Advice For Friend Who Is Having Existential Crisis

[jamman]

A very close friend of mine is having an existential crisis. Which is great - she's ripe for it, as she is 23 already. Below is what I came up with as advise for her. The advice is what I have taken from my Buddhist studies.

If you've never had and existential crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_crisis , this may not resonate.

And this is a long and possibly boring post. For whatever it is worth:

Occasionally I think about what you've been saying about what sounds like an appropriate and timely existential crisis. I hope that doesn't subside for you and leave you happy and normal as before - that would be bad.

Below are unedited notes that I wrote today, on paper.

Collectively we can spend thousands of years thinking we know something, but all we see are symbols and the rules governing interaction between these symbols. We can see the rules, and follow the logic. That is a type of knowledge, but is not deep understanding. Deeper understanding is knowing WHY something is meaningful at all, not just WHAT the meaning of something is.

Any language system can not give meaning to itself. Goedel proved this mathematically, but we can also see this logically quite easily. Language is symbols referring to something that is not a symbol. T-R-E-E means, or refers to, a certain pattern we can recognize. A concept replaces or substitutes for a recognized pattern. We would therefore have to stand outside of language itself to know what "meaning" means. What do we mean by meaning? We would have to point to meaning with something that is not meaning.

Nihilism is logically correct, yet fundamentally inconsistent. Goedell proved that too. Any linguistic system sophisticated enough to refer to itself can not be both consistent and complete. So therefore you can not say that EVERYTHING is meaningless. That is inconsistent, for if it were true, even that statement would be meaningless.

So just because you can NEVER explain what is the meaning of meaning with words does not, in fact CAN NOT, negate meaning.

The solution is in deeper understanding.

What is the meaning of a beautiful sunset? The answer is felt and embodied.

What is the meaning of moving music? The answer is felt and embodied.

The solution is in deeper understanding, not merely understanding the symbols and rules and formulations and all their interconnected relationshipos, but embodying all that as WHO WE ARE.

We have to transcend language before we can see what it means, the color red. What it means, the sound of the fan. What it means, the whole of language. What it means is us - we are inside a dream, looking at our hands, dreamer and dreamed are both dreamt. We transcend inside and outside, knower and known, and the question of meaning itself is born of us, yet not separate from us. It is below us, as is heaven. We are prior to it, yet it, like all manifest, is nothing other than us. Meaning is, yet we are what gives rise to it. We can't use meaning to see ourself, ourself is what sees meaning. We are the whole experience of the sunset and our body walking and the sand, inside and ouside and question, we are all that, that is all us, and still we are so deeply all that, so inseperable from it that we are therefor prior; that all changes, but our identity with it does not.

That all changes, but our identity with it does not.

Therefore we are prior to it, yet inseparable. Meaning is in the same relation to us.

So to really know deeply, of question of being must resolve itself with even each activity of seeing anything. What does it mean, the color red, the wind on cheek, the love in heart, this moment. It is meaning right now, at us.

Talking of the meaning of meaning may seem like irrelevant mental masturbation, but is only irrelevent to levels below higher rationality.

Most people never have an existential crisis, yet that is the required gateway to higher vision logic and the stages beyond. In fact the existential crisis is the birth pains of the centaur and vision logic.

The question of meaning only becomes a meaningful question once you can clearly see it. Ver, very few people have been totally grabbed by it. They are however the only people worth talking to; only they have any meaningful understanding of what "worth" means.

The centaur is the integration of mind and emotions and body as all embodied, and further, starting to embody language itself. To transcend and include all perspectives at-the-same-time.

You need a crisis of meaning as doorway, otherwise you will be stuck INSIDE language, trying to get meaning from within that, but as you can see, that enterprise is ultimately fruitless.

May you discover a good strong sense of nihilism and despair such that you have no idea whatsoever where to turn for solace. May you find insistent doubt. May all your answers lead you in circles back to your question. May you never be satisfied.

May you become the question, never for a moment dropping it.

Is this touching upon your experience? Am I right to interpret in your feelings of emptiness, loneliness, want, and suicidal thoughts an existential crisis of meaning? Can you intuit the solution I point to? See how important and meaningful is the issue of this pivotal point?

The solution, as I understand it, is to so totally understand the workings and limits of language as to therefor have understanding not be bound within language. You see that whole system, so therefore that system is no longer what you see with. You see the meaning of meaning, and no longer can the idea of meaning ever be used to measure you.

The only solution to existential crisis it to hold the tail of the tiger tightly, become the question. You are the one who is questioning, it is your question; the entire act of questioning has a meaning. The answer is in the question, the fact of the question, not what the question might refer to as answer.

People very rarely care about such logic, other than a few philosophers or serious Buddhist students. Bure really it is inevitable and it IS important.

One saint has always this same solution; look to see who it is that questions. Trungpa Rinpoche would often say "The question is the answer". I say, language can not point to its own meaning, so therefore heighten and widen your introspective awareness to include the questioner as well as the question, and so transcend language and look directly at it.

Well that, I'm sorry to say, is the best I can do. This email represents two dozen years of me holding the tail of the tiger. Not once have I succeeded in explaining to anyone what tiger I hold or why I hold it.

Just be the question. Please.

[ColPyat]

A very close friend of mine is having an existential crisis. Which is great - she's ripe for it, as she is 23 already. Below is what I came up with as advise for her. The advice is what I have taken from my Buddhist studies.

Maybe, instead of all the waffle, you should go and vistit her, forget the studies for a while and get drunk together and have a laugh.

[jamman]

A very close friend of mine is having an existential crisis. Which is great - she's ripe for it, as she is 23 already. Below is what I came up with as advise for her. The advice is what I have taken from my Buddhist studies.

Maybe, instead of all the waffle, you should go and vistit her, forget the studies for a while and get drunk together and have a laugh.

She lives in another country for one thing.

For another, an existential crisis isn't the same as just being down in the dumps. It can be a stage on the cusp of personal development, after which the world is never seen in the same way again. The metaphor most commonly used is the dark night of the soul http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_night_of_the_soul .

It can be a terrible time of great significance and ultimately very positive. NOT something you want to placate and make "better".

At least, if we take into account the countless thousands before her who have had an existential crisis lead to a new way of seeing meaning altogether.

So your advice, while seeming to try to be helpful, could instead totally avoid the meaning and potential of her crisis.

In my essay, I was trying so very hard to use language to point to a new way of seeing - trying to use mindfullness to edge towards non duality. As this is a Buddhist forum, I was hoping that notions of transcending concept might be familiar. Did you see nothing of value or interest or meaning in my post at all?

Some view Buddhism as a path towards greater and greater renunciation and an extinguishment of desires and thus perfect freedom. I'm not one of those people. I see Buddhism as stages of personal development that ultimately transform perception such that our mindfulness leads to insight that sees subject and object arising inseparable, and find a type of non conceptual meaning in each perception. I think this is important, and difficult - even seeing the path is difficult.

[ColPyat]

In my essay, I was trying so very hard to use language to point to a new way of seeing - trying to use mindfullness to edge towards non duality. As this is a Buddhist forum, I was hoping that notions of transcending concept might be familiar. Did you see nothing of value or interest or meaning in my post at all?

To be honest, no, i did see mainly over-intellectualisation of the issue.

You said it at the end of the post - you have so far not succeded to explain that thing. Yet you try with rather strange metaphers and whatever. Why try to expain with language what can only be experienced?

But maybe i am just a philistine. But sometimes non verbal communication does wonders where language is insufficient.

[jamman]

In my essay, I was trying so very hard to use language to point to a new way of seeing - trying to use mindfullness to edge towards non duality. As this is a Buddhist forum, I was hoping that notions of transcending concept might be familiar. Did you see nothing of value or interest or meaning in my post at all?

To be honest, no, i did see mainly over-intellectualisation of the issue.

You said it at the end of the post - you have so far not succeded to explain that thing. Yet you try with rather strange metaphers and whatever. Why try to expain with language what can only be experienced?

But maybe i am just a philistine. But sometimes non verbal communication does wonders where language is insufficient.

This is a word based forum, and I am limited to email in my exchanges with my friend. Non verbal communication is not a part of that.

I lament that “intellectual”has come to connote disembodied, irrelevant to real physical and emotional life, and that careful thought and precise speech is considered at once excessive, or intellectual, and fake, arrogant, haughty, or pseudo.

Necessarily precise choices of words, such as lament over regret, or connote instead of mean, are thought overly formal, out of place, specious; as if a lawyer and an English professor had shown up in business suits at the family picnic.

The uniquely human trait of curiosity, the compulsive drive understanding with ever more precise mental models, is somehow considered irrelevant mental masturbation, as if the very act of seeking an accurate mental model hides the truth that it seeks.

We can get hypnotized by ideas, and neglect to inhabit our other domains, the physical, emotional, sexual, social, and spiritual. But it doesn't follow that there is a danger of being too intellectual, when it is ideas that are being exchanged. I would hate to be accused of being too emotional when embracing my child, or too sexual during sex, or too self absorbed during contemplative meditation, or too awe struck during a nature reverie, or too devotional during a spiritual reverie, or too unfocused during deep dreamless sleep. The time of words is not an insult to our other seasons, and does not stand insulated and apart from them.

So in order to subvert the negative connotations popularly given to the word intellectual, I will take up the term “mental masturbation” with pride instead of sin. Doesn't the image illuminate the bodily pleasures of thought? And when two or more people engage in mutual mental masturbation, I think the Lewinsky episode made clear that that is considered sex.

So here is a toast to good uninhibited mind-sex. Even pseudo-sex is preferable to being celibate.