I'm 18 and I'm dying. What do I do?

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by RedMenace

Thank you, your words mean much to me. I know what you mean about all this... I dealt with many of these issues back in high school as well, and gained some self-transcendence even then through it. There's only so many
needles and so much vomit you can endure before you start to realize you are not on some pleasant hedonistic rollercoaster. It's shaped my way of thinking, and by extension, my life. I'd even say maybe it's shaped my mind for the better.

But... now that it's not letting up, I just can't shake this haunting feeling that the universe doesn't really want me here. Kind of a self-centered thought, but it's hard to let go. I mean, there's a reasonable amount of suffering you can expect from life in general... but what do I do when the suffering becomes literally unreasonable? When you look ahead to the future, and your suffering only looks exponential?

I don't know. Lot's of thinking to do. Lot's and lot's and lot's of thinking to do.

Viktor Frankl, psychotherapist, founder of the so-called logotherapy and himself a KZ survivor, said: "People do not want to be happy. People want to have a reason to be happy."

Finding a meaning in our lives, cannot be argued to be one of the greatest drives and motives in our lives. All religion, most part of science is probably motivated by it. If we see reason in our suffering, we endure it better. Statistics show that KZ prisoners managing to nevertehless see a reason for life, were more liekly to survive, than those who lost all hope and fell for despair. "Wer ein Warum zum Leben hat, erträgt fast jedes Wie."

One or two days ago, I read a german essay where a cosmologistz stated that in mathematics, part of the math gets invented in the process of calculating knopwn problems. In other words, the truths math seems to find, gets very much created by itsxelf, by the process of using math. Chemical and biological scientists speak of self-emerging structures and dissipative structures. In psychology, radical constructivists talk of the mind inventing and cinstructing the conditions it then think sit has jujst discovered "outside" itself. In Chos theory it is said that all future order and complex structure, although not causally preset, nevertheless already is embedded in former states of patterns of simplier complexity, and are just unfolding, like a tree, althoiuigh not present inside a nut, nevertheless emerges from that nut, specific in it'S type, but nevertheless totally unpredetermined in its specific details and future fate.

All this are hints at that there is not just one, fixed, preset meaning to be found, but that the meaning gets created by the process of unfolding it, constructing it, realising it, adding it to the worlds of phenomenons. And that means: we are adding the meaning to the world. We are the context that links phenomenon and meaning. There is no real differentiation possible bertween subkject and object, observer and what he observes. There is only the process, the event of observing, of becoming aware.

What is it that is observing, and looks out to the world through your eyes? What is it that is aware of yourself, thinks of yourselve as "me", and identifies itself with you although "you" is contantly changing, and every six years materialistically (???) is completely replaced down to the last atom in your ever changing body?

And one step further, one could say: since we define the context by by adding meaning to what we perceive, WE ARE THE MEANING. We are both imortant, and totally unimportant. We are unique, and nothing special at all. We are what it all is about - but the univese sure as hell is not revolving just around us.

I find it helpful in times of sadness, to focus on a context of greater scaling. To me, it has become astronomy in recent months (again). Thinkling about those unimaginable disatances and spaces, dimensions and time standards, helps me to step back from myself and put myself into a more appropriate relation to it all. Sometimes, the void pout there is scaring me to death, when my mind starts to dive into it. But this outer space as well as the inner space one experiences when practicing meditation regularly over a longer time, only is horrifying as long as one stares at it, but still does not dare to jump right into it. It'S like trying to drive a boat on a wild river, with one hand still grabbing a hold at the beach: you fight against the water and the waves, and you fight for breath since water is all above you and the boat tries to resist the force of the waves. But when you let go and allow to get carried by the water, the river suddenly carries you away, but also does not cover you with waves all time long, since you allow yourself to move up and down together with the waves. Or you take a dive: on the surface, the waves are hautnign you and stirring and rocking you, but just some meters below, the water is is calm and more peaceful.

But it takes courage to make that first step. Or big suffering that makes one believe one has no other choice.

You currently are set for looking after some answers to existential crisis you seem to face at this time of your life. I cannot help poyu muc h, just turn your head into a direction where to look yourself, thining that at that direction you have the best chances to see something that might be of help for you. Therefore, I would like to recommend you two books. I know them both inside out, and have worked with them and used them in classes/courses. This is no attempt by me to missionise, do not get me wrong. I am cnvinced indeed that everybody can read them and see their value without being offended or feelig crioticised, no matter whether he is atheist, Jew, Christian or Hindu. The only people who will feel offended are fundamentalists, conservatives in hate of chnages, and clever Dicks thinking they already know it all.

http://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Free...5757309&sr=8-1

This is a book I learned at university, I got iontroduced to it by my professor at that time who accompanied me until my diploma. It's great in leading people to a way of asking questions by which they m,ust not accept knpowledge given to them on a silver plate, but find the answers themselves, and in right the exact dosis meeting their capabilities best. Do not be mistaken by the title: the book does nto give you answers. It is filled with questions and doubts from the first to the last page.
Tjhe author is a Tibetan scholar, but the book neverthjeless is "cultiure-free", there is no Buddhist terminology or indoctrination. Everything it says you can check and analyse yourself, maitaining an empirical working method in the best meaning of it.

http://www.amazon.com/Free-Yourself-...5757843&sr=8-1

This is the best and the only book I recommend on the issue of spirituality. Do not think of it in terms of obscure religion just because of the title. I know the author, he has been my second teacher after I left Berlin, and I owe him a lot, he also chased me away after a while and said that he could not teach me more and that I should teach myself, which for the years to come I did (without his kick I never would have found the courage to do so). At the time he wrote that book, he used to be without compromise, and very pragmatic. He meant it well and thus was supportive, friendly - but kind of harsh. Fighting to gain inner freedom is no adventurous or sentimental issue, no soft wallowing in cosy emotions and collective feel-well sit-ins. It is a brutal battle: tough, lonely, desperate, and it is about nothing else but your life (and freedom). Every priest or social worker or helpful spirit telling you different and offering you softer, easier "shortcuts", is a lying bastard and should get his tongue ripped out.

Again, this is not just some more scriptutre trying to missionise people into Buddhism or Christianity. I am atheist, so I hardly feel any loyalty for churches, Buddhists or Christian communities. There is little sense in trying to put in words what "it" is all about, but this little book gets that impossible job better done than most others. But one word of advise: I am hesitent to recommend it, because by past experiences I know that many people find it too uncompromising, even merciless - most did not read it to the end, for that reason. And it is all that indeed, in a way. It leaves the reader no space to play foolish mindgames, or to manouver in an effort to evade uncomfortable truths. Either read it in full, or do not even start. The worst you can do is to start reading it and then break off after the first quarter because you think what you believed in so far is being put into doubt too much.

If you want to soar with a paraglide, sooner or later you must jump out of the plane, even if it scares you.

These two usually are the only two books I ever recommend when somebody asked me for a book on these issues. You did not ask, I know, but I wanted to give you something more than just a forum post, something that you can take into your hands, carry home and start investigating.

I hope it serves you well. But I don't say it is easy travelling. If you curse me first, but later smile, I know that I did something right. If you only smile, then I know that my intention failed.

Good luck!