 9 year old brother for being rude, ungrateful, disobedient, etc. She has spat on her children, said she wished they were never born, and then woken up, gone to church and been all smiles. She routinely calls me bipolar, although I was never diagnosed with bipolar and tells me take to my meds (I was taking ADHD meds for a few months). Truth doesn't matter to her.

Gee, this sounds like my "mommy dearest," who sang in the church quire every Sunday, after debauching herself every Friday and Saturday night, and abusing her children throughout the week.

As I often say here, the fruitful contemplative life requires discipline, and leading an exemplary life.

As far as education goes, I skipped 1st and 12th grade and finished school at 16. I attended community college briefly but lacked the discipline to continue. Sometimes the thought comes to me that I could have a PhD by now, which can be painful but of course I'm learning to embrace that I am not my thoughts, or my "achievements" for that matter. A couple years ago I learned software engineering at a coding bootcamp - 1000 hours of study condensed into 3 months - but wasn't sufficiently motivated to find work. Failure to do that is what brought me back "home". Now it's even harder to motivate myself to find work. I'm 23.  No college degree. No work experience. I know I can do the work. At the coding school I received ample praise for my abilities. I was among the top few students in the first half of the program..unfortunately during the second half I faced pretty bad financial difficulty. My lights got cut off at home and I had no food left in the fridge.. This affected my performance and i wasn't able to build a strong enough portfolio to be competitive, especially given my lack of formal credentials. I can still code and I'm still one solid project away from having a hire-able resume, but at this point I just want to get away from society. The thought of being a highly paid slave is soul-crushing, but the reality of living with my mother means it's difficult to maintain the discipline required to attain the fruits of the path. The more I write about this the more apparent it becomes that I should must go. But it seems my only alternative is homelessness. I don't have a car or even a bike.

Most of the major mystics were homeless mendicants, possibly for the same reason that you are dealing with.  The dysfunctional life is hard to shrug off, when one is immersed in it.  This is why I have been a homeless mendicant off-and-on since I turned 18.

I'm in school now and receiving financial aid, so soon I will get around $3k. I have some debts I'd like to pay off but I'm considering letting them reach the seven year mark to debt forgiveness as they're already almost halfway there. Right now I'm considering giving the coding another push, getting a job and saving up for some time for a home somewhere affordable, all while meditating for as many hours a day as possible. I am sick of these lesser emotions - fear, doubt, jealousy... I even wonder how a worldly life would be if I could get rid of these. Some sort of half-enlightened life..idk. It is tempting.

School is a path that many people take to financial freedom from the dysfunctional family.  So, I wish you success.  I have lived in one of 3 vans almost continuously for the last 20 years.  I wish that I had done so in my late teens and 20s as a student.  You might want to consider such a lifestyle while you are a student.

Anyway, I am very new to this all. I've meditated before when I was studying. I found short meditations of about 10 minutes every hour or so would help me to focus through the next hour. The longest I had previously meditated was about 25 minutes. After reading through GWV materials, I did a lying down meditation for 1hr 22 mins 3 days ago. I must admit it took about 1 hour for my mind to settle. This is the hardest part for me. I keep losing concentration on my breath. I get pulled along by a thought and don't notice it. I tell myself "I will concentrate on my breath" and before long I'm thinking of something else entirely. I've since done 2 35 minute meditations and the thinking persisted the entire time on both occasions. At the end of them, I admit I gave up with the thought that I might try again later. What should I do in these situations? Power through and keep bringing attention back to the breath? I remember reading Eckhart Tolle's 'The Power of Now' where he mentioned concentrating on the space between thoughts. I admit i like the feeling of this focusing on the space. Is it sufficient to use this space as an object? Is it an object?

I basically did this.  I just sat in meditation 3 times a day, every day for decades.  With practice, and discipline one can become good at anything. So, why not meditation?

Also, I am new to Buddhism and have been looking into the Pali cannon on the site. Is there a page on the site anywhere with some foundational chapters? I'm poking in at odd places and there is a lot of terminology that I don't understand. I've been using Google/wiki as well as the dictionary on the GWV page. It's not that I don't know what the words mean, it's more I don't understand the terms/idioms used.

Check this link out, and don not worry about the language, because with use it will become second nature.

Lastly, on sitting still. I have upper back/neck pain from long sitting at my computer and looking down at my phone - all this with bad posture. When sitting to meditate various pains surface and a stiffness in my upper back intensifies (this stiffness is with me throughout the day unfortunately). I've been looking at some yoga books to download, but I am open to suggestions.

Loud mind, loud body, loud environment. I'm hopeful that it will work, given time and correct work.

Thanks for your time.

I practiced hatha yoga every day for a few decades.  I did so, because I found it useful for dealing with joint pain.  So, perhaps you will find it useful as well.

I enjoyed reading what you had to say, and look forward to reading more from you.  Welcome to this forum.

[Alexander]

Hi Marcus and welcome. You may want to do some reading on Jungian psychology (confronting the "shadow" self) or on the Greek word "metanoia" - I feel they are both describing the same process. I feel that most people repress / hide from these mental health questions, but that they are an innate part of the human psyche / experience. We are just all so disingenuous. We are also living in a very dysfunctional time - emotionally, sexually, and economically, which compounds the problems. Jung believed that by being open and honest about ourselves, by confronting the things that horrify us, and by digging into the unconscious, it was possible to integrate those horrific parts of ourselves into a new "whole," and in the process not only come to peace but also unlock our ultimate potential. :)

On the PTSD question, I wanted to share this post I wrote a while ago, as I thought it might help. :)

Speaking from someone with experience with traumatic stress (now - knock on wood - recovered), it takes years of work. The difference between PTSD and other mental health issues is it isn’t really a mental illness (if that makes sense). It isn’t an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. It’s the constant, repetitive memory of the evil experienced juxtaposed with your normal understanding of yourself.

After years of reflection / introversion (trying to use that approach to overcome it) I can say that that approach did not work and only affirmed the memories. Of course, that would be the natural approach to resolve PTSD.

Ultimately, I became so exhausted of it I just started categorizing every trauma related thought that arose internally and just casting them out / abolishing them / killing them. The rage, hate, negative self image, flat affect, etc have to go along with them. I spent years dealing with anger and ultimately accepting that my rage / resentment toward others due to the PTSD was completely legitimate (which it was). But, at the same time I say to myself, I refuse to become a hateful, negative person due to this evil I experienced. So, I accept the anger is legitimate, but then I cast it out / let it go.

One word of advice I would say is just try to be tolerant with yourself, patient with yourself, and develop a healthy self-love. I did not tell anyone about my PTSD issues and (unfortunately) the effects it has on relationships leads to more issues. In total it is a long process but I can testify one can return to health!