Lessons from Rock Bottom

I've been doing a lot of learning lately. A lot of re-prioritizing, a lot of turmoil. Last September I accepted that I had a great deal of work ahead of me; I was entering a busy season. For the first time in many years I stopped going to the gym regularly; I'd had a negative experience that left a bad taste in my mouth, and even after switching gyms I realized that the gym wasn't giving me fulfillment as it used to. I found more peace with yoga. I've been feeling unsafe physically and spiritually recently, and practicing yoga has guided me to cultivate a space where I do feel safe and welcome while teaching me the courage I need to change my life. Meanwhile I've invested in relationships that deepen my connection to God and empower me to find myself. I've also been working on finding a way out of my current work situation--more on that later. From September on, I knew that the rest of 2025 was going to be filled with important work. My time of rest was officially over.

At the center of my struggles (and all struggles) is the core Buddhist teaching that "attachment is the root of all suffering." We can think of the obvious application--the attachment to physical objects and reputation--but this idea goes deeper. In traditional yogic philosophy, everything in the universe is divided up into prakriti and purusha. Prakriti is everything that is temporary. It is everything besides the soul, it is body and mind. Purusha is what is left: it is the soul, the eternal, who you really are. This truth is not limited to one belief system. We see it in Yogic teachings, Buddhism, the Abrahamic religions, even science; this idea that those who are truly spiritual are able to detach themselves from the material is ancient and resounding. To let go of the ego is to accept that there is very little that we have control over.

I'm going to be honest, these past couple months have been brutal. A recent Rich Roll podcast episode described hitting rock bottom as when your life finally gets to a point that you would rather face the fear of uncertainty than the suffering of staying where you are now. While I remain very functional, living an epic life I love outside of work, I have hit a rock bottom. My body has retaliated against staying in survival mode for so long. My eyes have been flooded by tears of hopelessness with increasing frequency. Two weekends ago I read a Rumi poem that finally gave me the courage to change:

Let yourself by silently drawn

by the stronger pull of what you really love.

The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks

The next week I notified my bosses that I would be quitting my job mid-January. I did this despite them wanting me to stay, despite the fact that I don't yet have plan. Without the knowledge that I had hit rock bottom, this decision does not make any sense. But it felt like I had no other choice. The way I see it the longer I spend at this job, the less time I will have to figure out where I belong. I believe the pressure that I'm creating for myself will make diamonds.

I am still figuring a lot of things out; I'm in a moment where the hindsight of the future would be very useful but is not yet accessible. However I am willing to share the insights I have gleaned thus far.

Much of my turmoil about work has come from my attachment to an idea that things should be a certain way, people should act a certain way. I am confused because it seems like there are certain innate things about ourselves that we must accept, as trying to change them will only cause harm. Meanwhile, humans have an extraordinary ability to adapt and make insights about themselves. How do we decide when to accept ourselves and when to make a change, and how to we achieve the latter without falling into a pit of shame? For every positive trait there is a negative counterpart; they are two sides of the same coin. For me, the characteristic that makes me insightful and independent also cause me to struggle to interact with many people at a time. My whole life I've felt like there is something wrong with me and I am finally learning how to use this unwavering quality in a way that is beneficial to the world. Once I accept this aspect of myself, I can figure out how to better navigate challenging social situations such as the one I find myself in at work.

At this point I find it necessary to address the tendency of misled people to use spiritual language to make excuses for unholy actions such as being mean or indulging in the senses. I believe that it is important to meet our imperfections with curiosity, but we must remained disciplined in holding ourselves to a high moral standard. When we do something that doesn't align with our beliefs, we must address it with our hearts open. We can't ignore it, or morph it into something it is not. Acceptance of ourselves where we are is not an excuse, and it certainly does not eliminate accountability.

Awhile back I listened to an interview with Stanford biologist and neurologist Robert Sapolsky where he explained why he doesn't believe in free will. The podcast also discusses that if we believe that free will doesn't exist, then we must learn to live without judgement and fault. This does not mean that we let murderers walk free because it's not their fault they are the way they are, but their imprisonment must be carried out with the intention of keeping the public safe, not out of retribution. Moreover, I recently attended a Christian women's group where there was major discussion around accepting that there is only so much we can do to help our loved ones cultivate a relationship with God. In order to respect the will of God, we must surrender our egos and accept that things will happen in a way that we do not understand because we cannot see the full picture. We can give our children all the resources and lessons they need to thrive, but nothing good will come if we interfere with their path. More broadly, we will never understand where another person is coming from and we can't make sense of a person that is built out of entirely different psychological building blocks from ourselves. We should not torture ourselves trying to change people when we don't have the resources to do so as mere mortals.

In my instance, I must surrender my attachment to work situations being a certain way, and I must surrender my attachment to the job itself; a job that I thought would be perfect for me, a job I moved to an isolated area where I knew nobody to do, a job that provides me with material security. Some things I cannot fix; sometimes I must move on. And that's okay.

Simultaneously, I've been thinking about what love really is within another universal truth found in Matthew 22:36-40: "Love thy neighbor as thyself" and "whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other toward him also." For the past year I have been tortured by misinterpretation of this concept. I'm still working through how I adhere to this teaching without hurting myself, but I've been thinking about how our modern concept of love differs from what was meant in ancient texts such as the Bible. Love is not something fleeting; it is somehow connected to purusha, our identity as an eternal enjoyer. The true meaning of love lies beyond the individual and requires a profound understanding that we are all interconnected children of God. We all are part of a system that is so much bigger than ourselves, and to judge someone is to believe that we understand this system in its entirety.

Within the context of my job, my body and mind has shown me what my soul has known all along: this place is no longer serving me. I torment myself by trying to come up with explanations for this that don't encapsulate the full picture. My reasons lay fault and blame on people; they come from a place of smallness. Some things are simply not meant to be put into words. Loving my coworkers doesn't mean that I need to put myself in harm's way to make them feel warm with some fleeting emotion. I can love my coworkers and acknowledge their interconnectedness and honor my own predispositions at the same time. I can love a community and understand that I am incompatible with it.

I am now able to see how the past couple months have led to a rock bottom, and I even accept that I am still there. I'm doing my best to understand that all of the uncomfortable emotions I'm feeling in this period are not morally bad; life was never about only experiencing pleasant emotions. In fact, if we spend our whole lives running from bad feelings and towards good ones, we are trapped in the prakriti of our minds and will never find our way to our purusha. Intellectually I understand that this rough period is necessary for growth, but that doesn't make it easier to exist here--it's not supposed to.

From this rock bottom I've already learned a couple things. First, I've learned to genuinely not care for the approval of people I do not admire. This is not a truth I find necessary to rub in to people and it certainly doesn't mean I don't hold myself to the the standard of treating everyone with love. However it does mean that my sense of self is strongly rooted and is not impacted by the opinions of people who do not take the time to understand themselves or anyone else.

I've also accepted some difficult truths concerning my future. It is not the first time that I've been in an environment that I am not okay with even when others are. My initial reaction is fear and judgement. I think, what must be wrong with me to feel this way? I try to change myself but it never feels right. At the end of the day this part of me is something that I can't change and don't want to change. I think about how as young as middle school I would go into the forest by myself without any technology and bathe in the love I felt all around me. How I still have my best cries when I'm alone in the woods. I knew these things intuitively before I knew of forest bathing's rising popularity in scientific and spiritual circles. I've come to accept that I am sensitive, which is not in conflict with my affinity for difficult solo outdoor adventures but is a reason for it. Because of these things it will be a challenge to find a lifestyle where I can be of service to God while making a comfortable living.

I'm over ignoring the signals my body sends me. I'm over forcing myself through situations that make me feel unsafe. I'm over running from my truth.

Moreover I've come to accept that it will be a long journey to figure out where I really belong. It might take many decades fraught with confusion. This acceptance feels similar to my mindset before a hard running race. There is nothing I can do about the fact that my future will be filled with difficulties. These difficulties are not something I should try and avoid because they are inevitable. I could drop out of the race or not start in the first place, but that is not in my nature. And when the work is done, I can rest easy knowing that it can never be undone.