Lack of Motivation Arising Out of Spirituality

[PivotalSyntax]

It seems like I'm losing all motivation to do anything, for the most part because of my spirituality. Even my creative side has no inspiration to play music or to write or anything. All I seem interested in doing is searching for truth, meditating, gaining knowledge, and exercising the spiritual side of my being. Besides that I only sit in reverence of the moment. I'll go to the park and just bask there in nature and the calmness and beauty of it all. I don't do ANYTHING with practical results. My life is basically one big introspect. It is difficult to know if it feels right or not, because through introspecting you do not see many changes or results because it is gradual and from within. Has anyone gone through something similar?

I wrote a metaphorical poem to try and describe this.

The solitary tree muses in the sun,
Yet it grows, reaching up, immeasurably so.
Its action, is that of no action.
Yet there it is, extending out to embrace the firmament.

Its sluggishness, its lack of motivation,
Is due to the eternal breathlessness of all that is One.
Its mysticism, its search, its reverence,
Gracefully inhibits it from action.

Reality carries it away, its spirit glowing bliss.
But it's strong and meek, and young and wizened.
Wise
But Simple

Only when it is realized for work does it lose its splendour.
When it's cut down and made into things.
Its rise into new creations is not warranted.
It is regrettable.

It has lost its way.

That is its raw, unedited form. It's not meant to be a literary masterpiece, but a conveyance of how I felt at the moment. Help.

 

[Scarlett Wampus]

I've gone and am still going through something similar. I could tell you about what its like for me personally if you like. For now here are some thoughts I had in response to your post. They might be familiar to you but reiteration can't hurt. I'll use the word spirit as a metaphor for the I-know-not-what:-

Essentially you are being asked to surrender. It will never stop and it will doubtless involve periods of confusion, discomfort and disruption. Sometimes it may seem that it will ruin your life or end it early and it might well do that (or sort of feel like it). There are no guarantees and you are on your own. The spirit doesn't make sense and its not possible to see what its up to except in retrospect. Brilliant, eh?

There is a big difference between denying the trials & tribulations of adult psychological development through passive resistance and accepting & opening yourself to the spiritual. Be careful not to get them mixed up or become distracted by people who don't know the difference.

You're probably underestimating how much you're doing with your life because the ego doesn't tend to notice decisions and actions that it isn't playing a major part in. Even if you really are doing almost nothing outwardly the chances are you're building up a lot of psychic force inwardly, like a bow being pulled back before it releases an arrow. Underneath your quiescence, do feel the power of some kind of a deep life force that runs through everything but awareness of it is strangely absent from mundane human affairs? If you can then its at work inside & through you.

A pattern common of contemplative people is that they can spend a great deal of time doing not much at all and feeling kind of useless. As the years pass by they can gradually (or even quite suddenly) become more actively engaged in the world but this activity springs forth from the same quiet beautiful hollowness that earlier seemed to be responsible for zapping them of motivation.

Right now you're going through a phase where the spirit seems to have a lot of frustratingly unrealised potential. That is always very good if you're spiritually inclined. Ever so slowly the ego becomes accustomed to being a passenger and not trying to control the spirit for its own purposes, because it can't. Frustration is the ego beginning to realise its own insignificance. It will fight back, lose badly and then seek a compromise. It is by this going through process again and again that we become healthier spiritual beings.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

I went through a stage like this when I was younger. Turns out I was just lazy. Seriously, I eventually found that you can both do things and introspect, concurrently. In fact, the best introspection happens during and/or after actually doing something.

Additionally, most "internal" changes cannot be meaningfully measured until externalized. It's like spending hundreds of hours learning and studying music theory. You might gain more insight into the mechanics of music, but, in reality, if you don't compose anything, you're not going to get any better at actually writing music.

 

[EverChanging]

I am not at your level of meditation at this time, but yes, it is possible to be mindful, to meditate, while doing things. Or rather, actions just happen, with no doer. There is nothing "you" can do. Just wait, and actions will arise when they arise. And then they will happen, and then pass away, like everything else. They will happen of their own accord, with no doer, as the "mind" sits still in tranquility.

 

[Midnight Pete]

It sounds to me like your spirituality is in effect a kind of narcotic. Are you sure it's your spirituality that's got you lacking in motivation?

 

[saoirse]

Thank you for your poem and for sharing. I understand. At this point, even though I often think I am dying, I may be really just beginning to live. I will persist, because I can't go back to the stress of living according to the requirements of my thinking ego mind. Why is life so stressful for us, allegedly the most intelligent of all the species? I'm going back to womb, or The Garden of Eden before the ego set in wanting MORE.