Expert: Laurie McLauglin - 5/28/2009

Question
Im 24 years old i feel like ive lost my inner self i want to find the real me there is a void in me like my soul is gone i want to go and live with monks i know they are very spiritual i my self am into spirituality i can feel inside me this is what i need where do i look how do i get started who do i contact how much will it cost if anything ive been through alot bad relationships dropped out of the ninth grade living of my mom i cant confide in anyone i need help finding my true self or i feel like i will be lost... can you help me please i hate feeling like this the pain of knowing im a failure a let down to my family i need a spiritual journey i dont know what to do ive looked but everyone wants money or got to have money to travel i dont have any

Answer
Greetings Jerrod. Thank you for letting me answer your question. I will do what I can to help.

First off, you are not alone. I too felt lost, depressed and a failure at various times in my life. I am now fifty years old. I too looked to many religions until I found a spiritual path that worked for me.

Having a spiritual path is very important. Buddha taught 84 thousand different teachings.  He taught so many because he geared each teaching to his specific audience and their needs. So, even if you do not choose to make Buddhism your spiritual path, hopefully there will be something in it you can find useful.

I am glad to hear you are drawn to a spiritual life and want to live with the monks. It is true that religious retreat centers provide a place of calmness and peace, they are not in themselves the answer to your problems.  Remember; “Wherever you go, there you are”.  You can go to a quiet place but you still take your mind and all its agitations with you.

One can be in the middle of a beautiful forest and still be anxious and unhappy. Or one could be standing in the middle of Times Square and be completely calm and at peace.  Happiness comes from only one place.  That is from within.

Do not worry, your inner self, the real you is still in there.  Nor are you a failure. Buddhists believe that we have what is called a heart-mind.  It is the equivalent to a soul.  Buddhists believe that it is a combination of our minds and our hearts that comprise it. I belong to a Tibetan Buddhist lineage.  The Tibetans love to use images to help us find happiness.  Often the diamond is the image we use of our heart-mind.  The reason is that it is beautiful and it cannot be scratched or harmed.

The reason, we believe, that we feel like our soul is lost is because it is simply obscured by things that we think are important but are really not. These things come from outside of us.  As we progress along the path to ultimate happiness, we realize more and more that there is nothing missing.  That we truly lack nothing.  All we have to do is rid ourselves of the stuff we THINK is important and see those things that are truly important.

Fortunately, those like yourself, who are spiritual in nature have many options. Here in America, we have freedom of religion and so we can explore many religions till we find the right one for us. I am sure, if you keep an open mind, you will find one that resonates specifically for you. It might be Buddhism, it might not.  And if you do like Buddhism, there are many, many choices of how to practice; from the austere Zen to the elaborate Tibetan and lots and lots in between.  Before you start checking out monestaries, I would suggest you find out if you like Buddhism and if so which kind.

If you want to start to see if western Tibetan Buddhism resonates with you, I suggest you go to the website www.fpmt.org. That is the group I am associated with.  There you can read about who we are and what we practice.  You can order free books.  I suggest “Becoming Your Own Therapist” or “The Essence of Tibetan Buddhism”, which is the first book on Buddhism I read which helped me a lot. You can get these books from the website page called “Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive”.
And you can see if there is an FPMT center near you.  If there is not, you can take classes on line or I will be happy to answer any of your questions as they come up. If you wish to learn about Buddhism and prefer to listen to Buddhist ideas, I suggest you listen to talks by an Australian Buddhist nun named Venerable Robina Courtin. She is wonderful in that she has had a hard life and tells things just like it is. In these talks, she is telling us very important things. If you listen to this, it should either resonate with you or put you off. Either is fine.  But if it does not resonate with you, all I ask is that you sit with it for a few days and think and mull over what she says – then if it still does not resonate, just let it go and don’t worry. Here is the website for one of her major talks. http://www.talkingbuddhism.com – “The lies our mind tells us.” Actually all the teachers on that site are truly amazing.  I have heard several and can attest to it.

One great thing is that there is no guilt in Buddhism.

But as I said earlier, Buddha taught 84 thousand teachings for people in all situations.  So, even if you do not choose Buddhism as your religion, I do have some suggestions on how to start down the path to finding yourself and to becoming happy again.

The job of a Buddhist is to become familiar with our minds.  It is our minds that cause us to feel lost, depressed, unhappy, like a failure. But our true nature is happiness and true joy. The quickest way to start improving ourselves is to begin to learn who our mind really is.

We think we are in control of our minds, don’t we?  We control our mind. But do we?  How much control do we have?  

Let’s find out. Sit down in a quiet place and make yourself comfortable but alert. Close your eyes lightly.  Now, all you are going to do, is to bring our mind to just be aware of one thing; the feeling of the breath on our upper lip; the cool sensation as we breath in and the warm sensation as we breath out. Now, count ten breaths. In and out comes as one breath.

At the end of the ten breaths, how many other thoughts came into your mind except your breathing?

If we were really in charge of our mind and not the other way around, we would not have had any other thought come in would we?  So are we really in charge?  Apparently not.

Think about this.  Getting angry, getting depressed, feeling afraid, getting annoyed with ourselves and others, feeling sorry for ourselves, being jealous, having any harmful thoughts – right now we feel that we have no control over them.  A situation arises, and we automatically feel upset or afraid.  It is as if we cannot help ourselves.  Right? Wrong. These feelings come not from outside ourselves, but from our own mind.

It is our mind that causes us happiness and unhappiness, according to Buddhism. So, in order to find true happiness and let go of our unhappiness, we must really know and be in charge of our own mind.
We can use this very easy meditation to begin to help us become aware of our mind.  By doing this breathing meditation concentrating only on the feeling of the breath coming in and going out.  Soon a thought will come and sometimes a lot of thoughts.  Do not worry. Once you recognize a thought arise, just acknowledge it and return our mind back to the breathing and counting the breaths.

Try it for between five and fifteen minutes a day. As you work on this you will begin to recognize when thoughts arise.  AND you will begin to recognize if the thoughts are positive, negative or neutral. Once you start recognizing negative and positive thoughts, rejoice!  Be happy!  Now we can begin to recognize negative thoughts when they arise and before they manifest as actions, decide not to think them any more.  And when we have positive thoughts, we can decide to let that thought manifest.

Now you are beginning to be free of being a victim and are taking control of our lives. We can stop being angry, sad, depressed, being a victim.  We can then cultivate our good qualities like patience and compassion and love because we can recognize when these thoughts arise and choose to manifest them or not.

And that is just the benefits of a simple breathing meditation.  
Buddha taught as his first teaching, the Four Noble Truths.  First he said suffering exists.  Then he defined what suffering was and where it comes from.  Then he said that suffering can be extinguished.  And then he created the eightfold path as the fourth noble truth which is a way to live to keep us from suffering ever again.

This is the most basic of Buddha’s teachings but it is also so wonderful because it does say that the suffering you are going through now is completely normal but it is possible to rid yourself of that suffering forever.  

But it takes practice.  As you know, Jerrod, we are so steeped in our own issues and stuff that it seems almost impossible to find happiness.  But as you will learn, yes we are steeped in our own negative stuff.   That comes because we are so familiar with negative states of mind, that like ruts in a road, our mind keeps falling into them.

We must create new ruts – forge new paths in our minds that lead us to make choices that make us happy.  One of the most important ways of forging this new path, you will come to learn, is to get out of our own way and start recognizing that we are not the only ones suffering.  Once we can start to see past our own stuff and see the suffering around us and realize “I am one, others are many” and start to have compassion for others, then we will realize even more and more happiness within ourselves.  

It is really true, what goes around comes around. Buddhists call that karma. And the happier we can make others, the happier we become.  But this practice is the hardest one in some ways. It is the hardest one for me.

Anyway, I hope this helps a little.  Don’t hesitate to contact me for any follow up questions.  I will be happy to help you in any way I can.