Slumps and Why They're OK

Sometimes we wake up in the morning and 'it' isn't there anymore.

What I mean is the feeling that we get when we are contented. Or driven. When our purpose is clear in our mind.
When we have satisfied why we're here and why we're up in the morning.

Sometimes that disappears and we're left with a void. A restlessness, a discontent.

It's the same malaise we are likely to get when we divorce ourselves from those modern implementations that seduce our attention, whether it be work, friends, activities, hobbies, holidays.

If we've ever had some spare time with nothing to do and nothing planned, it can creep in.

Perhaps it's an uncertainty about yourself or the world -- many people will experience this. Barack Obama felt as if he knew not where is place was in the world when he was 22.

There are two ways I have thought of dealing with this:

• Breathe. 

Accept that life is uncertainty and change. Now realise that uncertainty about yourself is peace. It is life. Existence is a jagged oscillation between warm receptivity and joyful challenge. The very uncertainty you experience, the slumps in your days or months - this will and must exist as certainly as the joy and exhilaration that life offers you exists. You cannot hope for change or completion - 'finishing' or 'doing' something never removes it. We must accept that it occurs and know its existence implies the existence of its opposite.

• Find your core - your deepest desires

These moments are opportunities to re-examine what it is that you want. It is the universe giving feedback to yourself. If we do not act from a place grounded in our deepest desires of what we want from the world and ourselves, we lose our centre. Our sense of why we are here. We get stuck in a job that we do just for the sake of continuing our existence. We follow a pre-fabricated path partly due to the expectation placed upon us, partly due to the ease in which we follow. We feel week. 

During these slumps, make it your purpose to find your deepest purpose. Immediately. Every moment spent without it is a moment where you do not love those around you from a position of deep fulfilment. We must find this core to align our existence towards it. Only from a position of alignment are we able to act deeply, to love truly. When we have found our core - our alignment, then the external validations such as a job, an education, others' respect - they are meaningless. 

Our core - the deepest desires within us - that is our truth. When we live with this truth, we are on a journey towards a thing that is eternal and infinite. A pleasure that is secure from all pain. 

It is true that the two points your correspondent has made are seemingly contradictory. How can one accept something yet simultaneously look for ways to expel it? The Kahunas described truth as being 'what works for you'. We may well heed their word.