This is where faith comes in for many people, Traveller.  When you have a belief in a higher power/greater reality which is love, you know you are never alone, even when you feel that you are. 

When you can tap into that power, sometimes you can draw to yourself a better and more hopeful outer situation.  In the meantime, places like this where you can find support are a good place to turn.  Also, surrounding yourself with positive authors, music, etc. can be very sustaining to the spirit.

much love, blink

Hi Carolyn, I understand how you feel and I feel like that too sometimes.  I've been trying to think of what advice to give you, but I don't have much other than the same stuff that Blink has said.  This reminds me of myself very recently, feeling like I need someone to lift me up emotionally and finding no one there who will help.  So I sit, close my eyes, and remember very hard, (hard enough until I am re-living the feelings), of times when I was giving or receiving love.  And I imagine that it is filling me and healing me, and even though I don't feel better right away, I tell myself that it is already working.  Kind of like taking medicine, you take it and wait for the results.  It sounds kind of silly now that I am actually saying all this.  But this is what I do to get by.  This is my faith.  This is how I cope. 

Well, at least we here on this board can be there for each other.  I always find something that someone has written that is inspiring or uplifting for me.  Even if I am just reading stuff and not responding to everything, I am always here reading.  Especially since I have not been working this month due to surgery.  I am spending a LOT of time reading here.  And I have been a little depressed and crying a lot lately too, so that's another reason I am reading a lot. 

This reminds me of a visualization I did the other day.  Again, it may sound like silliness, but then again maybe not.  This is how I am though.  What I felt like doing was imagining everyone on this board  who wanted to go, was all gathered in a large room.  And we are all sitting in chairs in front of a stage.  And everyone gets to take turns talking in front of the group to say how happy they are to meet all the others, how much everyone or "so-and-so" has helped them or inspired them, etc.  Basically just introducing ourselves to each other face to face and saying our appreciation to each other. 

Anyway, using my imagination like this helps me feel loved, connected, etc.  I have always used my imagination and I guess I will never grow out of it.   

 

Love, Vicky

maybe you help others because they need your help, maybe you don't recieve help because you are stronger than them even though you may not relise it yet? ever thught of it like that?

i mean i don't wanna sound bad towards towards the other people, but you are stronger.

if you feel you need help talk to a friend, i'm sure they are very willing to help and talk and listen but may be unaware of your feelings as they might not pick up on them... tell them how you feel...

i think there are more people there for you than you might relise. We at the board certainly are!

Hope that helps

Ryan

Thanks Carolyn! 




My surgery wasn't too big a deal, it was for carpal tunnel syndrome.  I am a medical transcriptionist.  Can't wait to type with two hands again!

Thanks for the edit advice.  Modify=edit...that makes sense.   

Love,
Vicky

Traveller, sometimes it's hard for people to accept love. Look deeply into yourself and find out why you feel you're not worthy of receiving love. That is usually the reason. 

I felt this way for a long, long time until I finally released a lot of past life stuff and this life stuff and realized that I am Worthy of being loved.  It's an awesome feeling.

Love, Mairlyn 

Hi Traveller -

If I understand correctly, you find it relatively easy to love others, and to do things for them, but you feel that you do not receive love in return. I wonder whether you equate loving with doing?

In yoga, there are three general qualities that are involved with living: being joyfully pro-active and creative (karma yoga), being compassionate and loving others (bhakta yoga), and being logical and aware of what is happening (jnana yoga).  If you prefer Buddhism, these are also the three top and three bottom worlds in the Wheel of Life Mandala, the top is where life is working, and the bottom is where it isn't working. In that Mandala, the very center circle is where we have all of it working at once, satchitananda.,

To love means that we view others with compassion and that we sense their existence as part of our own. This follows directly from the idea that we are all God, emanated in various forms, but nonetheless God. (You might ask, if you are not a manifestation of God, then what are you?)

Then if you are God and all others are also God, then we are all One. We are one with terrorists, with child molesters, with saints, with common people, and with nut cases. (The Cosmic body, like your physical body, also has it armpits and assholes, and they are equally necessary.)

Not everybody is able to see things this way, so they are unable to give love without qualifying it. All that means is that their emanation of God is still learning how to behave, which is probably why we're all here anyhow.

If you see all others around you as God, and yourself as God, and all beings as One, then to the degree that you incorporate that perspective into your life, you are becoming a bhakta yogi. Whether others do or do not have the ability to reciprocate has nothing to do with it. 

When this perspective has become so completely one with your life that you no longer see others as different and in opposition, but only as ways that Oneness extends itself to fom a cooperative whole out of numerous views of the same thing, then you have reached sarvastarka samadhi, the first transcendental level.

Conversely, if you require reciprocation for caring about others, then that attitude is no longer unqualified love of God for God, but a method that seeks to make some kind of emotional profit. In clinical terms, this latter posture is called "co-dependency". The idea that, "I'll love you if and only if you love me back, and do so in the manner that I expect," is not very useful.

dave

Love that censor. ROFLOL

Love, Mairlyn