Way Of Minds

I'm not able to sleep right now. I woke up and have been having thoughts about this person that I just can't stop. I just go down storyline after storyline, endlessly, replaying the same ones over and over again, making myself upset and even angry.

I have complete chaos in my mind. I know the answer as to our relationship is simple, but, my mind keeps going through these thoughts, it keeps making things up. It tells me stories that are not even real, they are not reality, but to my mind they are so real that they just feel as if they are actually happening while I am thinking them. I am making it all so much more complicated than it actually is also, I know it's simple in reality, but it's so complicated in my mind. It's an odd feeling, because I know the truth and know how it really is, but, I also have this other part of me that knows everything else that my mind made up about it.

I feel like there is a shadow that is cast over all of the good things I have in my life, to the point where they are all dimmed, almost to the point where I can't even see them. I can't feel their positivity. It feels like I am incapable of experiencing and enjoying the good things I have going on, which are a lot. I have so much good in my life, from the experiences I have on a daily basis, to the people I meet every day. I even enjoy my current work and what I do. But I just can't fully enjoy it.

I have been meditating, hoping that will help, but that too is feeling like a dead end. Not that I will stop practicing and trying, I won't, but I am in a place where it all feels futile, as if nothing is getting better, even when I pretend it is.

There are moments where I feel like there is hope, and that I am getting to a good place and am in the right direction. Those are few though. But I do have hope and a knowing that I will feel better more often, and then I will feel better more than I feel worse, and eventually, I will just feel good, with an occasional fall, but I'll get back up.

I have been having trouble finding happiness. I experience momentary joy, but it never lasts. I laugh, sometimes to tears, but the moment it's over, that joy goes along with it as well, and I am left feeling some sort of emptiness that makes me feel like I am completely alone. It usually comes and goes, but sometimes it lingers, for a while. This is one of those times.

I am surrounded by people and friends, but even with their company, I feel the same. Sometimes, even when we are all together, laughing and having fun, I suddenly zone out and lose all that joy, and am just overwhelmed with emptiness.

What is this emptiness? I ask myself that a lot. What is this loneliness? It feels like there is an answer to it all that I am just not getting. It feels like there is something I am not doing right, or something I should be doing. Like there will be a moment where I will just have this realization of what it is, and the emptiness and loneliness will just go away.

Don't ask for something to be more than it can be right now. I heard this quote today and felt how much I relate to this. This for me has been one of my biggest struggles, one of the biggest lessons I have had to learn and am still learning. To not force things into being what I want them to be, when I want them to be.

This goes for anything, really. Especially for relationships and people. Whether you meet someone you are interested in, but they are just not interested in you, or its just not the right timing, sometimes all you can do is let it go and allow it to have its time, allow it to work when its ready. Forcing it, trying to make it more than what it can be right now can result in simply nothing, making it not even work when it could have worked when the time was right.

Its not about waiting, its not about predicting the future, it's just about letting go of trying to force things to happen the way you desire. Trusting in who ever it is you believe in or want to trust in, whether this is a god, the universe, yourself, or just having plain out trust, that things will workout, and that you will be pleased.

It's a big lesson, it's difficult to put into practice, especially when it is in relation to other people or a lover, but the more I do, the more I see that it just works. Letting go, allowing things to happen when they happen, and not forcing anything into existence.

What I have noticed is that I am more aware of my thoughts, and that I am lost in my thoughts. Getting lost in my thoughts has always been something that has consumed most of my day. The moment a story line would start, I would just get so deep into it and I wouldn't even realize it until it would completely take over and even change my mood.

I have been meditating on and off for quite a while, but it never really made a difference, I would even get lost in the story lines while meditating. That changed when I started going to a Buddhist meditation center about a year ago, I spent about 3 months there and they explained that you should not try to let go or get rid of thoughts while meditating, that instead, you want to be aware that you are thinking. Once you become aware of them, you just let them go by themselves. But to not force this process, simply sit and be aware of the thoughts.

Once that sank in, I started putting it to practice during meditations, and it actually showed some results, it started working, I started noticing that I was thinking and lost in the stories more and more, and was able to bring myself back, and that translated into everyday life.

Now, when I think about things, even before a story is created I am already aware of the situation, that I am thinking and that if I continue this way, I will get lost in the story.

I can't stop the story line and myself from getting lost in it every time, but, I am aware of it every time now, and that is a huge difference. It gives me more control over my mind and my thoughts, and the option to actually make a decision, if to continue down that path and get lost, or if to end it. It's just that for me some story lines are too tempting to not go down, but that is another practice!

Though I have been doing much better in the past 6 months, I still hold on to things too tightly. And recently was a great example of that in which I won't go too much into detail, but, I held on too tightly to the point where I lost the very thing I was holding on to.

Looking back now, I can clearly see what I was doing, but, of course, while I was doing it I was oblivious. Though, this time was different from the past because I actually was aware that I was doing certain things, where in the past I wouldn't even realize the state I was in. And though I was aware of how I was feeling this time, I was still oblivious to the bigger picture of it, the smaller and bigger impacts of what I was doing, of holding on so tightly.

For the things that I did realize, I just couldn't get myself to let go and to release even a little bit, I didn't know how. And the things around that, what it was causing the other person and me, I just couldn't see.

Now that I am past it, I can see it all and see what it did to me and to them. Of course like anything it's not as simple as that, there were many factors in this, but, I was a major one, and my lack of ability to release the holds even a bit made things worse and worse, very quickly, to the point where I couldn't even tell if what I was doing and thinking was even me, or if it was just part of this terrible attachment that I formed.

My lesson from this of course is to stay on my path, and learn to love loosely, to not hold on too tightly, but also to learn to identify when it is actually happening, to identify what causes it and how to prevent or stop it if it has already begun. This is a lesson that I have yet to learn as I just realized that I still feel powerless in this situation, I don't know yet how to handle it. But that is the ongoing lesson I need to learn.