lost and found

[compost]

Some time ago my boss and I were chatting over lunch. I was a chippies labourer and it was becoming glaringly obvious to both of us that this was probably not the best career direction for me. Not because I couldn't handle the work, but after several years in the construction industry, I was sick of it, and it didn't suit my personality. My boss posed to me that I "hadn't found myself yet".

This phrase got on my nerves. What the hell can it mean?..

I think it relates to how we see our individual roles in society. In this case it referred to my indecision on what 'career path' to take.

It also meant I was still on a journey of self-discovery...as if there's a finish line for this journey (when you find yourself), which once crossed, you're magically endowed with wisdom, contentment and understanding about your place in the world. So on this 'journey' we refer to 'where we were' (mentally, spiritually..) at different points in our lives to assess 'where we are now' and 'where we can go' - a linear concept - which I’m not entirely satisfied with.

On the other hand it could mean I should submit to a role imposed on me by society; that once I find myself in a comfortable position (career, family, status, whatever..), I have 'found myself' and can now judge whether or not others have 'found themselves'.

Would you say you've 'found yourself'? and what do you mean by this.

(we're you once lost? ... how are you not lost now?)

[Alchemica]

Great question, glad you asked . Keen to hear what others have to say.

Definitely understand about the indecision on the career path front...

I see it as only something the individual can answer for themselves... for me, "finding myself" would be something like getting back into a productive state where I can appreciate the day, support myself and loved ones to the best of my ability and know that I've done something positive for me, something for others, something for the world and in the end, something positive for the future as a whole, yet not lost the "me" or the simple pleasures in life. Even if it's only something small. Ultimately, learning from the good and the mistakes, avoiding them in the future if necessary and lending a hand where needed.

...as for the journey to "find myself" ending? Not so sure... but it certainly has to settle down soon in my case. I like to see it as a continual work in progress. Just making sure that I don't get too lost again, otherwise it's a bit a job trying to find anything. A bit of socialising, synchronicity, rational thinking and karma to keep it in check though.

Anyway, I like the quote, cant remember where it's from but "Sometimes you have to get lost in order to find yourself, happy hunting"

Having a deep think about it all this weekend, will add to this post if I come up with a better reply.

Edited September 12, 2009 by Alchemica

[toby]

Great question, glad you asked . Keen to hear what others have to say.

Definitely understand about the indecision on the career path front...

I see it as only something the individual can answer for themselves... for me, "finding myself" would be something like getting back into a productive state where I can appreciate the day, support myself and loved ones to the best of my ability and know that I've done something positive for me, something for others, something for the world and in the end, something positive for the future as a whole, yet not lost the "me" or the simple pleasures in life. Even if it's only something small. Ultimately, learning from the good and the mistakes, avoiding them in the future if necessary and lending a hand where needed.

...as for the journey to "find myself" ending? Not so sure... but it certainly has to settle down soon in my case. I like to see it as a continual work in progress. Just making sure that I don't get too lost again, otherwise it's a bit a job trying to find anything. A bit of socialising, synchronicity, rational thinking and karma to keep it in check though.

Anyway, I like the quote, cant remember where it's from but "Sometimes you have to get lost in order to find yourself, happy hunting"

Having a deep think about it all this weekend, will add to this post if I come up with a better reply.

Perhaps lost is a disconnect, where the searching is all about individual identity, and found is an observation of all that is and recognizing it as aspects of self and having the ability to engage with it as such.

Using every experience as one of looking at self, not looking for self?

[nabraxas]

yeah, i think it's more finding a balance within yourself.

a balance where all the different aspects/drives/needs ov your personality are in a contentment inducing harmony.

obviously this is not a final state, as time goes by events both within & out ov your control will affect that balance.

With age/experience it becomes relatively more easy to regain that balance, but sometimes people loose that sense ov balance completely & have "mid-life crisis", so "no" there is never really an "end" to the process.

[ThunderIdeal]

Would you say you've 'found yourself'? and what do you mean by this.

pretty severely a couple of times.

found yourself = witnessed yourself as god once

doesn't constitute an end to any journey, you are hiding all the time, just means you can remember finding yourself once.

Edited September 13, 2009 by ThunderIdeal

[drugo]

Max Weber suggests that the modern self is highly indebted to religious asceticism; a protestant work ethic which emerged in full colours at the turn into modernity. More specifically, during the Catholic Reformation, the early days of capitalism and the industrial revolution. Long story short, this dude reckons that the rational organisation of labour, distinct of Western capitalism, fed off the Protestant idea that everyone has a 'calling' in their life. Before the Calvinists/Puritans and Protestants mutated the idea, in the middle ages this 'calling' used to be for clergy and church folk in regards to their divine relationship. These days, according to Weber, our highly specialisated work force has evolved out of a protestant work ethic which hails that everyone has a specific 'calling' in life, a 'calling' which we are to find.

This calling is crudely defined as your job. One of the most fundamental questions people ask when meeting each other, generally, in the West, is, 'what do you do for a living?', sometimes abbreviated simply as 'what - do - you - do?'. This is a protestant work ethic question. In the modern West the centre of a persons identity generally surrounds their job. I think this next quote is about as pessimistic as Weber gets (a lot argue that he took it too far, I think it's worth hearing, at the least):

the forward progress of bureaucratic mechanisation is irresistible… When a purely technical and faultless administration, a precise and objective solution of concrete problems is taken as the highest and only goal, then on this basis one can only say: away with everything but an official hierarchy which does these things as objectively, precisely, and “soullessly” as any machine… by it, the performance of each individual worker is mathematically measures, each man becomes a little cog in the machine, and aware of this, his one pre-occupation is whether he can becomes a bigger cog… it is still horrible to think that the world could one day be filled with nothing but those little cogs, little men clinging to little jobs and striving for bigger ones… The passion for bureaucracy… is enough to drive one to despair (cited in Sica 2005:53):.

I reckon that people do often find deep meaning in their work (contrary to Weber). I also reckon that the nature of our capitalistic system has produced particular kinds of attitudes to support itself. One attitude being, 'clinging to jobs like a purpose willed by god' (Weber).

When you boss said 'you haven't found yourself', maybe he is deeply interwoven with this common type of Western attitude - which can be rephrased as 'you haven't found your "calling"'.

I tend to feel that my life is a collection of "callings" morphing in and out of each other, kinda' like the various forms wind takes flowing through a majestic acacia in bloom.

[Yawning Man]

The start of this year was easily the darkest, shittiest place i've ever been in my 22 years. Unemployed, in debt, loniness, and living in a fucking box of a flat weighed on my mind enough for me to start getting really stressed, angry and depressed. It was really my fault for letting it get to that point, so i couldn't be angry at anyone but myself which again, fucked with my head and made me loose it a few times. This went on for many months, along with applying for god knows how many jobs and getting knocked back by almost all of them caused me to loose interest in most of what life had. Couldn't even be fucked caring for my plants.

I look back and consider that was a period where i was lost. Everytime i found an ally way that looked like it could pull me from that shit it ended quickly because i was just so distracted and worried about the shit that was going on. So i couldn't perform and second guessed everything i did. And every time i'd land back to square one thinking what the fuck am i going to do with myself. I felt alone!!

It was only when i made the decision to leave melbourne that things got better. Distancing myself from something that just wasn't right for me. I want to travel and explore and living in an expensive shit hole with fuck all money was taking me nowhere fast. Things suddenly became VERY simple and much of my confidence and esteem has returned. I feel focused and am laughing at how good things are now.

So, in this experience, i was lost. Because i didn't know what i was doing or what to do. Where to turn. All my decisions were the wrong ones. Bailing on the whole experience made things clear again. I think i've found myself somewhat. Working towards going overseas, acknowledging that my mental health might not be the best and seeking help to try and fix this. Going back to my hobbies and interests help reduce stress and help my think about where i want to be going and where i can succeed..where i can find myself.

Although there are many aspects to me. Is it a question on what parts of myself i want to work on and what i get rid of. But then, letting go of something that was a part of me means that i'm a different person once it's gone. A new self.

Great question Compost.

cheers

[Rabelais]

Interesting little read mooksha.

I sometimes think I have no one singular 'calling'. My calling is the search for my calling.

Comes down to those old inalienable rights of man.

"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

[ramon]

Starting to think more and more that I have found myself.

Can't say I ever thought I was lost as the path always seemed to be predetermined but it just didn't lead to where all the signpost stated.

[botanika]

What the hell can it mean?..

In this case it referred to my indecision on what 'career path' to take.

you have answered your own question. He's your boss not a shaman.

[drugo]

Although there are many aspects to me. Is it a question on what parts of myself i want to work on and what i get rid of. But then, letting go of something that was a part of me means that i'm a different person once it's gone. A new self.

Great question Compost.

cheers

Great response Yawner, thanks for sharing your roller-coaster experience. I've had a few times in my life that probably relate to your 'boxed existence' of early this year. I tend to feel that life is pretty void without suffering, not to say we should aspire to suffer. Rather, it seems that suffering is fundamental, it's a key faculty in how we destroy and create ourselves and also how to get to know ourselves better [especially if we understand suffering in this way]. Much love.

[Siggor]

it's funny when people are sick of something they come up with something like that,

we are never lost, only the realisation, a vocation is not a person.

the realisation is BE who YOU are, BE your morals/ethics, honesty, trust, free, then it wouldn't matter what your vocation is you can pretty much do anything and be free within yourself, everything else will follow.

[drugo]

Interesting little read mooksha.

I sometimes think I have no one singular 'calling'. My calling is the search for my calling.

Comes down to those old inalienable rights of man.

"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

A kind of infinite search?? paralleled by an infinite finding? I'm hearin' ya

But I'm not so sure if those 'inalienable rights of man' are universal in the way you might think.

The idea of 'liberty', as is rampant in the West these days, emerged out of 19th century political philosophers - Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau - and is widely critisiced by intellectuals as being a sort of shallow, misleading term that makes those in the West feel 'correct' and superior in their understanding of themselves. All cultures are a balancing act between rules and room for creative movements. If there was no 'repression', no rules, it would be an all against all shit fight [according to Hobbes, Rousseau would argue against this]. Habermas is a key thinker who hails that 'liberty' is a gimmick of Western culture. Liberty as a kind of misleading term is obvious in, for example, consumerism and the idea that you are free to buy whatever disposable shit you want, [or can]; 'design' your individuality, express yourself through the clothes, car, house you buy and all the lame meaning making activities associated with consumerism. It seems that the really disturbing thing is that people deeply involved in this set-up are usually oblivious to the fact that their personal impulses and desires to consumer shit have been embedded, or 'programmed', in them by powerful cultural regimes such as the main story-telling devise of our culture [film], backed up by advertising, marketing, and t.v. in general. These elitist regimes are supported by an army of dosile consumers which maintain the capitalist ethos, you know, the whole rich / poor divide suffocating the world.

This type of 'social-constructivst' thinking is incredibly indebted to Heidegger and the idea that we live, always, in a world - we see the world through the world we live in, so to speak, and it's not like we can ever 'step-back' or 'get-behind' our view of the world and see it 'objectively'. Objects are always experienced in a matrix of meaning at the whim of historical cultural convention, in other words, for the West, the Greeks [reasoning], the Christians [sacred/profane or good and evil], the Enlightenment philosophers and scientists [reasoning, minus God], 19th cent political philosophers, and finally, postmodern ideas [deconstructionism] seems to be slowly trickling into popular thought. Heidegger says that we are not the bearers of historical ways of thinking and being-in-the-world, rather, we are slaves to history. I've found entheogens [used well] to be powerful tools for releasing the ugly, heavy, shackles of the past which have been holding me down for so long now. I'm sure many of you have had experiences, high on a tryptamine, of looking at an object, like a flower, and seeing it in a kind of naked, primordial, state, removed from the idea of it being a flower and becoming immersed in the basic experience of being-with-the-flower, so to speak. The idea of the flower is often the thing which steals you from yourself and puts you into the hands of cultural elites. For a more obvious example, the 'idea' of race changes so many peoples basic perception of how they see someone else. We live and 'see' through culture, through "ideas"; a lot of shit ideas of the past, residue from historical ways of thinking and being.

I hope the rant is welcome.

Freedom, or liberty, is an important idea, but we must be careful of the complex motivation hiding behind and within freedom claims. As often they are simply enforcing immoral repressive regimes.

[compost]

Going back to my hobbies and interests help reduce stress and help my think about where i want to be going and where i can succeed..where i can find myself.

This snippet has actually stuck in my head as a useful reminder lately, thanks!.

the realisation is BE who YOU are, BE your morals/ethics, honesty, trust, free, then it wouldn't matter what your vocation is you can pretty much do anything and be free within yourself, everything else will follow.

Sure that's all good in some soul essence kind of way.. but not what my lived experience is like. I'm an anxious mofo stuck in capitalist history described above. So I tend to think we are pretty much always lost.. either way though!

I reckon its often only once a period like these are written down and pieced together into a timeline that we can apply our ideas, and make some sense of it. unless you live in the eternal now or something?

hell i dig the posts mooksha, you sure can pack it in!

The idea of the flower is often the thing which steals you from yourself and puts you into the hands of cultural elites.

[Siggor]

i used to be exactly the same, no job, labeled a misfit, depresso, angry and anxious, i had no hope, no life, but once you start to peel away at the layers of those emotions, you will find that they serve no purpose, they are pretty much created to cause distraction,

one of my major fears was a social one, out in public used to suck big time for me, then i looked at the fear from a different angle, was it useful in my life to have this fear, or what would happen in these social situations that i was fearful of, then found out that it can't hurt/harm me in anyway so i worked through the fear, by being present in the situations, and found that nothing bad is going to happen.

how is being angry, depresso, anxious going to enhance your life in any way.

i have came along since those days, once you come into your own the only thing that really matters is happiness.

what purpose is your emotions serving you? are they apart of the plan of the person you want to become, if you had the opportunity to let go of these emotions would you allow yourself to? would you accept the new person that you are going to become? set yourself on the path, don't think the change is going to happen quickly for you. put in the work and you will see a newer you in no time.

[compost]

assuming you're writing at me?...i'm not sure what your projecting, but my opening post was framed as a point of departure into a discussion about how to conceptualise such things. not an expression of my angst and depression and a search for a final answer!

on the other hand i wont deny all you describe is a part of myself as well. thanks for the advice.

in fact i think nabraxas summed the whole thing up nicely, but its kind of crap to finish a thread on that.

[Siggor]

it was more to everybody that has lived similar paths.

sorry to bum out the thread.

[compost]

I guess I'm promoting autobiography as something useful.

The posts with some personal stories are the best imo. 'Mapping out' the past allows new ideas of 'the path' to form. Writing it out gives you a clear reference, defines your stance, otherwise the past is condemned to float around in your head or sink away. This specifically applies to our own ideas about our own life development, but corresponds with things like song writing or drawing etc, where over time you can observe some progressive improvement.

It also corresponds with cultural history, except we only culturally 'use' our historical lessons half-assed? (much like myself really..)

So if I can remix a bit, in another go at making sense; writing around our individual ideas that are lived through culture is also

powerful tools for releasing the ugly, heavy, shackles of the past which have been holding me down for so long now.

[Yawning Man]

Great response Yawner, thanks for sharing your roller-coaster experience. I've had a few times in my life that probably relate to your 'boxed existence' of early this year. I tend to feel that life is pretty void without suffering, not to say we should aspire to suffer. Rather, it seems that suffering is fundamental, it's a key faculty in how we destroy and create ourselves and also how to get to know ourselves better [especially if we understand suffering in this way]. Much love.

Thanks bro. I actually agree with what you're saying about suffering. In my limited understanding of some cultures, suffering is a fundamental part of their sprituality (dont ask me what cultures lol). But personally i would agree that suffering is essential in moving past stages of life that may hold a person back. It was the negative emotions and the like that stripped the useless thoughts, ideas and exposed the most essential that i needed to focus on in order to get my life back on track, in the direction i wanted it. So, in a way it made things clearer and easier to understand. If that makes sense?

We cant appreciate all the good stuff without having gone through the crap. While i'm here Mooksha, i should say i really enjoy a lot of your threads/posts. You've got some great ideas and some knowledge man.

cheers

[drugo]

Thanks bro. I actually agree with what you're saying about suffering. In my limited understanding of some cultures, suffering is a fundamental part of their sprituality (dont ask me what cultures lol). But personally i would agree that suffering is essential in moving past stages of life that may hold a person back. It was the negative emotions and the like that stripped the useless thoughts, ideas and exposed the most essential that i needed to focus on in order to get my life back on track, in the direction i wanted it. So, in a way it made things clearer and easier to understand. If that makes sense?

It's almost like we tumble and crawl through the depths of hell as a particular and essential mode of being in 'our' world. It's hard to imagine, i think, but try to conceive of life as being pure 'positivity' - as in your whole life - In one hand it is kind of appealing, on the other hand it seems kind of void or 'lacking'. Maybe, in order for our lives to have form, to be something 'in themselves', they need to play within an arena of positive and negative, a life of "yes" and "no"?? I mean, for those who have experienced something like finite dissociation and a melting into the "oneness" of the infinite cosmos, the experience of complete "oneness" may be seen as one polar extreme [like black and white poles with a profoundly complex system of grey shades (your life) between]; with "hell" - suffering, pain, struggle, "no" - being the extreme at the other end of the dichotomy. Maybe life is a dance between these dualities, like how a trapeze act is a balance between the performer and gravity - shit, does that mean that the 'performer' gravitates towards a particular 'extreme' (maybe "negativity", suffering, pain) whilst in the process being 'sculptured', or 'sculpturing' life in a struggle towards the positive, OR, in other words, the "negative" extreme gives space for movement and form, for you to be a something and not just "one" - positivity. It seems that, like a canvas for expression, life has an essential background of "negativity"; to continue the trapeze metaphor, a type of gravity. Experiencing no gravity sounds pretty cool, but it seems that "gravity" offers a complex system for 'sculpturing' one's life like a trapeze act, like a poetic expression of movement amongst struggle and play. One's life being the key to understanding the idea here. Consider how difference makes up the world, the existence of different things that are shadowed by a totality of agreement, a "oneness". The negative charge seems to offer us a platform for becoming. I'm not sure if negative is "bad" and positive is "good" in the common understanding. Maybe they are both essential, both Good as foundational for growth in self-"Other" creativity.

Fuck that is some serious ranting! A lot of the suffering ideas are inspired by, and a derivative of, Nietzsche and his take on 'nihilism' - for those of you possible wanting to look further into that. Life as suffering, so to speak, is a popular way of looking at the world. Buddhist say it, Theravada and Mahayana traditions may differ on how to deal with suffering, but both see it as fundamental to the finite being. It's interesting that you [Yawner] said that for some cultures suffering is a fndamental part of their spirituality. Nietzsche would say that this is the case for all cultures - he would 'see' western spiritualities probably as somethings like consumerism and nationalism [true-blue aussie mateship; die for your collective associations trip]. For consumer example, in order to consume the fancy car and benefit from all the spiritual rewards associated with it, like social status and social capital, most people need to slave their arses at a job they most probably don't jump out of bed in the morning to go to. There is a deep sense of suffering within the motivations of popular western "spirituality" ie. consumerism, nationalism.

It is worth trying to understand this idea of Western suffering in relation to suffering in certain pre-modern societies, such as Indigenous Australian states and countries, or "bands" and "tribes"; the Kamilaroi of North NSW - just over the mountains - were the largest Aboriginal Australian country before white-man slaughter "progress" policies came. The majority of Indigenous Australian pre-modern societies used powerful and intricate rites of passage to instill the idea AND experience of suffering as a basic element of being human - along with instilling a heap of other shit. Boys used to get it 'worse' than girls. Usually, when the time is right in a boys adolescence, his uncle and a few other adult men; or some significant kinship/community combination of people who the boy looks up to, take the boy away from the community for sometimes up to 2 years. In this period the boy would experience rigorous rituals, like going on hard-core bushwalks which do things like offering the opportunity for the old to teach the young 'secrets' and understandings, through dialogue/chatting, of how the world/cosmos is and the boys position in it. Other, what will seem like for us, more extreme rituals include intense physical pain, types of body modification such as scarification and circumcision [each act is intricately and carefully laden with symbolic meaning for integrating the boy into society AND himself as a spiritual being which suffers].

Some argue that the current rites of passage governing the majority of Western life transitions [getting drunk, laid, wedding, buying car, house] is a bit lacking - that the transition from child to adolescent and adolescent to adult is murky and some times 'missed' resulting in confused adults that don't really understand themselves as a political and spiritual being - a being that suffers, creates, destroys, and lives in a world which relates to, or is involved in, numinous or profound spiritual existence.

I don;t know if we should all run to the hills and scar each other's foreheads, but maybe our culture can offer rites of passage that have a bit better of a direction than getting drunk, laid, and buying shit.

Imagine locally organised rites of passage with a few distinguished individuals from your community, who really know what they are doing, offering intense, guided entheogenic experiences to assist in kids discovering themselves as teenagers and teenagers discovering themselves as adults ---------- just a thought.

To sum up, I guess I feel that suffering ain't "bad" in the way I used to think it was, and maybe we need to dissolve our 'abstracted individualism' into (1) the community of those around us, (2) our personal 'inner' community, and (3) the communities of our future. What better way to help with this triad than a huge dose of locally picked subs. or cubes, ingested next to intelligent wise motherfuckers and within a powerful ritualistic context.

Below is an abstract from Aldous Huxley's novel Island. The book is about a Utopian society. The following bit describes a socially integrated kid to teenager rite of passage using moksha-Medicine. It is also interesting to consider that Huxley was well into the benefits of mescaline and lsd.

the first stage of their initiation out of childhood into adolescence...In a few minutes these boys and girls will be given their first experience of moksha-medicine...this is more than just a piece of theological rigmarole. Thanks to the moksha-Medicine, it includes an actual experience of the real thing...The real thing isn’t a proposition; it’s a state of being. We don’t teach our children creeds or get them worked up over emotionally charged symbols. When it’s time for them to learn the deepest truths of religion, we set them to climb a precipice and then give them four hundred milligrams of revelation. Two first hand experiences of reality, from which any reasonably intelligent boy or girl can derive a very good idea of what’s what (Huxley 1962:160).

Edited October 11, 2009 by mooksha

[drugo]

Reichel-Dolmatoff ( Amazonian Cosmos: The Sexual and Religious Symbolism of the Tukano Indians 1971:174) regarding a Tukano ayahuasca adolescent to adult rite of passage describes that: 'On awakening from the trance, the individual remains convinced of the truth of the religious teachings. He has seen everything; he has seen Vai-mahse [Master of Game Animals] and the Daughter of the Sun, he has heard her voice; he has seen the Snake-Canoe float through the rivers, and he has seen the first men spring from it. The voice of the kumu [ritual leader] has guided him and has explained everything to him in detail.

[drugo]

move to other

Edited October 12, 2009 by mooksha