Hi Jay,
I am writing you at 3am. I have been reading words on your site for perhaps 20 minutes (longer, shorter, difficult to say these days). In the beginning, and with some existential dread, I thought you might be an AI or a bot programmed to bring human wisdom to a worldly population buried in an ever-growing sea of meaningless distraction and electronically-fed anxiety.
But if you are a bot or sophisticated AI, or just a human with a brain, I wanted to thank you for creating this site. It has brought me down from a very electric and dangerous mental cliff. Tonight I came across this with my mind in a spiral of doubt, angst, horror and madness. I was questioning why my world had become deeply steeped in meaninglessness, in sadness, in confusion and purposelessness.
Why the world around me seemed hostile at best, evil at worst. I wondered why – with so much joy in my past, so many good experiences and friendships and love – did I feel like… I was ending. Like I had done all the things, seen all the stuff, run smack-dab against a wall that curved around me and towered above me signaling I had nowhere left to run, that I was finished. I came here asking myself how on Earth it would be possible to continue to live if life felt so heavy and scary, all of the time.
But your site guided me into some words and -inherent- possibilities that opened a mental curtain and brought some space. Like a breeze began to flow through the static. Reading about purpose as opposed to possession, distraction, job, money – reading that these social things did not by necessity contribute to a whole, good life – I didn’t know I had become so rooted in the external. I had become lost in the noise and forgot something of the human soul. Id let the world take little bits of my heart and Id patched those wounds with distraction and doing. I had forgotten the experience of living.
Anywho, thanks to you and this site for pulling me back to a calm space. It helped. It provided some levity and hope.
Appreciate you!
Dear Kate,
This is one of the most beautiful notes I’ve received, thank you so much for taking the time.
Often while writing I have a feeling (assurance?) that there is such a thing as universal truth, and what I share is an imperfect description of it – a refraction through my own (human) mind, similar to countless refractions offered by others. The refraction itself is never the important part, rather the thing it’s trying to point back to – the perspective we all have access to.
Feels like you connected with your inner world and its hallmark accompanying peace as wrote this… which is absolutely wonderful. This, in my opinion, is it.
Now the challenge is to “stay there”. Hold it as a home, and when things feel off, remember you are always simultaneously in that place – where everything is all good. Any implicit appetite or emotion that tempts you away will never feel quite as wonderful. You can smile at all the feelings life might offer here forward… indulging as you wish, but always knowing them purely as clouds in the sky, as opposed to believing them, being all-consumed by them. You ARE the sky, never the clouds. Your lightness is impervious to their influence.
I would love to hear if you are able to stick with this over time… meditation is a wonderful way to orient and re-orient (among other things), if you are not already familiar. If you can remember and are willing, please reach out in a few weeks (or months, years…) and let me know if your ease has stayed with you. (of course, your ease IS always with you, it’s simply a matter of feeling connected with it).
With your permission I’d love to share an anonymous version of your note and this response, but ultimately that is not important, no worries if not… what matters most is if you can hold this.
A couple articles that came to mind while reading your note (if you haven’t already found them)
With all sincerity and warmth,
Jay