I have a question (Page 1 of 2)

Dante, you might want to give EFT a try if you haven't already  - it's free, you can get the instructions online, and odds are you'll feel some kind of release from it.   Still, honestly, real change is hard.    I'm a fan of Tolle as well and I remember he said on one of his audio collections that a person with a heavy pain-body could with discipline dissolve it in about two years.  He spoke directly against the idea of enlightenment requring multiple lifetimes or even decades of spiritual effort - something I don't doubt is controversial to many.    Anyway Dante, I'm struggling with the same stuff you are and it's not that the answers aren't out there, just being able to apply the answers and commit to a path seems the harder part - at least for me.

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.

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?

Phi, what makes you so sure Dante isn't a girl? It's obvious now, well no it isn't I guess. Could be alternative lifestyles eh?

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

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.

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

INITIATION.