Life alone, Love alone

All I'm trying to say is that there are three cases;
a lot of friends, few friends and zero.

A lot of friends is a lot of happiness, but most people
don't really know who they are, and can't survive on their own.

Few friends is the worst of the three because you cling to
those people too much. Even when you try to fake it,
still they get indifferent because they have the idea
you are somehow defective. So they give you little pieces of
time and sometimes they ghost, and come back, but it
leaves you feeling like total crap. And even the best of it
comes with a lot of bitterness.

Zero friends is where you build a foundation in your own self.
Because you survived without them, it makes you strong.
This is also the mindset where you can go to a lot, but
you have to go through the fire first.

I just wanted to clarify my opinion on that.

 

There's nothing in this world worth clinging to.

Much less things that cause you suffering. Things that...when all is said and done...will mean nothing to you, will have no emotional connection to you.

That desire is not you, not yours, could never be yours. You never decided to have that strong pull towards women or sense objects in general. It happened because of a very complex series of events occuring simultaneously a very long time ago, with no concievable beginning in sight. This preassure that the sense objects exert upon you, the gross phyical preassure at the level of the body<---that is the pain, that is the unpleasantness, the suffering. To the extent to which we succumb to the preassure at the level of the body, we train ourselves to not distinguish between a desire and a chasing of the desire, since we don't fight it but simply give up we assume that every craving is also a reaction, when in reality there's no reason why our craving should be taken at face value--more so when we realize how wrong we were, time and time again, we were tricked by our feelings, a slave to our feelings (slave to craving), pulled in this and that direction like untrained dogs. We are holding the leashes (the heart/mind) and the untrained animals on leash are the five senses. To the degree to which we let ourselves be pulled by these wild dogs, we will be led astray. That's to say, a beings addiction is to form, for a man there is no form more intoxicating than a woman's. you don't even have to see the face, just the shadow of a silhouette of a woman is enough. This is because desire is impersonal. There's no reason to identify and appropriate what our eye comes into contact with as ours. The eye simply sees and comes into contact with pleasant sights. There's no rationality behind these sights. They aren't actually attractive in the ultimate sense, but rather, it's our wanting of them that is the problem. The moment you want something there is a lack. You are in debt; you can't be happy till you have that, whatever it be. You could just cut the middle man and be happy without that want. But it's not so simple cause the only way to stop the habitual pattern of craving and clinging is to never EVER let it in ever again. No matter how many times it shows up, you have to never want it ever again. To never want the wanting of sense objects. But it can't happen, because you say, 'I don't want it now, but I'll leave my options open, I want romance and love if it comes'. Imagine craving is someone who's knocking on your door, and you don't open the door now, BUT he knows you'll open it tomorrow, do you think he's just gonna leave? he won't cause he knows you'll give in tomorrow, that the preassure of him standing outside will be too much and you'll open the door. But if you resolve to never open for him ever no matter what he will get tired and leave. If craving leaves, suffering leaves.

Read your text with reflection. The entire experience of craving for experiences is suffering and the pain is viscerally felt through the text. Why hold on to pain?

It's extremely hard to get rid of this self inflicted pain we cause ourselves because we don't want to let go. We don't want to stop wanting our desire, even when all that the desire is doing is hurting us.

Name one good thing that the desire has done for you. .

You've invested your heart and soul into this desire, and what has it given you in return?

Desiring sense objects is like playing a lottery ticket that costs 5000$ and the maximum award is 5 dollars. The reward is never more than the investment in energy, emotion, time; life. The pain is always more than the reward. And not only do you lose the 5000$ and not win the 5$ but you could actually lose more than the initial 5000$. On account of sense pleassures people lose their lives, fighting over territories or women. All that death, pain, and carnage, all because of sensuality; the reason being simply sensuality. Like vultures peaking out eachothers eyes for scraps of rotting flesh. Sense desires bring little gratification and much danger.

And yet it can't be intellectualized beyond a certain point. It must be fought. It must be endured (the pressure to give in.)

The pain of sensuality is so great.

George Harrison could have any woman he wanted and did. And yet, when he lost his wife to Eric Clapton he suffered. And Eric Clapton did evil by desiring his friend's wife. Both fell into grave pain on account of sense desires. And now you look at that woman that they were SO crazy about, that they obssesed SO much about, cried so many tears over, were literally insane over...and she's just an old woman, still talking about her days of dating famous Rockstars (that's to say, still talking about sensuality, obssesed with sensuality, after having lived a life all about sensuality.) Whatever attractiveness she had is not visible now. And in retrospect, whatever beauty she had, was not very convincing even whe she was young from the mundane point of view. But the beauty or ugliness of a form doesn't matter, what matters is that you want it. And in the wanting; there is pain.

That wanting of it is death, and whoever wants to live should avoid that wanting as if his head was about to be chopped off.

 

So weird about how much fear there is about loneliness.

I know: I ran from it for years and years.

I only had a few friends, but I clung to them so hard.

It was like being a little child who screams for attention:
look at me, validate me, love me, help me, like me
and so forth.

Then one day I came to the decision that if they didn't
voluntarily come to me, I wasn't going to them.

And they didn't! And they still haven't!

Boy, I went through a million levels of hell.

I thought they were my friends/family.

Would I always be alone like this? What if I died?
Would they care?

But after some time went on, those fears and the loneliness
started to die down.

And I realized that being on my own was better than chasing people.

In chasing people, the suffering never really ends, not even if
you catch them.

Neediness is like a fire that burns almost anything, every social
interaction just creates more need, more loneliness and more
signals of being a defect.

The only way to kill it is to isolate the fire from its fuel.

Then what's left is this pile of rubble.

But at least the fire is out, and once everything gets cleaned,
then there is some clear space to create something good.

With an empty vacant lot, a person can do a lot, they can build,
they are only limited by their imagination.

With a raging fire, the only thing a rational person does is escape.

Nobody is going to stand and roast marshmallows when the refinery
explodes.

This is why I strongly believe that men need to be isolated and
to spend most of their reboot in working, fitness and/or
contemplating their addiction/recovery.

A BAD USE of a reboot is chasing around old contacts, hitting
up people on social media, being on social media AT ALL,
chasing girls, watching videos about attraction and game,
and worrying about people in general.

Recovery is essentially a social disease, and the way to cure it
is through isolation and loneliness.

Otherwise someone goes back out into the world with the needy poison,
and bangs their head against the wall.

And how many dudes are in the forums who pine and wail that they
can't get a chick?

It's because this time is meant for healing and recovery, a time
to rebuild their lives, fitness, careers and other things.

Yet, they go to the brink of suicide over some stupid rejection!

You were handed the keys to success, buddy, that is what
the rejection is! This rejection is the key to ascension in life.

But nobody listens to me....haha!

 

This time, let the fire burn out in such a way as to create healing.

Then you are whole.

 

Ever consider a full dopamine detox? I get the vibe that you are cranking the dopamine
some kind of way. I could be wrong. It's just a hunch.

 

Your life story was very touching, sir. I wish you nothing but success in your journey. I hope that you are finally healing from your past and making strides towards a future filled with purpose, peace of mind, and above all, happiness.

 

Dear Buddhabro,

I hope this message finds you well.

I will explain to you the cause and solution to this problem, please take heed.

The whole world revolves around the eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue, and the body. Sights, sounds, scents, tastes, and touches--respectively. This is the entirety of the world--the entirety of YOUR experience--around this the whole world revolves. If you were to tell me of any experience you've ever had, I already know what it is; its sights, scents, tastes, sounds and touches. It could never be anything else. Your favorite memory? Your worst experience ever? Its dependent of these five.

The pioneers of western psychology lightly touched upon this with their conditioning experiments with animals, but they never quite made the leap onto the conclusion which is of worth, even though they were close. Why is that? Its because this truth is very hard to see, hard to fathom, because it goes against the entire world; Its not self-evident. That's why even though people seem to come near it, they never ever see it.

Now, if the problem of our conditioning were entirely reliant on our senses (like animals) than we would be in big problems. Furthermore, if the objects of our desire were actually irresistible, if they were good, satisfying, actually worthy of desire; then there would be no way out. But since we can control our senses, and since the objects of our desire aren't actually desirable, then there is a way out.

And what is the way out? Wisdom. Wisdom of what? Wisdom of the problem and the solution to the problem.

All feeling is caused by contact. Contact precedes feeling. This is easy to understand at the gross level: Your eye meets a sight, and this generates a feeling. The tongue a taste...this generates a feeling. The ear a sound...this generates a feeling. The body a touch...this generates a feeling. The nose a scent...this generates a feeling. The mind meets a memory...this generates a feeling. Things touching you, coming into contact with you, generate a feeling in you. There are only three types of feeling; pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.

Your relationship to pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feeling, is your direct relationship to lust. The normal response is to avoid unpleasant and neutral feeling, and run after pleasant feeling. And herein lies the problem; The problem is that of lust attached to the senses. Its not that the eye sees a pleasant sight--a sight that the mind registers as pleasant--its the lust attached to the eye faculty that accompanies that sight. The lust/craving means 'more-ness', you want more of that. The instant you want more of that, you immediately shifted into unpleasant feeling (because wanting more means I don't have enough) and so you go after the sense object of your desire to feel pleasant, all the while feeling unpleasant. BECAUSE PLEASURE IS PAIN. ITS ALWAYS BEEN PAIN. ALL SENSE DESIRE IS PAINFUL. The only reason we ever misconstrued it as pleasant was because we reinforced that notion by going after the objects of our desire, further cementing the idea that they must be pleasurable. The reason we run towards sensual objects is to avoid the pain. WE RUN TOWARDS PAIN IN ORDER TO GET AWAY FROM PAIN. The whole phenomena of lust in regards to the five senses is painful. The phenomena of pleasure is simply a misperception, a perversion of perception. Pleasure was never in the sense objects. They were always hollow. That's the reason why once you eat and are full, suddenly that food doesn't seem so appetizing. Pleasure isn't in the food, it was in you running away from the pain of hunger. So the food wasn't pleasurable, it was just taking away the pain of hunger, and you misperceived that as pleasure. WHY?

THERE'S NO REASON WHY. SENSUALITY IS GRATUITOUS. There's no reason for it. Its completely unnecessary and uncalled for.

Abstinence can never uproot the problem. If your goal is to eradicate weeds from the garden, simple management like cutting off branches wont cut it. You need to uproot those weeds; not allow them any space to grow further. Not engaging in sensuality isn't enough. You need to destroy your VALUE OF SENSUALITY. And what do I mean by the value of sensuality? That's the value we attach to feeding with the five senses. So that instead of seeing a pleasant sight as something valuable, we just see it as a pleasant sight. The value of sensuality means the valuing of lust in regard to the five senses; thinking of good tastes as valuable, good touches as valuable, good scents...etc. Just think of it: why would you consider these things valuable? Why cant they just be a good taste, why do we crave the good taste, why do we look forward to it, why do we find solace in it? There's no reason why. That's whys sensuality is gratuitous. You could just think of it as a good taste and that's it, but that's not the way we work. We delight in our senses. We find joy in them. We feed on them. And herein lies the problem.

You need to stop valuing them, to stop thinking of them of pleasant, and to see them as hollow. But this can't be achieved through thinking about it. The whole mind and body need to develop to the point where they recognize the pain inherent in desire for any object of sensual perception. In order to train the mind and body in such a way, the danger of sensuality must be constantly kept in mind. What's the danger? The danger is like a hunter who sets out bait, and we foolishly think that he does it to feed us, but the bait isn't to feed us but to trap us and once we're trapped the hunter can do with us whatever he wants. Any kind of suffering your mind can imagine, that's the suffering the hunter will impart upon us. And that hunter is sensuality. It was never anyone else. Our dependance and lust for feeling, is the hunter setting the bait. The hunter can only set out the bait in a certain terrain; his terrain is always the five senses, with the mind and its lust for ideas as the sixth sense. That's to say, if you abandon the terrain of the senses, the hunter can not find you. He can not chase you out there; because the senses are HIS terrain. Whenever we play with our senses, we are in the terrain of the hunter. If you are in the terrain of the hunter, even though you avoid the bait, he'll still catch you eventually.

This is the problem. I'm running out of the terrain of the hunter. I've been lured by his bait and tortured too many times. Pains beyond imaging, pains which could have been avoided by avoiding the bait, by leaving his terrain. For my part, I'm leaving his terrain. That means practicing non-delight in the senses. That means being constantly aware of the hunter and the fact that I am indeed being hunted. And that if I know this and fall into pain, then I am the only one to blame. Cause I knew I was in the hunters field and didn't care enough to leave for my own safety.

This is why in AA there is the talk about 'always being an alcoholic' and practicing maintenance. What that means is that they still value pleasure of the senses, and since they still value that, and alcohol is a sense pleasure, then of course, they would always be alcoholics. That's why abstinence never uproots the problem, because you still value, your heart still values, the thing you know is bad for you. The thing you KNOW is POISON.

Sensual pleasure is poison. Its not that there is a poison that can be extracted out of the pleasure so that the pleasure can still be enjoyed; the pleasure itself is the poison. And what's the difference between a drink that you like and one that has poison in it? Poison is tasteless so you wouldn't know the difference. The difference is the knowledge of the poison there. In the same way that you cant take a little bit of poison, YOU CANT TAKE A LITTLE BIT OF SENSUALITY. To do so is insanity. That's why you relying on your eyes for pleasure eventually leads to watching pictures of women and then you zone out; the poison was in valuing pleasure dependent upon the eye FULL STOP. Everything that happened after that was just on account of that value.

A little bit of excrement smells just as bad as a truck load of excrement. This is the case with sensuality. A little bit is just as bad as a big chunk of it. Its just as bad as in that drinking a little bit of poison is just as bad as drinking a lot of it; sure, drinking a lot of it will kill you, and drinking a little bit will just make you sick; but the act of drinking it when you know it has poison is just as bad. Anyone who drinks a poison knowing its a poison is insane, without any importance of the quantity.

 

It was just a guess because every time I came back here, you seemed sort of lonely.

But yet, you were on a hard mode reboot. I've always been more "up" on reboots, even if I was lonely.

But about dopamine, any kind of pleasure stimulates it. Sugar, coffee, social media, TV, alcohol, drugs (otc & street), gambling, PMO (of course) etc. You know the list probably.

What can you do to get it to zero? How pure can you go? In purity there is suffering, but it's great after you are in it a while. Freedom, calmness, ambient joy.

Cold showers and fitness bring it down too, and/or clear out the system of dopamine.

But there's no easy way. You will suffer to get there. Do you want the benefits?