Please help me

[Gopi]

I don't know how or what to say here. So I will try my best to be concise and coherent.

1) I am having a really hard time maintaining any kind of schedule. This includes meditation practices, eating, sleeping, etc. I am a full time student which requires me to maintain a schedule and when I do that, it feels like an immense amount of energy is expended even to do the most simplest of chores. For a long time I used to feel bad about my own 'lack of self-discipline'. I still do feel guilty about it and chide myself for being so lazy, unorganized, and having no self-control. These days I simply pray 'Help me'. But also feel a fundamental inability to show self-discipline. For example, when I joined FST, I thought I will read the lessons atleast a few times every week. Now it has become very sporadic. I feel ashamed at my lack of commitment and defeated every time I break my own resolutions. Please help me.

2) My appetite is very sporadic. It has gone from 'No appetite' to random appetite. I do not  have much cravings for taste or flavors anymore. But suddenly in the middle of the night I feel ravenous. And ravenous is the only word that feel befitting. Even though I have had dinner, I feel like I could eat three more meals. Except it is not a craving for the flavors or taste. And then some days, I can go without food for the whole day. Sometimes, I just feel like I am being dragged to eat. I don't feel 'Full' anymore. It goes from hungry to uncomfortable (if I over stuff myself). There is no sex drive but I long for intimacy. I also feel like I am mourning and in a way nostalgic about the loss of my sex drive. Something feels like things will never be the same again. I am trying my best to just stay in the now but the euphoria-depression cycle is so frequent these days. I have a 'mood swing' almost every other minute on certain days. I want to cry a lot - both out of joy and out of pain. One of the biggest issues I am facing is that I really don't know what I want. That is the only way I know how to phrase that. I had goals before - be spiritual, be liberated, etc. None of that makes any sense anymore. On a bad, I keep longing for death and there is an intense drive to leave everything behind. Except I don't know where I will go after leaving everything behind. Nothing makes sense and there is no goal. Please help me.

3) Lately, I feel intense anger when I see someone being disrespectful towards anything else - esp. other people. It is not just anger but an all consuming rage. Like I want to rip open their guts. This scares me. And is also very draining. When it gets too intense, I just visualize leaving it at Her feet and that usually helps. But sometimes I am scared at the kind of things that come into my consciousness. Please help me.

[Mystress]

  Gopi:

   You are spending too much time out of your body and I want you to start dumping overload several times a day.  You need to stop trying to bless or enlighten people you meet and learn to turn inward. 

  So one thing at a time:

  When not in body, you have no appetite, less motivation, no sex drive and a lot of ordinary human social interactions like hugging someone feels odd, like you don't understand why people want to do it. Your body wants to do it! It still feels these things but you are not in it to get the messages. 

   OBE is the old style enlightenment, easier to deal with a celibate path of poverty if you are not in the body feeling its appetites.  It is not a true enlightenment just escapism and the body becomes frail if you spend too much time out of it. It means you are keeping your soul outside of your body. It holds the knowledge of your dharma and lifes purpose so of course you lose touch with that inner navigation if its not inside you to speak to you through your discernment. 
   FST is a body-first path, you need to learn to stay embodied and listen to the body wisdom. 

  When you are not in your body it becomes an empathic trash can for other peoples emotional stuff, and even worse if you are holding an attitude that everybody needs your blessings, love and light. They don't, if you see them as God of their own lives... Namaste. If you put yourself in a position of being "source" for other people then you are being God-Guru for them and their karma flows to you and karma is emotional ego junk. 

   So when not in your body you don't feel much of anything and that can seem like depression, and when you return to your body it is an emotional mess because its been a karma trash can all day. Chaotic mess of other peoples ego fragments and emotional stuff makes your brain fuzz out or freak out, and knocks you out of body again.  You experience overload, which is the state of feeling unmotivated and hard to focus, and all the mood swings. 

    Start dumping overload a few times a day...  to dump overload, squat down keeping the soles of your feet on the floor, and press your palms to the floor or ground and ask for all excess energies to drain out your hands back to the earth.. stay there a few moments or until your head clears.  Do it now then read the rest.

   To come back to your body when you notice you are not in it, observe your body breathing, without trying to control the breath.... just watching, feeling it, all the sensations. two minutes of this will bring you back to your body, a few moments more and the joy of your soul returned to you, starts welling up from under your ribs and spreading through you and it can and will cleanse a lot of karma debris.  Fill you with you.. with the energy of your soul by giving it humble gratitude for its presence, and love while observing the breath  - then there is not room for other peoples stuff.   

   Your energy follows your attention and if your attention is on helping others, as your first posts here suggest, then you are zapping people with your Kundalini, triggering karma stuff in them which flows to you as the one responsible for triggering it. When you have this attitude, your Shakti field becomes very pokey, it feels kind of aggressive to others. the karma feedback is worse because the pokeyness makes people feel resistant to it and you. They did not invite you to be guru for them, you are playing a superiority power game of ego and they feel it instinctively and resist.  Resistance means the stuff doesn't clear, it turns toxic. 

  You are not in a good place to be playing guru, you need to clean up your own backyard, get your head sorted and focus on your studies. Surrender wont clear other peoples stuff if they are resistant to letting it go: Goddess wont accept stolen property. She will assist its return to its rightful owner. The phrase is

  "Goddess please take from me anything that belongs to another and give it back to them, in whatever *way, shape, form or time* as You know best. Thank You." 

  As with the phrases of surrender, take a deep breath and feel your feet after... pause a bit to let things process, then say it again. Other people's stuff will tend to peel off you in batches or layers so say it 3x.

  The phrase invites Her to transmute it along the way, (in whatever *way, shape, form or time* as You know best) while keeping your ego opinions of what you think other people need, right out of the picture.

   Turning inward means giving your energy to your own heart, to Goddess abiding there with the trust that whatever anybody needs, She has it handled. She abiding *within them*, Namaste... will take care of them. 

  You stay turned inward with a discipline of always keeping at least 60% of your attention on your heart and power chakra, listening for the signals of your discernment. The outside world will lie to you, your ego will lie to you, appearances can be deceptive... only the heart sees clearly and Goddess speaks most clearly through the signals of your discernment. How can you know Her will for you if you are too muddy to be able to listen?   

  This focus can enhance your studies too, Goddess already knows everything and listening to discernment and school lectures or reading textbooks at the same time will give much wider insight into the topics of study.

    You do not get those signals if you are overloaded and out of body. I am not surprised at your being sporadic with the lessons, when so overloaded they won't give much benefit. It is ok to discard all previous practices when entering FST. Often on further examination they are revealed to be efforts to control or awaken Kundalini that don't fit here.

  Turning inward to focus on giving yourself and your energy to Goddess within your heart, with the affirmation that She has your life handled will change how your Shakti field is experienced by others. It stops being so pokey-invasive to people and triggering them and becomes very soft and non invasive, you stop getting the karma feedback of blasting people with your attention because most of your attention is turned inward. Your heart has the entire universe inside it so anything outside can also be found inside and represented more truthfully.

   Do what you need to do, to remind yourself to dump overload several times a day. Post-it notes, a string on your finger, a reminder-alarm on your smart phone.  5x a day, more when you need it. Follow it with observing the breath and grounding. Overload has already messed up your studies, your head and well being and it will go after your physical health next with stress and toxic conditions weakening the body if you do not focus on resolving it asap and first priority.

  You need to focus on getting your head back together and frequently dumping overload is the key. OK to take a break from the lessons for a while, people often do when they feel they need more time to assimilate what's been brought forth... so long as it is not, as Duu pointed out, an ego trap of wanting to understand before surrendering.

  Many people do FST as a 3 year path, once they realize the power of it.  Take your time.

  Remember to bless your food before you eat it, with gratitude both for the food and for the appetite. Same for water. Observe the breath and come back to your body before you eat or it all tastes like nothing, bleh.

  Thank you for your emotional honesty. Blessings...   

[fewtureJ]

Gopi, thank you so much for your post. I relate in many ways, and have been so frustrated with facing these things over and over (for years now).

Mystress thank you so much for your post. I completely relate to the person you described as out of the body in everything you said. Thank you for going into so much detail. Thank you for the recommended activities, I will do these. It was like reading a post from the universe and was amazingly perfect given my last 2 weeks where I have been feeling quite desperate.

Blessings

[Gopi]

Dear Mystress,
I have been reading and rereading your text the whole day. And have been doing the overload exercises. I cannot believe how stable I have been feeling the whole day. I did not know what the 'Power chakra' was. So I read about it on Kundalini-teacher. Your post there pretty much hit the nail on every single issue that I have been struggling with. There is so much to absorb and integrate.

Your words have made me be more conscious about where my attention wanders. And I was taken aback by how much I am taking other people's problems as mine. Every time I do that, I did the overload exercise. My hands got very warm. I am catching myself repeatedly taking on other people's problems and it is shocking how much this thought pattern comes into my consciousness. I guess I have some work cut out for me. Thank you for pointing it out.

I also did the food blessing + gratitude as you suggested. I am going to keep doing these exercises as consciously as I can.

One thing I have noticed these past few days is that when I pray, I feel hesitant, almost guilty, requesting Her for anything in specific. I think I am just trying to be cautious and leave it all unto Her. I use these two lines as prayer - It is from a Hindi bhajan.
Sab ko dua dena Ma... (Bless everyone Mother)
Dil mein sada rehna Ma... (Always Be in my heart Mother)

I am mentioning this here in order to make sure that this is not another ego power play. I guess I am trying to explore why I feel hesitant requesting Her for specific things for myself. For example, I am currently not in a romantic relationship. However, I have been craving for the love of a partner for the past few months. Yet, I feel very hesitant to put forward this as a request to Her. Instead, I just say 'This is how I feel'. On the one hand, I feel like 'What can I ask that She already is not aware of?' But as I am typing this, I also feel like this could easily be another ego trip. Please help me with this.

I don't know how to express my gratitude for your guidance here. So I will just say 'Thank you!' for now.

[Mystress]

Glad my post was useful.

I did not know what the 'Power chakra' was.

 I use the western names for the chakras because this is a westernized system and also because I have no talent for learning a foreign language and I only know a handful of the Sanskrit terms. I think the students find the western terms a bit more approachable too. A lot of westerners find the eastern terms a bit intimidating and I have had a few people tell me privately they feel shy to post because of not knowing the Sanskrit terminology. Well I dunno it either so don't be shy.
 Fortunately, two of the FST Lineage, Duu and Gustaf are long time hindu scholars and can respond to posts that use the terms.

 So from the top down, the western names for chakras are
Crown
Third eye
Throat
< spiritual heart chakra isn't in most eastern systems, for water of life.
Heart
Power
Second
Root

 We also consider the sun and the earth heart as shared chakras.

One thing I have noticed these past few days is that when I pray, I feel hesitant, almost guilty, requesting Her for anything in specific. I think I am just trying to be cautious and leave it all unto Her.

 I sometimes play silly computer games for a brain break. Lately I have been playing "Trade mania" which is like monopoly. Instead of dice there is a wheel with 8 spots, 1-6 plus cards and events. I will look at the board and see where I need to land, then spin the wheel and it gives me the number I want,  waaay more than the 1/8 odds would account for.  Not 100% of the time but very often, and it delights me.  Ascended Master vs computer AI... not a fair contest, I always win. Yet if I gloat over the AI opponent landing on a bad square (taxes takes 1/3 of your cash) then I can expect to land there next!

 Ego experiences linearity, it measures distance, size, and judges importance. Snowflake, elephant, skyscraper... Goddess is all of them, you think She sees one bit of Her unified Self as being more important than another?  Time, space, size, judgements of importance are meaningless in non-duality.

  There is nothing in FST about the virtues of poverty because poverty has no virtues. Detachment has virtues, not poverty. Goddess is a Goddess of abundance, She makes 8 million sperm where only one is needed to do the job, every autumn the cedar tree growing through my (dangerously rotted and needing to be replaced) lower sundeck dumps enough seed to reforest all of BC where there is not room for another tree to grow. The universe is abundant and Goddess is willing and able to provide all we need, or want... it is for us to work on opening to receiving. That is what you are hitting up against.  

   It is normal to want stuff. Part of being embodied to feel its various appetites. Its ok to acknowledge to yourself that you want stuff. It is even ok to ask, but also surrender having. "It will be as Goddess Wills."


I use these two lines as prayer - It is from a Hindi bhajan.
Sab ko dua dena Ma... (Bless everyone Mother)
Dil mein sada rehna Ma... (Always Be in my heart Mother)

 Well, there are some negative assumptions in these. Asking Goddess to bless everyone suggests She hasn't already, or that She won't unless you ask Her? Seems kind of high handed and a bit short sighted. Goddess is All that Is, so She *is everyone* already, and who is supposed to be blessing who, what? They ARE Goddess already. Stop projecting that they are not and that they need you to bless them.  

 Similarly, Goddess always is in your heart. Where do you think She is going to go? How can All that IS, go anywhere if there is no-where that it isn't already... except in your perceptions. So these prayers are really giving a lot of energy to a belief in separation which is true for the ego experience of being separate from the Divine but not true in a higher sense, at all and I don't see a value in giving energy to affirming ego beliefs.  If you see someplace where you think Goddess is not, pray to adjust your perceptions because She is there, She is All. Only the ego does not see it.  It is the perceptions you need to focus on, not telling Goddess where to go ... She is already everywhere. Give thanks.

 Regarding relationships, best way to find one is by not looking or wanting one. Otherwise you give off a needy vibe that discourages all but the motherly types.  Focus on your primary relationship, with your Divine Beloved... She will bring your perfect human partner when the time is right.