I've been so desperately searching for answers and meaning because of who I am. I've always been shy, skinny, self-doubting, depressed, and lazy. I'm intelligent, or am considered intelligent, but I've failed almost a full year of high school (recently got back on track, to my surprise, yet I'm taking college prep classes when I am very capable of honors). Basically, my self-worth is s***. Right now, I'm stuck in an apartment with a girl I don't think I love (not that bad), and with my mother who is going through an emotional crisis with my abusive stepfather (who I don't live with) and my communication with my mother is very strained and depressing (due to her recurring problems) and any communication between my mother and my girlfriend almost immediately results in my mother screaming and my girlfriend crying, as I watch unable to do anything in fear of my mother saying "You're just trying to be the man and defend her!" and then calling my father and telling him to come over and yell at me as well. (almost done I promise....) I'm afraid of working at my job (which I'll be working at in a couple days) because I am excessively self-conscious around people I don't know, and I just want to do a good job but I'm not exactly a top-notch worker no matter how hard I try. I've dropped out of contact with my friends ever since I have moved so now I feel like I have no one to talk to, and that no one can, or wants, to understand or hear anything I have to say. I've effectively attracted a very sad and hopeless life situation. Yeehaw.

I'm doing what I can though. If you're wondering how the hell I got a girlfriend, I visualized it, back in the days when I first learned about it. I believe in God, and I believe that through the law of attraction I can get what I want. Don't ask me why I didn't visualize something other than what is happening, because I don't know why either.

I've written out completely what I want in the next stage of my life, and I intend to manifest what I have written down, as soon as I get it from rough draft form to something that can be clearly understood(?) by the universe. And for those who would say that manifesting for selfish things is STS, well, I disagree. The end line of my script will be "This or something better now manifests for me in fully satisfying and harmonious ways for the highest good of all concerned."

Thanks all of you much for your help. You are reminders that there are friendly people out there and that other people believe in unseen forces as well, and have something to live for that isn't money and sex.

Antaeus wrote:

I just really need to ask. What the hell do I do??... to change?

INITIATION.

I hear you there bro...  I've asked myself this question a few times in the past.  I believe that the idea is to try and be good nomatter what the situation.  Even if the pressure is very strong the one source that always keeps me grounded is to always return *good* or *love* nomatter what the situation brings.

We are bound to make mistakes and loose track every once in a while but most of the time if one is focused on doing good, I guess a good word would be STO, then it's a 100 percent certainty that the seed of good will return good harvest.

Peace, PhiConcept.

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Hi Phi.:)  There are at least two parts or maybe I should refer to them as fronts that exist in my life right now that have me wanting to be that part of Karmen which is known as Nemesis, and actually utilitizing certain tones in order to reduce feelings of anger, and you say, " ... the one source that always keeps me grounded is to always return *good* or *love* no matter what the situation brings."  Actually, I'm just over dramatizing.  You deserve it for the claim you made.  

You did remind me of an old book I have, "SITUATION ETHICS, The New Morality."  By Joseph Fletcher.  There was a situation where dropping a depth charge would destroy a U-boat that is threatening a convoy but the depth charge would also kill at least a hundred sailors that had to abandon one of the ships.  It's not just saving the lives on the remaining convoy but the cargo reaching the destination is also vital to even more lives. 

I was just wanting to ramble on.  Its good to hear from you Phi.

I just really need to ask. What the hell do I do??... to change?

INITIATION.

I hear you there bro...  I've asked myself this question a few times in the past.  I believe that the idea is to try and be good nomatter what the situation.  Even if the pressure is very strong the one source that always keeps me grounded is to always return *good* or *love* nomatter what the situation brings.

We are bound to make mistakes and loose track every once in a while but most of the time if one is focused on doing good, I guess a good word would be STO, then it's a 100 percent certainty that the seed of good will return good harvest.

Peace, PhiConcept.

INITIATION.

Aha! Another trap noted. It is indeed a surprise to find myself comparing myself to imaginary people... I have unnecessarily negative feelings towards certain traits of mine that I didn't think of to just accept and embrace.

God, I used to do that all the time, comparing myself to people.  Still do occasionally.   It's helped that recently I've had people annoyingly comparing themselves to me, which makes me go "AHHH!  stop it, go away."  So irritating.  So now I'll keep that in mind in the event I find myself doing the same with others.     People can't truly know other people and then make the mistake of thinking they do and comparing themselves to this imaginary, idealized version of what they (mistakenly) think they understand about that other person.  Also, it's easy to focus on what supposed achievements others have accomplished, while forgetting our own.  And then we have to keep in mind that we're not seeing their many mistakes and foibles....of which maybe we ourselves haven't made.   We also may not be seeing where they've got it rough, or fully know what their personal problems are.......disadvantages and downfalls that we ourselves don't have.  We all know that saying - "The grass is always greener on the other side."  So comparing ourselves to others is never a good or accurate thing to engage in.  To do so accurately would mean we'd have to fully know them inside and out, and everything they've done in life - which is impossible.   So, best not to compare in the first place!     We have to realize that we're all coming into the game with different advantages and disadvantages, different life goals, different karma, different everything.  So comparisons aren't fair or balanced.

There are two Stuart Wilde books in that guy's Scribd page in the link I provided in the Links forum. Go read'em if you haven't! I'm pretty sure they're pre-morph (and you're right about that, by the way).

Aha! Another trap noted. It is indeed a surprise to find myself comparing myself to imaginary people... I have unnecessarily negative feelings towards certain traits of mine that I didn't think of to just accept and embrace.

Dante, deprogramming, to me is less about reinventing yourself, more about becoming happy with who you already are. Programming implies there are multitudes of statusquo "norms" that everyone must conform to, and that mentality will quickly lead to depression, lack of direction, etc.

Because these are IMPOSSIBLE standards, the powers that be are quite cunning at (collectively) making everyone feel like a total pile of shit. it's a power game, but it has little effect on those who see thru it.

    J

Where I want to go is... or who I want to be, might be a bit unrealistic (to others, specifically my family). But I have to be honest with myself. I do not have a strong desire for a new house or lots of money or anything like that. I think this is because after watching my grandmother and mother work their asses off only to die of heart attacks (grandmother) or be more furiously unhappy than they were before (mother) I saw the pointlessness of it. I don't know what I want specifically! Which is why I am not visualizing. I can only say very general things, such as I want to know deeper things, I want to know that there is more than permanent financial-related stress! (seriously!) I want the truth. I guess you could say I want a completely different way of being than what others have (I didn't know that...). I want to look at the world with appreciation, and be able to live gracefully. I could do this working every day and living in an apartment! (like right now!)

Same here - I don't strive for marriage, kids, house, and all those things.  I saw where it got my parents, and see where it gets everybody else, the same way you saw what it did to your mom and grandmother.  For me, trying to understand reality and doing research into subjects that interest me has been the goal of mine for years.  Not the power career and money mongering and all that.     

Well, it's not a choice about being annoyed or passive - that's black and white.  Being passive isn't the answer, as that usually entails just sitting there like a deflated lump while you suppress your annoyance, which then pops back out again later in other ways.   So this is where the writings of say, Theun Mares, or Stuart Wilde come in handy.  They give you another way of viewing these situations that would normally annoy you, so that they no longer will have that affect on you.  You won't be "passive" when faced with annoying situations or people - ie, a deflated lump who just sits there, suppressing your annoyance - because you'll have a completely different way of viewing the situation altogether, which will naturally cause a lack of annoyed reaction.  I find that Stuart's work is very good about getting into this aspect of things.  To paraphrase what he's said in several of his books - if it's raining, then it's raining.  Do rain.  If someone is late, then they're late.  If stuff doesn't go as planned or work out, then accept it. 

A good example:

I see people around me at my job who get annoyed over the most trivial ridiculous things.  Like today for instance - a pizza delivery guy shows up in the lobby with pizza and soda, but no name for who it goes to.  No prob, I just do a general overhead page to announce that whoever ordered pizza, please call the front desk.  Meanwhile, the pizza's smelling pretty good.  Ummmm, pizza!   

The phone rings right away. It's the business office (accounting office.)   A pissy woman huffs to me over the phone, "I told them to come around back!!!!"

Internally I just roll my eyes and breeze on past her, "Okay, I'll send him down now...." not even acknowledging her venting.  I have no interest in entertaining people's venting. Especially somebody I've never even met or talked to before until this moment.

There was a second's pause of hesitation from her at my complete lack of reaction to her outburst, then she said, "Okay...."   Then I hung up.  End of story.

That's a good example to illustrate petty annoyances and people's varying thresshold levels of tolerance.  For me, if I'd ordered the pizza and they showed up in the wrong part of the building and I heard it announced on the loudspeaker, my first reaction would be "YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!  THE PIZZA'S HERE!!!! WOOHOO!!!"  Fun times!  Then I'd call the front desk and be all "It's for us, send him on back!"   It wouldn't even occur to me to be annoyed.   But you have these miserable nasty people (who usually always work in accounting) who get annoyed about EVERYTHING because they have completely lost the plot.  They have no grip on things anymore. 

For me, I've worked hard on trying to find a different way to view the world so that things won't annoy me the way they used to.  I've gotten much better, to the point where I don't understand most things that people get irritated at.   Now I'm left with only the big annoyances to deal with, which I'm working on.  Every time one of the big annoyances pops up that gets me riled up I stop and try to think of a new way of looking at it - find a reason why I shouldn't actually be mad, find that other perspective.  Do that enough times and eventually you reprogram yourself.  I'm still not there yet, but I know I will be eventually. (haha, I just remembered the movie "Wag the Dog" where Dustin Hoffman's character, the movie producer, is this totally unflappable guy, no matter what catastrophe is happening he's always like, "That's nuuuuuuthin'!  It's nuuuuuuuthin'!" with a wave of the hand and shake of the head, followed by some totally crazy anecdote from his movie making career that illustrates a real example of catastrophe.  We should all be like that!  haha)

The Morph stuff is his more recent work.  I can't see the morph, and most people can't either for that matter, and I wouldn't worry about it.   Seeing the morph isn't what's important.  That's not a requisite for anything.  Getting our personal shit together is what's most important.    Maybe seeing the morph will come later.  And maybe it won't.  But again, it's not really important and it doesn't mean anything if you can't see it.   I reccomend Stuart's older material, pre-Morph, if you will.  The Quickening.  Infinite Self - 33 Steps to Reclaiming Your Inner Power.   Whispering Winds of Change.  Sixth Sense. 

Yup, actually, I do.     Results with self help usually don't happen overnight, that's why you have to have patience and willpower to keep at it.  And the reason "why" has to be clear.  What you believe can occur if you keep at it and keep at it. 

The reason I've given up on more than one occasion and walked away from doing self work is because I didn't see the ultimate point, like, what good is this ultimately going to do???   But if you can find a reason why, then it becomes imperative.  For me, I want to navigate through life better, be able to handle all those annoyances that come at me.  I'm TIRED of people being able to pull my strings and push my buttons.  I'm TIRED of people draining my energy with their crazy behavior.  I want to see things differently, so that I won't react, so that I can become the way I've seen of my higher self.  I also want to become more lucid and awake and aware, in control of my thoughts and internal chatting dialogue, because I'm tired of my thoughts maybe not being my own. But you have to get to that point where you find your reasons and it's a situation of enough is enough.

Get a girlfriend.

Peace, PhiConcept.

I live with her. *cough smartass*

Yeah, I would agree that committing can be quite difficult! It's nice to know that others can relate (very). And I had actually tried EFT but not for anything serious. I actually kinda just blew it off (forgot about it)... I am looking into EFT today though! Thank you.

Thank you for the reminder. I don't feel like such a loser for not changing already anymore!

Where I want to go is... or who I want to be, might be a bit unrealistic (to others, specifically my family). But I have to be honest with myself. I do not have a strong desire for a new house or lots of money or anything like that. I think this is because after watching my grandmother and mother work their asses off only to die of heart attacks (grandmother) or be more furiously unhappy than they were before (mother) I saw the pointlessness of it. I don't know what I want specifically! Which is why I am not visualizing. I can only say very general things, such as I want to know deeper things, I want to know that there is more than permanent financial-related stress! (seriously!) I want the truth. I guess you could say I want a completely different way of being than what others have (I didn't know that...). I want to look at the world with appreciation, and be able to live gracefully. I could do this working every day and living in an apartment! (like right now!) I do not wish to change my life situation (or keep it the same).  I just want to not react to petty things. Be a little less serious...maybe.

But I could start in small steps and be very satisfied. Just how do you change programming and habits? For example, how would you go from irritable to completely passive?  (and thank you by the way, for giving me the opportunity to figure some things out)

And I happen to like Stuart Wilde very much. I even watched the entire matrix series because of him! But I am afraid I still have many "how" questions regarding his material. The most prominent one being, how do I see the Morph? And... how do I see past this fabricated reality?

I am afraid that I have had this issue with almost all self-help/spiritual material I have ever read. I hear soo many wonderful theories, but in the end I really only care about how I get there. I just do not seem to have developed the capacity to be able to pull that abstract information out from what the author is giving most of the time. The only exception was eckhart tolle. Focus on the body, watch your thoughts, got it!

Anyway lyra, you had said something earlier about that age group lacking enthusiasm and motivation. That sounds about right... lol. It's really hard to be enthusiastic when you feel like you're wasting your time and should be doing something productive.

I think I figured something out though! I do not continue most of my practices because if I do not see some form of results, I either forget or give up entirely (usually forget).

I started singing when I was 15 for no reason (inspired?) with no prior practice and I am still doing it to this day (Oh, I'm 17 by the way! sorry! ). Why? Because I feel the results. I hear people tell me now that I have a great voice. And it takes absolutely no effort to sing anymore! It's not work at all which is why it is one of my favorite things to do. So I know I have the discipline and the ability. I am just easily discouraged because I usually don't get tangible/noticeable results, and/or due to my strong feelings of inferiority, lack of enjoyment (aka heaviness, seriousness, sadness), and general stress.

Does anyone know what I mean?

That was an intro. Now to one other thing. I've tried the sedona method. It hasn't changed me. I've tryed the zpoint process. Hasn't worked. I've been trying emotrance. I think there is something wrong with my energy body now... I can't seem to let go of crap!!!!!   The fact that I feel like I can't be free is really bothering me. I want things to be different so badly! But I don't even know what to visualize!!!! The only reason I still even think of anything spiritual is because of a few synchronicities (very profound...and beautiful) and that visualizing usually works for me (yay). I just really need to ask. What the hell do I do??... to change?

Maybe there's too much "trying" going on.  Too much stress, too much effort, and possibly expecting quickie results.  Real change takes time for most people, it doesn't happen overnight, or in days or a few months. 

We all have bad habits and a lifetime of programming.  That's why change can be so hard and take awhile, and why many instantaneous quickie "modalities" and techniques don't work. 

If you want change you have to first identify:

- Where you want to go - what's your goal?  Where is the finish line for you?  If you don't know where you're going, it might be impossible to get there.
- What are the bad habits and programming that you want to change?  What's hindering you in your life from reaching the finish line?

Everybody's going to be different in their answers.  Everybody has a different personal goal, everybody has different bad habits and programming.

You'll also need a hefty dose of willpower and desire.   Without that one can easily fall off the wagon, figuratively speaking, after a few days.

For me, I wouldn't recommend any of those methodologies that are out there.   I'd recommend philosophies. 

Buddhism is a philosophy.  The Toltec warrior path is a philosophy.  Zen is a philosophy.  But new age modalities and methodologies to me seem like bandaid surface level quickie fixes.  If you want true change on a permanent level, to reach whatever goal you have, then you kind of have to turn yourself inside out and go back to the very beginning. It's not as hard as it seems, but you have to examine who you are and how you got there in order to implement change.  Change only works when you've identified where the problem lies...and how it happened, and where you want to go.   After you identify where the issues are and where you want to go, it then becomes a matter of changing the way you think and perceive the world, and reprogramming your bad habits and mindset.  And that's where for me, philosophies such as the Toltec teachings, or Stuart Wilde (who overlaps with that, kind of a combination of Taoist/Zen/Toltec) come in versus any sort of compartmentalized "technique."

I've been in the process of identifying issues and making changes for several years now and the books of Carlos Castaneda, Theun Mares and Stuart Wilde in particular really helped.  I'd literally read their stuff every single day on my lunch breaks, in effect, undoing a lifetime of crap and reprogramming myself to a better way of thinking and approaching things.  I'm back to doing that again right now.   But again, it's been slow....bit by bit, piece by piece.  Falling off the wagon, getting back on, trying again, making progress here, failing miserably there, trying again, etc.   You have to be ready, and you have to patient, and you have to have will.   Some may think, well, if you keep failing, then obviously those philosophies don't work either.  !   Actually they do.  I'm not the same person I was several years ago.  And who I was several years ago when I first started in with this material became somebody very different from who I was several years before that.  So, it does have an impact, it has helped in a big time way.  But it's just not instantaneous.  Bit by bit.  Piece by piece.  Habits and programming die hard.  It takes work, and will. 

The point to our lives can only be determined by us.  So.....find that point.  If it doesn't exist for you yet, then create it.  Sit down and begin thinking about you want out of this life, what you hope to become, what you want to do.  I'm not sure how young or old you are (you sound young) but many people in their teens to early 20s who are into the weird and unusual stuff are generally lost it seems, from what I've seen in my own experience.  They're floating adrift, lacking any sort of direction or purpose or grounding, sometimes lacking hope or enthusiasm or motivation.   That's the nature of what's going on nowadays, what the powers of be have created in this society.  It's a deliberate plan, in my belief, and it's worked very well.  The current young generations, including my own, the 30-ish "gen x'ers" if you were to suscribe to such labels   are just lost, especially the males.  It's either they are completely absorbed by the mainstream hive mind, or, they're still living at home with mom n pop, or crashing with friends or homeless in cars.   Unemployed.  Can't find a job.  And deep down don't want to work.  Can't find a girlfriend.  No money.  No car.  Bouncing from failed self-employed venture after another after another.   Etc.  I think it's a mix of several things crashing together at the same time - the powers that be and their attempts at destabilizing society and dismantling the family structure with their media programming bombardment that encourages materialism and a shallow existence of money, sex, and acquiring "things," as well as the influx of souls waking up, no longer willing to play the game and refusing to take part in the whole matrix structure of things.   Both combined together creates people who are drifting aimless, lost. 

On a closing note, since you mentioned Stuart Wilde, he's my top recommendation, you'll probably do well to continue with his material, more so than Eckert Tolle.  I cannot for the life of me figure out the appeal of Eckart!!!    All you ever see are people talking about the guy.  To each his own I guess, but his stuff is so dry and boring boring blahhhh.  I've flipped through his stuff and found my eyes glazing over.  Nothing jumped out at me, and it didn't have any "life" vibe to it.  Very flat.  So I can't imagine how his stuff works to actually affect meaningful, permanent change in people's lives.  Which is a whole side topic in itself that's been on my mind lately................the fact that most self help books don't work. The fault lies with the person seeking the help as much as the ineffectual way most self-help books are written.  It's such a cliche to hear about people with their shelf full of self help books that didn't help at all or even make a dent.  Most likely because of bad writing, holier than thou approach, detached academic pompous way of writing, and the so-called "humorous" and "down to earth" books that just come across as being contrived, written by authors whose voices aren't likeable.  Etc.  Stuart has humor and is down to earth and personable, but it's real, not contrived, and it's likeable, and he incorporates first hand experiences and anecdotes into his stuff, so has more of an impact.   Also, I would highly recommend the book "Return of the Warriors" by Theun Mares.  That book really lays it on the line with regards to what the problems are for how most people think and live.

Peace, PhiConcept.