Just One Look Forum Archives

Is this possible? I've read many of the other wonderful reports of recovery, and I've yet to see anything like what people have described. (Maybe some of them flower their words up a bit, or exaggerate, etc. ) , no way of really knowing.

The more I do the Looking, seems like most things stay the same, and some things get worse :(

And I can't tell if it's my shitty Life or the Looking that's making things turn dark and sour. Which they are currently.

If this Looking thing is going to work for me at all, I have a sickening feeling I'm one of the ones it's going to take 15 years of Looking for this Fever of Fear to break.

Maybe because I have aspergers and I am naturally a mind-centered type person, not to mention I come from an emotionally bereft and crazy family.

Things are really confusing, and don't seem to be getting better. I now the Looking won't pay my bills, or get me stable place to live in, or friends, or the rest of it.

The Looking's made me realize there's not hope to life, and that I really don't like most people. I mean really, I don't. I don't enjoy interacting with people, or doing business with them.

Being born on a benighted planet chocked full of mechanized belligerently psychotic power-mongering Apes will do that to ya.

Funny how all the people seeking help out there are convinced (through society and the system) that it's THEM that's wrong. Oh no, it's not the world, or the system, or this species of avaricious technologically clever and soulless apes, oh no, it's YOU. lol The ultimate mind-job if you ask me. Amazing how they turn all this on the one seeking help.

I really don't know if this Looking will bear long-lasting fruit, but I'll keep on trekking,

I don't know what else to do.

What's needed now is for you to accept the fact that the looking itself does nothing except to reset the mind so that it can begin to do just two things simultaneously:

First, it will starve the psychological structures that have come into being to protect you from the experiences that the fear has deemed dangerous and harmful. And second it will provide you with the ability to determine for yourself what is worth your attention and what is harmful or useless to you. The rest is entirely in your hands. You need not be at the mercy of the neurotic structures that have come into being to serve the fear.

You say after..."The Looking's [has] made me realize there's not hope to life, and that I really don't like most people. I mean really, I don't. I don't enjoy interacting with people, or doing business with them". And as far as the..."Being born on a benighted planet chocked full of mechanized belligerently psychotic power-mongering Apes"...we both know John is not one of them. After the medicine of just one look at me, the torrential arising of thoughts may continue. The instantaneous reformation may, perhaps, take 15 years to notice as having already taken place, but take heart. This simple medicine will certainly alleviate even suicide as the only option--you are now just WET with, not guilty of thoughts. The felt perniciousness of all thoughts arising will stand down as you keep trekking along. Also sometimes in the midst of fevered thoughts drink a glass of water. It will help with dehydration.

Little Owl,

I understand where you're coming from. My recovery has its fits and starts....things go smoothly and then everything seems to regress. One step forward, two steps back. I was somewhat fortunate in that after I did the looking I didn't even think about it. I had no hope that it would work, in fact I forgot about it completely. I had already given up on myself and was resigned to living with my anxiety and depression for the rest of my life. So, I didn't even think to measure myself against the looking to see if there was progress.

About six months after I looked (and it was a cursory look as I thought it was complete BS and I was done with promises of transformation and spiritual redemption) I started having a really bad time. I had regressed to intense anxiety and depression like I hadn't felt in decades. I had no idea what was happening, but, it was interesting, I sort of handled it better than I did decades ago. I just figured I was older and wiser. Somehow it occurred to me to go back to this website. There I read about the recovery and realized I was having the exact symptoms John and others described. It took awhile to retrace my steps and figure out when I did the looking....i had so completely forgetting and buried it. After this I relaxed a bit, but it was difficult because along with intense anxiety, depression, and severe insomnia, I was incredibly angry. I am not typically an angry person, so I was stunned by this low, seething anger that was with me all the time and then would break out into full blown rage at times, startling me and those around me....as you can imagine.

It did help to have the resources here, John's retreat videos and podcasts, as well as the forum. I very gradually regained my prior functioning, probably about a year, and then after this noticed that I was gradually losing my lifelong anxiety and shame. It was like sitting in a bath tub, the water receding very slowly, all the while I sat naked in dirty water that was getting colder. But drain it did.

Now, over three years later, my life doesn't feel that profound or exceptional....unless I compare it to how I felt 2 1/2 years ago, then I feel truly reborn. It seems I am just more optimistic. Where once I gave up in the face of anxiety, addictions, shame, problems of every flavor, depression, obsessional thinking (learned helplessness) now I ignore negative and hopeless cognitive constructs more easily and try to find a way to solve the problem. Because problems still come, expected and unexpected. I had a true test of this over the summer when I had a series of life events; deaths, changes, etc, that would have put me in the hospital before the looking. I am still recovering from that time, but its like there are two programs running, the recovery program that is grinding away, ferreting out all the insidious effects of the fear of life, and then the life program, which is just my old life running sweetly and viciously as usual.

All I can say is hang in there. I am sure the looking worked, is working, for me. Maybe just forget about it for awhile....just live, and don't think about whether you are changing or not. Take a measure several months from now and see if things change. The changes are subtle....

Regards,

J

Thanks Jack, John, and everybody. Good answers. And the identification is comforting. Even though this practice is not spiritual (or religious) it does seem to require a modicum of faith. And this is coming from a longtime atheist here.

Talk to you guys soon.

Happy road to sanity, all of you.

That's a new thought for me, little owl, but I think you're right, we do need faith. Happy new year to you and all on this forum.

As I consider no gap between me and my life, this intimacy prompts trust in me, in my life, whatever they both are. And as well as each moment is now open to attending a resourceful life.