Have You Noticed That Something Feels Horribly Wrong?

If so… you’re not alone…

You may have noticed it. If you’re reading this, I’m betting that you have noticed it. You might be like me and you can’t seem to escape it. Even when I’m really busy or wrapped up in a really good day, it’s still lingering like an ugly family secret and brewing like a distant storm. I see people mention this online all the time and I’ve had the same discussion with a few of my more spiritually perceptive and sensitive friends.

Something is wrong. Seriously wrong. We don’t know what exactly, we can’t put our finger on it and the feeling is so subtle and yet so ominous that we can’t just dismiss it as something that our ego has fabricated and coughed up as the ego has a tendency to do. No, there’s definitely something pervasively wrong with the world right now. A lot of people take it as an ominous omen that something really bad is going to happen and we’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop. There’s a feeling in the air that something majorly catastrophic is approaching on the horizon. That is if, you know, you can ignore the daily human catastrophes that we have ever single day in the form of things like human traffic, child abuse and teen suicide.

So many people are so troubled by this spooky feeling that they are reconsidering every aspect of their lives, myself included but that’s neither here nor now. We are thinking about how we live, who we spend our time with and what our future is going to look like. Believe me, I wish that I could just let it go and be okay with being complacent and happy with whatever life delivers but it’s just not that simple.

I feel like I need to scream

I’m restless. Literally. I am comfortable and at peace with much to be grateful for and yet at any given time I want to scream and run. If you can relate to all of this, believe me, you’re not alone and I really wish that someone would organize a support group or something even for the simple purpose of not feeling so alone and isolated in this feeling. If the apocalypse is just around the corner we can at least cling to each other as we scream through the last horrible moments in this shit show.

My feelings only intensified after a recent eye opening trip on psilocybin mushrooms. I took some golden teachers, it was the first time with this particular strain and as I learned later from a different strain of mushrooms, the golden teachers take their job very seriously. They don’t fuck around. They were sad, I was told, that I had experienced so much sadness and despair but ready or not, they show you what you need to see. The teachers showed me a prison. I was suffocating and trapped and totally forsaken. I have truly never felt so alone or abandoned in my life. I’ve walked through my own emotional hell several times and I’ve learned that if there’s one thing about feeling alone, being afraid of it will only make it ten times worse. You have to stare that asshole in the eyes and show it that you’re not afraid or it will really torture you.

“The fear of being alone makes loneliness ten times worse”

After that experience, I knew I couldn’t ignore it anymore or use any other forms of escapism like video games or the dopamine rush I get from buying something shiny and new from Amazon and once I got over the emotional hangover I really sat with this ominous feeling of something being wrong. I spend time in meditation every day and I can’t recommend enough a positive relationship with a meditation practice, it’s really powerful and I think I’ve at least grabbed the tail of the tiger and figured out why so many of us can’t shake the feeling that something about the world is horribly wrong and aside from a need to make some major personal changes, this is what I’ve come up with.

Coming or Already Here?

First, I think that “bad thing” might already be here. There’s a sense of a looming hurricane but I think we could be right in the middle of it. We haven’t noticed the water boiling because the heat increased so gradually and our modern technology affords us many means to escape this reality. We’re really good at ignoring it. For instance, falling into the warm glow of the screen at virtually any time we want. In this society, people actually play VR games where they are walking around in nature, yes this, instead of actually spending time in nature! Like, what?! “Look mom, there’s a tree in this game.”

When we look at the history of humanity, there has never ever been a time like this. There has never been a hell built and engineered quite like this before and we are navigating it without the proper tools or experience. It’s uncharted territory.I believe it’s possible and even likely that “it,” whatever “it” is, is here and we’re struggling to define it. You can’t capture fog in a jar and study it and that’s what we’re dealing with.

Second, I think that “it,” the deeply disturbing feeling that something is terribly wrong is also because of how disconnected we have become from literally anything and everything that gives us a sense of connection and meaning. Most of all, and most importantly of all, we’re disconnected from each other. Our human relationships and relationships with other humans have become horribly disconnected. We’re not built this way. We are not intended to be so blindly adversarial towards each other. It’s almost like it’s become cool to hate each other for almost nothing when most people have far more in common than they are different.

As best as I can tell, we’ve forgotten about loyalty or empathy. Instead of walking a mile in the shoes of another, we’re dredging up reasons for anger and outrage and many feel like we’re justified in doing so while we’re only contributing to the greater problem. Ultimately, we no longer feel connected to others because we’re so quick to turn on each other when we need each other.

We need each other more than we consciously realize. We need that connection, that empathic bridge of full acceptance and unconditional love. One of our basic core psychological needs is that we need to be loved and accepted exactly for who are in spite of any cuts or bruises that we have.

We desperately need to be able to show vulnerability and have our rough edges line up with the rough edges of another. We need to know that people aren’t going to abandon us or throw us under the bus when our flaws come out from the dark scary places and I think as a result that horrible daunting feeling that we have is the result of not only the lack of connection to each other but the lack of connection to anything and everything meaningful in general.

Instead of recognizing the lack of these connections, we’re trying instead to fill them with various means to escape. Drugs. Alcohol. Video games. Materialism. Blah blah blah. We’ve been lead to believe that our lives will be complete when we acquire wealth or nicer stuff. I’ve fallen into this trap too. I’ve lied to myself, believing that once I had money I could buy connection and meaning all the while I was becoming more distant from who I truly am and from what makes me really happy.

I believe we are in the middle of a spiritual war and a war consciousness and that many of us feel like something is horribly wrong because there is something horribly wrong. A total disconnect from what truly gives a sense of deep connection, meaning and fulfilment. All of which have been replaced with advances in modern technology and modern “conveniences” that are conveniently turning our lives into an empty echo of what life is really supposed to be about.

Blame the refridgerator

When I mentioned this somewhere on Reddit, the issues with technology widening the human chasm, someone contributed a compelling idea that human beings started to drift apart when the household refrigerator was invented and widely distributed. Before that, people were required to visit the butcher and the baker or whatever almost daily where they would encounter friends, neighbors and community members. They’d talk and associate. By listening to each other and maintaining eye contact, they built connections. They also needed each other. One person would trade eggs for some milk or whatever and so their associations were positive, they were symbiotic and exercised reciprocity. That’s the nature of community.

And while all of these things are certainly troubling, I am also convinced that there is at least one more deeply disturbing aspect and trait of our finely constructed prison. The lack of mental and emotional freedom. We are being corralled and herded into miserable lives without choices. Fit the mold. Follow the crowd. Don’t ask questions. Thinking for yourself is being portrayed as stupid and dangerous that’s why you’ve been issued your smart device to do all of your thinking for you. It tells you where you parked, when you need to get up and exercise and even tells you when you to drink some water because by God we know you’re too stupid to realize that you’re thirsty on your own.

I’m disturbed by the conformity. Deeply disturbed. I crave autonomy. My soul screams for it and I feel like I’m suffocating and yet I am profoundly disturbed that so many seem to have been convinced that conforming is doing something good for society. That deep disturbed feeling like something is terribly wrong is simply a war on our consciousness. We can feel it. Deep in our core. And we must trust ourselves and stop apologizing for wanting more from this miserable nightmare.

If you sense that something is wrong, deeply and disturbingly wrong and troubling. Something deeply spiritually wrong that is violating the core of what you’re made of… trust me, you’re not alone. It’s not just you.