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Existential Crisis

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systematicawesome > existentialcrisis

Started by jacobcole4000@gmail.com

Existential Crisis Resources

Resources that have helped people move through existential crises and such that they become breakthroughs, not just breakdowns

See Also: meditation.jacobcole.net/ • bodymasters.jacobcole.net/ • mentalstatehacks.jacobcole.net

The “Stop, Drop, and Roll” Of Existential Crises (Quickstart Guide / General Principles)

  1. Anchoring yourself in physical well-being is key*. It's easy to confuse emotional pain for physical. Ideally see skilled practitioners of acupuncture, osteopathy, or other healing arts, and also train in a “complete” wellness system like qigong or Iyengar yoga.

*Though there are other ways

  1. Read about Positive Disintegration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_disintegration

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  1. Read an awesome philosophical/emotional/spiritual growth framework e.g. http://yoga.jacobcole.net/ (maybe my favorite 6 pages of philosophy. From this book)

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  1. Go do something deeply fun and/or help someone with something*!

*Help your future self, if you’re depleted; and “be wise-selfish rather than foolish-selfish” ~Dalai Lama

Major Categories of Existential Sorts of Questions (please add)

  • Ow, I’m in pain!

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  • Almost everyone has lots of unprocessed traumas “minor” or major, and life feels so much lighter when we process them!
  • There’s a deep connection between stuck tension in the body and unprocessed psychological tension

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  • Starting points at addressing:

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  • Ping Jacob for group chat Support group on finding meaningful work
  • What is my gift? What would I be most sad if I died without leaving in the world?
  • globalideabank

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  • Some cool frameworks/starting points

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Logs of Specific Crises & How People Worked Through Them

  1. #Todo

Insights from the Void

Realizations That Left Me Feeling Ok

  • Things are cosmically really OK!
  • Discovering that my base nature – the nature of mind before conditioning – is curious and innocent and kind, and this is always trying to burst through
  • Discovering that following “The Way,” “the Tao”,  is what I’m after, and that that’s a /way/ of moving, a “quality of movement”, and thus accessible right now/wherever I am

Guidance that was great

  • “You’re on the path. There is no turning back. Kindness is the compass” ~Tom Alden

————

Scratch Notes

If you’re feeling really great right now in your body, it’s hard to be existentially angsty. *

Roger Cole (Jacob’s dad’s) recipe for happiness:

  1. Food
  2. Sleep
  3. Exercise
  4. Physical Environment
  5. Social Environment

Processing trauma feels so good! You become lighter and lighter until you become en-“light”-ened!

*That said, “Sorrow was given so you don’t stay here” ~Yogananda — that is, in the box of the limited human self, in the prison of thoughts, vs in our god-like cosmic nature, which is, I suspect, inseparable from the infinite awesomeness of cosmos

Things that induced existential crises

  • Making college decisions between great options that may really change course of life. “What do I want to do with my life?”

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  • Going to career fair and Being terrified because none of the options on the menu sounded good

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  • Helping
  • Tranquilo. Don’t worry, be happy! Sometimes this is your problem. A centered person could be happy doing whatever! Centeredness is the target to shoot for. Simultaneously maybe that uneasiness is your innate wisdom noticing that nothing the society around you is doing is aligned with your deepest nature, and maybe your path is to be a trailblazer.
  • “Get out of the box! You’re addicted to thinking! It’s worse than heroin!” ~Tibetan Buddhist Master Ossian Maclise
  • Many indigenous populations turn thinking / conceptualization on and off as a tool, and have a fluid sense of ego. Words are swords that slice up the infinitely strange oneness

Transcending your current level of consciousness

  • Beyond “should”

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  • NVC approach

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  • Beyond “wanting to start a company”

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  • Dustin Moskowitz, cofounder of Facebook, founder of Asana on founding companies (paraphrase)
  • “Look at what you actually want to do in the world. Consider if it’s the kind of thing that would be well-served by a for-profit company. Or ask yourself If you are the best person in the world to be found in that company. If not, find the best person in the world, and help them“
  • “you shouldn’t found a company unless you’re the best person in the world to found that company”

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  • Exercise you can do down: make a Minimalist Homepage listing all the projects you’ve ever done that you are proud of. This process is incredibly wife organizing and inspiring people has helped people Minimalisthomepages.com
  • Embodiment Practices —Existential Crisis is often a heady thing

Rough  Idea to Organize

#todo #AlternateIndex How to Cope, for the Broke —Monetarily Free Paths

#todo #AlternateIndex For Neuro Atypical Conditions

#ToWrite Depression and Existentialness

Also Existentialness and trauma

“Spiritual emergencies” - comparatively rare, but it’s own category

Paths and Results

It would be really nice if these paths were all 100% montetarily free, or all had scholarships available (many do!)! Let’s make a future more like this! And ping me if you’re financially blocked on following a healing path you believe in

Getting really into Iyengar Yoga

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  • "Take a step, no matter how small.” This was the advice of yoga master B.K.S. Iyengar to Patricia Walden some 40 years ago when she sought help to deal with recurring depression. Little by little, one small step at a time, progress can—and will—be made.

Oases of Good Feelings — Nice things to do when you’re feeling existential

  • Watching Oprah Winfrey Videos
  • Surfing, swimming, martial arts, camping trips
  • Seeing a great yoga/qigong/tai chi teacher
  • Seeing a great embodied healer, e.g. Osteopath, Embodyment Yoga Therapist e.g. bodymasters.jacobcole.net
  • Receiving kindness — be around mom energy!
  • Giving kindness — taking care of little kids
  • Immersion in healthy happy conscious community that lives a healing lifestyle e.g. Sundari on big island of Hawaii

Ken Wilbur Integral Theory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_theory_(Ken_Wilber)

  • Friends who benefitted Jeremy Tunnell

Living in a Monastery (free?)

  • Deer Park (Phoebe)
  • Monastic Academy

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  • Reviews: Mixed

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  • Was not embodied enough for “stuck in head” personality

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  • #todo Monastery Tiger Lived in in Marin, H in Tibet

How I Attained Persistent Self-Love, or, On-Demand Deep Okayness For Everyone

“it is possible to feel better than you think”

https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/how-i-attained-persistent-self-love?s=r

Sasha Chapin

“Throughout the fall and winter, I spent a lot of time picking up on transmissions put out by Tasshin Fogleman and Nick Cammarata, two guys who talk a lot about the power of loving-kindness, and the potential of loving yourself deeply. And, at separate times, both advertised the power of doing solo MDMA trips combined with loving-kindness meditation, a traditional variety of contemplation where you cultivate a sense of goodwill and then bounce it around in your mind between yourself, people you know, and the rest of the universe, to the extent you feel appropriate.”

  • Ow, I’m in pain!

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  • Physical and emotional traumas can connect profoundly

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  • Physical wellbeing frameworks to master - Feldenkrais, Qigong (various systems), Iyengar Yoga,
  • Processing trauma

Awesome Mental State Hack

Max Strom ribs expanded breathing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Lb5L-VEm34 Minute 14

#breathingExercise

Halp! I want to feel better and I can’t afford these things

Try: 10 Minute Qigong Routine from Peter Caughey https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=462497675429399

Followed by.

Am I actually just feeling awful because I don’t have one of these needs met? Often simple!

NVC needs list https://www.cnvc.org/training/resource/needs-inventory — “Needs are more than you think”

Ways of Processing Trauma #Curate

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  • Intensive Breathwork, e.g. Richard Bock “quantum light” breathwork for 1 hours

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  • “It’s like a therapy session”

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  • Wim Hoff Breathing
  • “Light Language”
  • Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy
  • Surfing- Assisted Psychotherapy :)

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  • https://neurohacker.com/using-sex-psychology-surfing-reprogram-mind-jamie-wheals-stealing-fire
  • “3. Therapeutic Interventions
  • Whether through talk therapy, pharmacological interventions, or flow states induced by action sports, research is demonstrating that even brief moments spent outside ourselves produce positive impact, regardless of the mechanisms used to get there.
  • In 2007, working with Iraq War veterans at Camp Pendleton, occupational therapist Carly Rogers of the University of California, Los Angeles blended surfing and talk therapy into a treatment for PTSD. In a 2014 paper published in the Journal of Occupational Therapy, Rogers reported that after as little as five weeks in the waves, soldiers had a “clinically meaningful improvement in PTSD symptom severity and in depressive symptoms.”
  • In 2012, psychologist Michael Mithoefer discovered that even a single dose of MDMA can reduce or cure post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in survivors of child abuse, sexual abuse, and combat. He found that the benefits provided by one to three rounds of MDMA therapy lasts for years. These results outstrip conventional treatments so convincingly that, in May 2015, the federal government approved studies of MDMA as a treatment for depression and anxiety.”

#Todo

The “Who am I” Direction

“You are not your next thought” ~Sam Harris …so who are you?

A whole lot (all?) of the world’s spiritual traditions hinge on breaking down the mysterious sense of self

Nice Paradigms

Resources/Insights that Proved Useful

May 2021: AK

A: Non force chiropractic

A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnkU0nNoO0E

JC: https://forestrock.com/courses/enrolled/834821 Long Life Qigong Class by Peter Caughey

If I were you I would go through all the lessons but you could start at 34

A: https://www.wayofbodhi.org/

A: Intro to person Jacob uses

A: Bodhi Dharma founder of zen, Indian dude who went to china to teach shaolin monks

JC: Taoist butcher

"What your servant loves is the method of the Dao, something in advance of any art." #quote

His cook was cutting up an ox for the ruler Wen Hui. Whenever he applied his hand, leaned forward with his shoulder, planted his foot, and employed the pressure of his knee, in the audible ripping off of the skin, and slicing operation of the knife, the sounds were all in regular cadence. Movements and sounds proceeded as in the dance of 'the Mulberry Forest' and the blended notes of the King Shou.' The ruler said, 'Ah! Admirable! That your art should have become so perfect!' (Having finished his operation), the cook laid down his knife, and replied to the remark, 'What your servant loves is the method of the Dao, something in advance of any art. When …

JC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_disintegration

JC: Every word every thought generates karma — ideal is oneness without thought

JC: Technique for tranquility

JC: Get rest of life together

Then ask: What else is there to do

What else is there to do but my pt

JC: The thing I want is to have good alignment with the world —> don’t give treats for misalignment

Freedom to let things happen

Release attachments so you can assimilate to the structure of cosmic order

When you release attachments you become the universe

Embody the qualities of the universe so they no longer hold you back

Metabolize this through

A: "when you release all attachments, you become the universe" <> obi wan If you strike me down I will be more powerful than you could ever imagine

A: "you now let the bigger cosmic order flow through you"

JC: Important I think to realize that releasing attachments is actually a good thing. Because I was on the fence about it until recently

It allows the hot air balloon of your spirit to fly free from this body and this life. And releasing an attachment to something doesn’t mean you can’t have material things. It’s just the attachment that Hass to go. But when something starts to become an attachment it Has to go

Until the attachment is broken. It’s possible to do this very gently and joyfully I think

Star Wars midi chlorians

2021: SV J

Sayam Sandhya (Ahankara illusion) 5/25/21

I was remembering that trick J taught P: “Do you actually want to eat that quesadilla or do you just remember wanting to?”

I’ve tried it for a bunch of things and it’s shocking how well it can stop me in my tracks as I realize the desire I was acting out was just this thought in my mind that said I had the desire but the desire itself disappears upon investigation.

The root of all these desires is the Ahankara, so logically it also can be treated this way?

Do “i” actually exist, or do I just remember myself existing?

Upon investigation, I just remember my self-identification but it doesn’t actually have any intrinsic existence. It’s yet another program that we can unload from our minds.

#shortcut

I’ve been learning about Ramana Maharishi’s self enquiry method and it’s extremely direct

J:

What’s Ahankara?

Ah, and this is a good way to really start to comprehend the idea of the ego as an imaginary friend / story / belief vs direct perception (knowledge)

Btw my tag for these things that really work to shift mental state is #Interrupt

It’s ridiculously helpful to hear that this one is working so well for you. I should lean into it more. What other ones are powerful for you?

A really powerful Buddhist concept that has hit me as the idea of distinguishing between that which we believe/hypothesize verses that which we know. And the only things that we know are direct perception

It shocks me back into direct perception

Consider friends since your hand. The idea that it is made of atoms is a belief, not a knowing. All you know is the color in front of you and the sensation from the inside

But the truth is, we now recognize even atoms as a fiction

They are ripples on the cosmic medium

*Consider, for instance, your hand

2021: SB J

Jacob Cole:

"Love is the absence of judgment" #quote ~The Dalai Lama

Shadi:

"It is to be hoped that we all have some friend, perhaps more often feminine than masculine, and young than old, whose soul is of this sky-blue tint, whose affinities are rather with flowers and birds and all enchanting innocencies than with dark human passions, who can think no ill of man or God, and in whom religious gladness, being in possession from the outset, needs no deliverance from any antecedent burden.”

You are that friend

—William James

Pardon the long quotes, this book is full of gems

“I have swum in clear sweet waters all my days; and if sometimes they were a little cold, and the stream ran adverse and something

Misc Ideas

#idea Spirtual awakening log app

Source: http://existentialcrisis.jacobcole.net/
Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QsHuxis-ibxbicqrRBou6rShCb2b10gyKZG9aLJZeWc
Scraped: 2026-01-30

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