noahfor

Hi, I am extremely depressed and terrified since having a bad acid trip over two months ago and coming to believe in Buddhism/Taoism without having any real idea what they are about, except what I experienced in my trip. I know that sounds really stupid, and you can probably just laugh it off as something some stupid kid is thinking, but I am in pain. It is very real to me and very terrible. Can anyone clear some stuff up for me maybe, or explain why it's not as bad as it sounds? There is no self. Therefore, there are no other selves. Therefore, everyone I've ever known is an illusion, so everything good and meaningful I've ever know, such as a parents love or just knowing my parents, is an illusion, and attachment, an image, and not real. There are no unique individuals. There is no real love because love is between people not just between random thoughts that come out of nowhere. It's all just a bunch of mind stuff coming to be out of nothing. It's all just so horrible and lonely sounding. I mean I love my girlfriend. But, really I don't and it's just an illusion. She's just an illusion. If we're all one, what is the point of my existence? If I die there's no change to either me, since I don't exist, or to the world. It's just so bleak. Is everything I hold sacred, such as a parents love, and love between two people really just an illusion? It's just selfishness somehow, or an attachment? I don't want more. I don't want to feel it again. I just want to know it was real and exactly as I experienced it. Is it just God loving himself playing some game? How is this not horrible? "We are all one" is probably the loneliest hell I can imagine. Pure hell. I can't imagine anything worse. Some lonely god playing hide and seek with himself to keep himself from knowing the terror of lonely eternity. Now, there is probably something I'm not getting, or I'm not getting everything. I realize this. But, I can't stop feeling this way. Here are some ideas that I have found somewhat comforting. Do they make any sense? The self is like the way a person looks. There is no one thing that I person looks like. You can't point at anything and say "that's what they look like." You'll only ever get one image of one instant from one angle. But, you can always recognize someone you know. Notes coming to be and passing away isn't silence, but a song. If you look for the song in the notes themselves you'll never find it.

Oh, okay, I understand what you're saying. I don't really have any familiarity with the concepts other than what I've read on the internet and heard over my lifetime. I wasn't really attempting to explore them either. This thread has been a big help to me, and I really am thankful for all of the advice. I'm going to take it, and leave on what I think is a good note. I need a break from thinking, and I'm going to try and ground myself in some manner. If I ever decide I need to start exploring again, I will do it the right way, or a better way at least. Thank you all.

That wasn't supposed to sound good. It was supposed to sound like something that makes all of life meaningless and horrible, which is what it feels like to me. I did go to the hospital, but it turns out it was just some intake program they have set up. I won't be able to see a therapist for a couple of weeks. I did talk to a therapist while I was there, but it wasn't really therapy. It was just them getting information from me.

Thanks for that. So if my girlfriend gives me a hug and I feel "this is real, this is meaningful, this is who I am in this moment, this is love" it isn't some confused attachment, addiction, desire, or misunderstanding? It is actually what I think it is? It just seems like in the face of "life is suffering" every part of life is meaningless and artificial, even when I feel like it isn't. Being around people and enjoying them as people and their company is just an illusion, fake, worthless pleasure, and an addiction.

I think I've found another big stumbling block for myself and that is this: that enlightenment and the enlightened perspective represents the absolute best way to be, the only truth, the only right things to do, and as a result makes every other deed or thought ugly, confused, and wrong. Like a parent's wanting to have a child, build a family, and show the child the wonder and beauty of life that they have seen themselves is all wrong, and really just a confused mess of egotism, attachment, false love, and other horrors. It makes it seem like the only real beauty and truth is in being enlightened, which sort of undermines all of life besides that of the enlightened.

Does an enlightened "individual" still have likes and dislikes?

By unique and exist, I mean that other people have their own thoughts, feelings, memories, and experiences, which in turn shape more thoughts, and feelings, and memories. I'd like to believe that there are ways that it feels like to be my girlfriend that no one else has ever felt. That when I see her make a certain face I can almost recognize these ways of feelings that she uniquely has, and know that I'm with someone who feels the way she does. I take your assurance that you are not a clone to mean that this is not a dream, which is what I thought you were saying wouldn't be so bad. In a dream I do know what everyone is thinking and did last week, which is nothing, since characters in a dream do not have thoughts or histories.

If I can get a girlfriend and have success, so can you. Even before this happened, I was depressed, angry, cold, and virtually non-existent socially, and I've still managed to convince her to stay around for 8 years. I am a complete robot around other people. I've never been able to work for myself because of my social problems. People are incredibly loving. There are thousands and thousands of people who would love you.

I don't get horribly depressed waking up from a dream because usually I realize I'm waking up into a world where unique individuals, whom I know and have a real history with, actually exist, from one in which people don't actually have their own unique personalities, histories, feelings, or experiences. I'm fine with loving everyone equally, but hopefully each love would have its own unique character and understanding, so that I'm loving the way people actually think and feel on the basis of who I am, and not just loving generically or anonymously a bunch of clones who happen to all be me.

We're not all somehow having the exact same experience though are we? On some level there are different unique individuals?

Thanks for all the responses. I'm comforted by some of the ideas presented, but also by hearing the uncomfortable ones coming from a human. One thing that I find very troubling is this: To an ant, I am a giant. To a giant, I am an ant. To an even bigger giant, that giant is an ant. There really are no giants or ants. Likewise, to me, my sweet old Mom is just that, or can be that. But, to someone else, and even herself, she is something different. This seems very sad to me, like we might as well not know each other. Even if people aren't just one thing, can we even say anything true about them ever at all at any moment? Is there some perspective from which someone like Hitler would appear exactly as my mom appears to me? I am going to see a mental health professional tomorrow morning.

I don't believe I had any insights at all. I believe that I have a very confused, lonely, and in a way a very egotistical mind, and the drugs opened up a gateway to hell. I have been depressed and lonely for a very long time and that can make a person very self centered because one is always worrying about one's own condition. Yes, it could all be in my head, and yet it all fits together so seamlessly and subtly that it's hard to eradicate. I've been reading and reading, but it seems to only make it worse. But, I can't stop believing it. I just don't know how to stop believing something that seems so true. No matter what arguments I come up with, I just automatically doubt them because the self is an illusion and we are all one. I just believe those things and I can't stop. I don't even mind if this is all just pretend, just as long as other people are not just illusions and are their own thinking, loving, laughing selves.

Hi, I am Noah. I moved the content of this thread to the other forum because it made more sense there.