With apologies to u/utthana, whose title I've stolen. I thought about replying to your post but that felt like hijacking, and a bit redundant three months down the track. In retrospect this may be more hijacky.
The world is quicksand but, contrary to all that I was led to believe about quicksand by cartoons, I think that struggling might actually be the way out.
I have also spent the last few months distracted and swamped by life and the world, to the exclusion of contemplation. For a long time my daily practice was at nil. Awareness was always there in the background in the form of dissatisfaction, but it just didn't seem like I had the mental space or energy to do anything with it other than acknowledge it. Even my dreams have become a dull penance.
If I had to describe existence recently I'd call it sawdust.
I've done a bit of re-prioritisation in the last week to be able to immerse myself, for a while at least, in practice, and attempt to figure out what the hey has been going on this year. I need to get some safeguards in place so I don't end up so mentally swamped again. It's a catch-22. Living in reasonable comfort in this world requires attention to a lot of stuff I'd like to ignore (money, money... money). It'd be nice to just make it go away but apparently I'm not skilled enough to do that yet.
So that's the challenge. Find a way to exist that isn't untenable but which also allows space - the bulk of the space - for mental progress. Perhaps in some manner I'm cultivating strife because I have some ass-backwards commitment to the idea that this is the only thing that will drive me. Intellectually, I know that pain isn't the best motivator but it seems to be a condition of my progress that it only happens when I'm so severely dissatisfied with the status quo that I force through changes in reality, temper-tantrum style. But too much strife just = stagnation and despair. Hopefully this truth will sink into and take root in my mind sometime soon.
So some techniques I'm currently employing:
Less wishy-washiness: If you want to do magic, do magic. Don't beat around the bush, generate some intentions, set parameters, make things happen, judge your results! I think that fear of failure can be so constraining that this one area of your life where you should be wildly imaginative, flamboyant and fearless can become a sinkhole of restrictions, excuses and apologies. The challenge here is walking the tightrope of not sinking into despair or giving up when you fail. There's a valuable, fleeting moment between action and failure when your mind tells you just why you failed. The problem is that there's a huge amount of data to unpack in that millisecond/frisson of disquiet.
Floating brain: I'm almost embarrassed to include this one, but I've found that it's effective at tackling the sensation that you're located in a brain, experiencing the world from behind a set of eyeballs, especially when you don't have much mental energy for genuine deconstruction of the world. Take your brain, make it transparent, float it in front of you. This helps me to remember that the brain is a construct of the mind, like the world, not the centre/originating point of my consciousness. It also gives me a sense of omnipresence.
Judicious use of fiction: Computer games, books; becoming invested in them and increasing their "realness," particularly that of the characters, doesn't so much decrease the reality of my day to day existence as widen its possibilities. That's clumsily expressed - I can try to elaborate if anyone's interested.
So anyway. Long story short, do not go gentle into that good night, rage, rage against the dying of the light, etc.
I've been able to combat this using mindfulness. The basic technique I learned with was to count your breaths (in 1, out 2) then even numbers are always exhales so if you lose count you can check your exhale count. The initial exercise was to count to 60... but who has the attention span for that? I shortened it to 10. If you lose count start over, if you get to 10 start over. Now, that you have the root of that; I've improved from being mindful of not only my breath... but can actively contemplate parallel to being "distracted and swamped by life and the world." Depending on where I decide to direct my attention I can dynamically focus more or less on one or the other.
Ouch. :<
That rings true here as well. I've been lucky enough to re-integrate into my characters starting zone (parent's house >.>) which restricts certain aspects of my intentions at times but doesn't strangle me. It also frees up attention from rent, groceries, and the other bills attached to independent living. I've struggled with framing it as a good thing (could be thought of as leeching) like in the SNES Donkey Kong Country game where you can replay the first level as many times as you want to get extra lives and the rhino companion.
In my experience, there are generally pains associated with growing. Like kinks that need worked out. At first it's overwhelming, but then you start getting into it and build "shortcuts" (or I like to think of them as bookmarks like in a web browser) that let you revisit things, quickly, in order to adjust them in finer detail. I would like to draw imagery from Bruce Almighty where he's trying to modify the way he receives people's prayers. At first, he was hearing all sorts of voices in his head, then he switches to envelopes with letters in them and get's buried, he finally settles on emails which is still problematic eventually... but the progression of refining the system is what I would like to point at.
A long while back, I think it was u/Mindseal (maybe under a different account ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) who mentioned this, the subject of being so present in the moment that you can talk to people in things like YouTube videos came up. I tried it once to great affect, and have since developed this to the point where generally spectator oriented content including things like TV shows and live sports events have become interactive games for me. I appear to be able to influence direction, pace, and outcome on a whim. An unexpected side-effect of developing this seems to be over-empathizing. Occasionally, if I'm listening to someone else tell a story about someone it's as if I'm identifying as the person they're talking about. Sometimes that's alright, but humans generally enjoy complaining so it get's kind of intense at times.
A technique I've been developing is similar to the one u/Mindseal mentioned in their reply. Rather than for healing, I use this for protection in general. I imagine something akin to a lightbulb, but not actually a lightbulb. More along the lines of a sealed container with a vacuum inside, imagined as if I were suspended in this vacuum inside the container. This apparently allows me to remove myself mentally and/or emotionally from a situation without removing myself physically.
Edit: Bonus Technique - "Shutting the Door" - This one is pretty simple. Essentially you "shut out" "that which 'I' am presently aware of being" in order to be "that which 'I' desire to be." Having listened to some of Neville Goddards lectures yesterday this seems like a summation of what he teaches / points to.
Originally commented by u/Scew on 2018-11-02 03:18:13 (e8utowj)
I think the truth is that there's always room for contemplation parallel to strife. I really should make less excuses for myself and commit more. I like your breathing technique - I've eschewed breathing meditation and mindfulness-based activities because of bad associations (I loathe the way mindfulness has been commandeered by the corporate sector to make people more compliant in the face of inequality and bad conditions). But you're quite right - it's all about how and why you utilise these techniques.
Right?!
If I have one more dream about parking inspectors, or trying to navigate my way to an appointment at a bank, or whatever...
I've been thinking about this and I think it comes down to the fact that the difference between the world in my imagination and the world as it is is painful. So to avoid pain, just stop imagining, right? Shut down, become numb.
This is effective but it's also stupid. It's also had the very undesirable side-effect of making my mind a wasteland of mundanity. I'm actively combatting that now by cultivating mental playfulness, consuming imaginative fiction, etc. It still hurts but damn, it's better than the alternative.
This is awesome! And yeah, I've found that certain types of content are excellent for creating the right mental state for manipulating reality. But reading this makes me feel I haven't taken it nearly far enough.
Originally commented by u/BraverNewerWorld on 2018-11-02 16:32:39 (e8wbq1k)
In Stephen King's On Writing, he mentions "shutting the door" and working until something comes out. I find that to be an interesting insight there.
Originally commented by u/LegendaryDraft on 2018-11-13 13:26:11 (e9leidc)
These sorts of visualizations can be so powerful and they get even better if done regularly. You have a visualization there and you expect it to have a certain effect, and what do you know, it does have that effect. It's really gratifying and empowering when this happens for me.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2018-11-04 22:16:12 (e90yly4)
You dropped this \
^^ To prevent anymore lost limbs throughout Reddit, correctly escape the arms and shoulders by typing the shrug as
¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯or¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯^^Click here to see why this is necessary
Originally commented by u/LimbRetrieval-Bot on 2018-11-02 03:18:17 (e8utp1w)