alone and friendless and fearful of the future

Dear Dr. Saltzman,

Thank you so much for graciously accepting my friend request despite our never having met. I consider it a true honor to connect with you here, and am very thankful for all aspects of your work!

My name is Krissy Ramsey. I am a 56-year-old former mental health counselor who lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I have been on the spiritual path my entire adult life, most recently focused on contemporary non-duality teachings, which somehow led to my stumbling upon your book, of which I have just completed my first read.

The Ten Thousand Things comprises some of the most cogent, thoughtful, and penetrating responses to the deep issues of living that I have ever encountered. Your book seems to have dispelled most of the remaining fantasies I’ve tried to hold onto regarding the existence of personal agency or anything one could remotely call a soul and has radically changed the focus of my experience from a “search” to simply being the ever-changing flow of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions.

Although it has answered the big-picture questions for me, I wanted to ask, to whatever extent you can, how (if at all) this way of seeing plays out in terms of in the face of the attempt to resolve apparently recalcitrant personal challenges. In my case, the overarching story driving the spiritual search was having lost all my family connections early in life, and—despite spending years of effort trying everything I could think of, including getting a graduate education—never having found my footing with work and finances, which in turn has led to constant fear of winding up homeless and dying in the streets.

In addition, despite my having done a great deal of therapy and personal growth work over the years and feeling myself to be a basically worthwhile person. I have been frustrated at never having had any success in forming lasting relationships, romantic or otherwise. I have, thus, found myself feeling perpetually alone, struggling to meet my basic needs, with few options available for improving my situation, and very little sense of relief, hope, or progress in between, constantly bracing for total destruction.

What little sense of hope I have been able to summon to this point has come purely from my immersion into various self-help strategies and spiritual practices, and the belief that somehow all my efforts would eventually pay off, resulting in a more relaxed and stable situation that would at least allow me to live out my remaining years in some level of enjoyment. So I have finally confronted the total uselessness of those efforts (except perhaps as you might say, to get me to this point where I can let them all go), however, there remains a part of me that continues to say, “Okay, but what now? Where does this freedom leave me in terms of dealing with my challenges?”

Of course, I realize that you can’t tell me what to do, but I would like to ask if you could clarify for me, whether I understand correctly that in choiceless awareness it really can be as simple as the old Zen poem says: "Sitting quietly, doing nothing—Spring comes and the grass grows"?

Since, truly, there appears to be nothing more I can do in practical terms to improve my situation, I would at least like to have confidence that there is, in reality never anything to worry about. I would be very appreciative if you could provide any additional insights that might help me gain clarity in light of the specific issues I’m dealing with here. This is the gist of my dilemma, as I see it, but I would be happy to expand on any part of it upon request. Thank you again, sir, for whatever help you can be in helping me sort this out, once and for all.

Respectfully yours,

Krissy

Hello, Krissy.

Thank you for your message and your appreciation of my work.

First, let me say that I understand your situation, and I feel for you. To feel alone and frightened of the future cannot be easy.

You ask if I can give you “confidence that there is, in reality, never anything to worry about.” I am sorry to say I cannot do that. And if I did offer you something like that, I would only be compounding the problem by adding a new belief in what “Robert” says to the already great weight of beliefs that you are now casting off like the impediments they are.

If worries are there, they are there until they aren’t. No one is making worries, and no one can choose to stop them either. Spiritual beliefs and self-help programs do not end worries, but only explain them away or sweep them under the rug, which makes matters all the worse.

In his classic book, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Chögyam Trungpa pointed to the human tendency to imagine spirituality as a method of self-improvement, as a way of refining, developing, and protecting the ego, as a way of transforming “myself” into something “better,” something “more evolved.” In the extreme case, this tendency takes the form of, as this is often said, “transcending the ego” while “I” am still there to enjoy this new “egolesss” state (as if!).

Later, in the 1980s, the psychologist John Welwood wrote about what he called “spiritual bypassing,” by which he meant using spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with painful feelings and developmental needs, which, like an ostrich putting its head in the sand to avoid seeing reality, does nothing to deal with such feelings and needs, but only shirks them.

So now, having come across my book, which “dispelled most of the remaining fantasies [you have] tried to hold onto regarding the existence of personal agency or anything one could remotely call a soul,” as you put it, you are faced with the practical realities to which both of those men pointed.

As Trungpa was saying, freedom is not about making the sense of self “better,” but of seeing the emptiness of “myself.” And as Welwood was saying, we human primates have real-world problems and real-world needs, and merely clinging to beliefs such as “everything is only an illusion” (Hindu spirituality), or that an ultimately benign God is watching and protecting us (Judeo-Christian-Islamic spirituality), or “visualization will get me what I want” (pop spirituality like “The Secret”), will not meet those needs except in fantasy.

That kind of spirituality is bogus, but the needs are real. You have mentioned two pressing needs. First, you find yourself friendless and without companionship. I am sorry to hear that. However, lack of companionship is not a condition cast in concrete. Your situation can change, and if it is going to change, it will require that you reach out somehow to others. I am not saying that would be easy for you. I understand that it is not easy for you. If it were, you’d already be doing it. But please consider ways in which you might. One classic way is volunteering to help others in some programs already organized to do that work.

As for your material worries, I find it difficult to believe that someone who writes like you with such obvious intelligence and insight would have to be fearfully indigent. Is there no way you can use your skills to earn at least enough money to put the specter of homelessness out of the picture? Please try to look into this, Krissy. Again, I am not saying this is easy for you. I understand that it isn’t.

To underline what I am saying, I am happy to hear that my book has opened your mind in this way, but please don’t misunderstand my words about “myself” being an “ever-changing flow of thoughts, feelings and perceptions” as you put it, as indicating that “myself” is without needs on the quotidian, every-day practical level. On that level needs must be met, which may require changes in perspective and intention. I understand that no one can simply choose or decide to change perspective and intention—indeed, that is one theme of my book—but we are all influenced by everything we see, hear, feel, or otherwise experience. So I hope that my words here will influence you in that way.

To be clear, Krissy, I am encouraging you to not give up, but to take a fresh look at what you need, and then to find ordinary ways—not philosophical or spiritual ones--of meeting those needs.

Sending love,

Robert