torn between two conflicting desires
I don't know if I should try to get a girlfriend or not. I'm 30 and I've never had a girlfriend. If you had asked me any time up until two years ago if I wanted a girlfriend I would have said yes without hesitation. But now I feel that I might want to be a hermit and that my desire for women is working against my deeper interests, that I am like Neo when he sees the woman in the red dress and that it might hurt my spiritual progress to try to get a girlfriend. Sometimes I feel that perhaps I don't have free will. I also feel that it is pretty much meaningless to discuss this issue with people, because I feel that a vast majority of people are nothing but regurgitators; they think that they think freely, but in reality they are only spitting out their conditioning. Of course nobody thinks this of themselves. But I still feel that most people are merely copying and pasting the information landscape that is out there, that they are a part of, and this goes for both aspies and neurotypicals. Nevertheless I post this thread...
Has anyone had a similar experience?
Does anyone know of any books that deal with this? How to deal with desires, how women might affect a man's spiritual progress etc? I have some but I want tips of more.
Chances are I won't be able to get a decent woman anyway.
I am very interested in spiritual initiation. That's what I think about regarding women. I think it might be that having a woman is the blue pill. But I have also read about sex magic/tantra, sex with women used as a tool of initiation. On wikipedia it says that Gnostic initiates were celibate though. Maybe I'm not evolved enough or suited for that path anyway. But marrying a woman doesn't feel like something I want either. I'd probably prefer to not have any desire for women at all. But I guess I have some such desire, although much less than ten years ago.
You appear to be looking at it as someone who thinks they ought to want a girlfriend rather than someone who actually does. If you're not intrinsically interested, it's not going to give you any spiritual enlightenment. "I guess I have some such desire" sounds like almost none at all to me.
Desire for a partner isn't a conclusion drawn from a weighed up list of pros and cons, it's something you either feel or you don't, and being inconvenient never stops it. Hunger isn't a weighed up conclusion from whether I've had enough calories and nutrition to get through the day, it's a sensation of needing food. To ask someone if I'm hungry by listing what I've eaten today and not mention whether my tummy is rumbling is a daft question. Likewise asking if you want a girlfriend by listing pros and cons is a similarly not constructive question.
Desire for a partner isn't a conclusion drawn from a weighed up list of pros and cons, it's something you either feel or you don't, and being inconvenient never stops it. Hunger isn't a weighed up conclusion from whether I've had enough calories and nutrition to get through the day, it's a sensation of needing food. To ask someone if I'm hungry by listing what I've eaten today and not mention whether my tummy is rumbling is a daft question. Likewise asking if you want a girlfriend by listing pros and cons is a similarly not constructive question.
I feel that I have desire for women. But I feel like it is a desire that works against my best interest. That it is a desire of a low carnal kind that I would probably rather not have, but nevertheless I have it, and therefore I think about it. As I said, two conflicting desires; the desire for women, and spiritual desire. To me it seems like women might be one of the primary things that can keep a man in the endless cycle of rebirths perhaps. I read about that somewhere but I can't find it now. I have also seen the picture of the goddess Isis. She is obviously very sexy in the picture. Behind her is the snake that bites its own tail, that I think represents the eternal cycle of rebirths.
When you ask for advice about an issue, and then insult the people reading your predicament and willing to help you, people just don't want to help you anymore. Plus, you're pretty much answering your own questions, regurgitating your own conditioning. ;D I'm sure many of us think out loud, and this is the...forum equivalent?
But I digress. You want to know about relationships and spiritual progress? There's no straight answer, I'm not going to pretend I know everything, but I grew up surrounded by highly spiritual and religious people and watched their interactions with the world, the people they married, ect. First, PJ4990's right. If you don't desire a relationship, you don't desire a relationship. Simple. Boom. Done. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just the way you are.
If you do desire a relationship and are worried about the ramifications it will have upon your spirituality: a good relationship, one that is beneficial to both parties, can help you grow spiritually in ways you can't even comprehend right now. You seem to be agonizing over the idea that these two desire are in conflict. But they don't have to be. This is something you have to figure out and decide for yourself, though I think you already know this.
There will always be red dresses in life, but you know what? They're not always female, half the time they're not even people. Whatever pill color you take, to continue the Matrix theme, I hope you find happiness. Good luck.^^
When you ask for advice about an issue, and then insult the people reading your predicament and willing to help you, people just don't want to help you anymore. Plus, you're pretty much answering your own questions, regurgitating your own conditioning. ;D I'm sure many of us think out loud, and this is the...forum equivalent?
But I digress. You want to know about relationships and spiritual progress? There's no straight answer, I'm not going to pretend I know everything, but I grew up surrounded by highly spiritual and religious people and watched their interactions with the world, the people they married, ect. First, PJ4990's right. If you don't desire a relationship, you don't desire a relationship. Simple. Boom. Done. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just the way you are.
If you do desire a relationship and are worried about the ramifications it will have upon your spirituality: a good relationship, one that is beneficial to both parties, can help you grow spiritually in ways you can't even comprehend right now. You seem to be agonizing over the idea that these two desire are in conflict. But they don't have to be. This is something you have to figure out and decide for yourself, though I think you already know this.
There will always be red dresses in life, but you know what? They're not always female, half the time they're not even people. Whatever pill color you take, to continue the Matrix theme, I hope you find happiness. Good luck.^^
You didn't do it on purpose, I don't think. Your first post reads that you have a problem, you want advice on it, but you don't actually think anybody has any useful advice in the first place. I found that insulting, personally, that it reads as though you're already dismissing advice before it has been given. You're asking for our help, but apparently our ideas are beneath your notice.
You didn't do it on purpose, I don't think. Your first post reads that you have a problem, you want advice on it, but you don't actually think anybody has any useful advice in the first place. I found that insulting, personally, that it reads as though you're already dismissing advice before it has been given. You're asking for our help, but apparently our ideas are beneath your notice.
That was a remark on the general uselessness of interaction with people. I stand by that point. I find that quite often the most easily offended people, the most emotional, are the most useless to interact with. I used to be extremely easily offended myself, paranoid, which is probably part of the reason why I have no connection to anyone. That however is something I have found to be a blessing, which is part of why I think about the topic of this thread. Nowadays I'm probably less easily offended. But the paranoia didn't shift over to love so much as it shifted into detachment.
This is how I feel a lot of times:
Are you really sure that you desire to be alone or is this just a defeatist attitude towards your non-success in this area? If a woman approached you in conversation, even saying all the things you just said about being a hermit, would you change your ideas about it in an instant? Think about it..
_________________
If Jesus died for my sins, then I should sin as much as possible, so he didn't die for nothing.
You're referencing The Truman Show and The Matrix? Seriously?
You need to turn off the movie channel and pick up some psychology/ mental health books.
Try these:
- Understanding Life (Alfred Adler)
- On Becoming A Person (Carl Rogers)
- Be Here Now (Ram Dass)
- Transformed! The Science of Spectacular Living (Dr. Judith Wright & Dr. Bob Wright)
Look into the Wright Developmental Model.
Here are some clips to get you started:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLYwuNaBScg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31rNueOBliI
I'm chatting to, or perhaps I should say was chatting to, a decent looking woman. She seems interested. That is very rare. I started the online chat, mostly out of boredom or habit. I feel a desire to meet her. But I have had spiritual experiences the last year and a half. I have sinned a lot probably but I feel like I still have some of that sense left. For example I went on a date with another woman and when I saw her attitude and heard her views I thought about how grateful I am that I'm not still stuck within that paradigm, the one that 99.999% of people are in. That spiritual detached state that I have experienced doesn't seem to go well with relationships. I feel that the woman I chatted to recently has been sent out to destroy me, or as an ordeal, and destroy me if I fail the ordeal. It's interesting now when I think about the goddess Isis that I mentioned above because I feel a lot like I am Israel and women are ISIS. This is also why I don't feel that Islam resonates with me, it feels like a religion that is fundamentally materialist and meant for a different part of humanity, for whom it might be right and serve a purpose. It's quite strange how this woman seems interested in me. A decent looking woman that is interested in me like that is almost unheard of. That makes me feel that the whole thing isn't real, and it's a trick.
Something strange happened today. I said to myself in my head that I will not continue chatting to this woman, and not meet her, as a spiritual sacrifice, and hoped that it might make me feel like I get back on the right path again after I have felt a bit like I have fallen from the right path. Shortly after I said that to myself, my workmates were as*holes. I wonder if that was a punishment for something, or some test, or enlightenment/ordeal because I showed that I was willing to walk the path of initiation, which I think to a large extent consists of ordeals. How do I even know if I'm on the right or wrong path if initiation might be the worst s**t. Admittedly happy well-adjusted people seem to have the least substance pretty much across the board.
I didn't have very strong desire for girls when I was growing up. But when I moved away from my parents at 20 I began to have a very strong desire for women. That has gradually decreased and today at age 30 I have much less, which I think is good. If I could choose I would have zero desire for women. One less problem to worry about.
If that's your desire that's your desire. Just sounds rather vague.
How, exactly are they in conflict?
Though it much help in the former is "women" (plural) or "woman" (singular).