Living Through a Low State

I. This May Be the Last Article in the Series on Low States

I have written so much about low states over the years.

Japanese Morita therapy offers an ultimate answer: let suffering take its natural course, and do what needs to be done in the present.

Many people understand this quite clearly in theory, but when a low state actually arrives, they still cannot embrace or allow it, or even recognize and become aware of it.

Keep Naming

Language has its limits; matters of the deeper mind and the unconscious are not so simple. But continuing to name things still matters. Seeing and naming still bring healing and connection. Over the years, precise, grounded names—karmic obstructions, entanglement, the task-doer ego, the night-watchman ego, lava, innate wholeness, the unity of humanity and nature, and so on—have continued to have an effect.

Low states: seeing -> allowing -> accepting -> embracing -> naturally emerging. Where do we get stuck?

Not in the later stages: we naturally emerge while taking a stroll. Embracing does not seem difficult either; when our mental energy is moderate, we can readily embrace the state. We get stuck when mental energy is low: we cannot see or become aware, cannot allow, cannot accept.

II. Allowing Low States

Allowing low states: “Before Coming Fully into Their Own, People Will Spend Long Periods with Low-to-Moderate Mental Energy and States.”

Low Mental Energy Is Enough

Career, social life, inner life—all can accommodate low mental energy.

Judgment and metacognition certainly decline considerably when mental energy is low, but once many karmic obstructions have been worked through, what remains is still enough for everyday life. In practice, it is enough for job hunting, work, socializing, inner life, and spiritual coaching. Even with low mental energy, we can be confident, free and at ease, and at one with nature. A person is unconditionally good, good enough. This is also the power of human innate wholeness. “Reverence for Karmic Obstructions” is also about respecting innate wholeness. Lava. In fact, the vast majority of people take university and graduate entrance exams, make progress at work, and achieve breakthroughs in reading while their mental energy is low. Writing this article with low mental energy and in a low state is itself practical evidence that it is enough.

Low states are so familiar to us. Why respond with ignorance, fear, and rejection?

Low mental energy and low states are different from extremely low mental energy and extremely low states. Extremely low mental energy and states, complete loss of connection, the kill threshold, existential crisis, and the night-watchman ego’s PTSD need not extend into low states.

We Have Accepted Extremely Low States—What About Low States?

“On Living in the Present” focuses on “living in an extremely low state.” Its central concern is whether we allow it: allowing ourselves to lose connection and dissociate, accepting our own incapacity. That article is the final safety net, the reality of things. The ego has completely collapsed, the self has dissociated, all connections have been severed, and everything is sustained by the primal vitality of the id. Yet life emerges precisely from this seemingly hopeless situation.

In extremely low states, we know to accept, allow, wait, refrain from exertion, and stop resisting. In low states, we somehow no longer know.

In a low state, the situation is clearly better and should be easier to handle, yet the ego and narcissism recharge, and the karmic obstructions of greed, aversion, and delusion return.

There Is No Oasis in the World

Freedom means traveling through the Gobi Desert without retreating to prison. Society = alienation; there is no oasis within society. The only oasis is in our own hearts, here and now in the Gobi. The only solid ground is the present, beneath our feet; the present is complete. If being clear-eyed means having no fantasies or fixations, only reality, then can we find rest in this final allowing: being in a low state and allowing ourselves to be in it? Can we stop exerting ourselves? Can we let go? The heart is like an unmoored boat. Let this heart settle here. Break through every illusion and fixation, and live in our own reality.

III. Greed, Aversion, and Delusion About High Mental Energy and High Energy Levels

Does awakening mean we must prove ourselves to be spiritually superior? Must we be highly energized to offer spiritual counseling or coaching? What if we are not? Is it my fault if I am not?

Greed, aversion, and delusion about high mental energy and high energy levels are still rooted in seeking outside ourselves. Under the social clock, exam-trained strivers suffer from compulsive striving, compulsive sprinting, and compulsive retreating into seclusion. They treat life as a final or repeat year of high school, hoping to become highly energized, ascend, and turn their fortunes around, believing they cannot afford to lose. There is also the predicament created by the uninformed bets these strivers place under the social clock: registering for university entrance exams, choosing an industry and a job, going on arranged dates, marrying, and having children before they understand much of anything. At thirty, they only just begin to see clearly, but are already deeply trapped. Without the courage to be a brave Nora, they can only manipulate and berate themselves, fantasizing about high mental energy, high energy levels, and an inexplicable reversal of fortune.

The fixation on striving: strive to raise your state -> push yourself relentlessly to produce results -> turn your fortunes around. The refusal to allow low states reveals how misleading and harmful compulsive spiritual cultivation and compulsive striving can be.

Spiritual cultivation is a false concept: can “I” eliminate “I”? There is only waiting, and even the “I” that waits quietly must itself arrive through waiting.

When we have no desires or demands, no worries or cares, what does it matter if we do not have a high state? Is this not itself a high state?

IV. Low States Have Their Own Reality

As I wrote in “Living in the Deeper Mind: Returning to the Realm of the Way,” there is no self, karmic obstructions are also the Way, and low states have their own reality.

(1) Low States Are Social and Historical Issues

All my low states, dejection, disorientation, discomfort, and pain; all the torment of ignorance; all my personal problems—these are problems of society and the times. Everything is as it is. The facts are what they are. Ebbs, troughs, and low states are part of the historical process, something I cannot fight. Even Marx, Engels, Lenin, Van Gogh, Su Shi, and Wang Anshi rose and fell with the historical process. How much more so must I?

Low states have reasons, causes, and consequences. Blindly and brutally refusing to allow them is unreasonable.

Low states are a good thing. “Weakness and Sensitivity Are Good Things”: the ways other people and external things strengthen or constrain us become more apparent.

(2) Low States Are Philosophically Crucial

Dialectical Materialism

A low state results from the combined effects of what is within us and the external circumstances of our fate and environment. This is a crucial link in the dialectical materialism of the relationship between humanity and the world. Mental energy is also a vehicle for freedom and agency. Neither mental energy nor our state comes solely from within; external things play a part. Raising mental energy and our state out of thin air is idealism, not materialist objectivity. There are limits to human ability: the limits of incapacity and non-action, of knowing where to stop and thereby avoiding peril.

Even if we really could maintain 100% mental energy and peak condition at every moment, throughout our lives, we would still encounter life’s limitations, suffering, hardship, and helplessness. Throughout life, human beings face an infinite world with finite mental energy. If the point of being in peak condition is merely to accept limitation, helplessness, and suffering, does that mean accepting our low state in the present? Ignorance is humanity’s fate. Being clear-eyed does not mean omniscience and omnipotence; it means awakening from ignorance.

No-Self Versus the “Low State–Attachment to Self” Combination

“Reverence for Karmic Obstructions” also means gratitude toward our intrinsic nature, knowing that it has always done its utmost and that the present has always been complete: “Complete at Every Step.” A low state is the actual condition of our intrinsic nature as it contends with karmic obstructions. What we call a low state is already the entirety of what remains after our intrinsic nature has done its utmost and the self has exhausted its strength. Yet the ego jumps out to attack and belittle it, and the harsh superego wants to lash us. That is why the negative self is the enemy. Internal and external karmic obstructions bring us into low states; the light of our intrinsic nature brings us out. It has always been this way. Trust our intrinsic nature, leave things to it, do not force things, do not keep stirring things up. But why does “I” so often draw close to the ego and karmic obstructions, instead of drawing close to and forming a connection with our intrinsic nature?

“I” is not reality. “I” is born in a low state; it is a result of that state and one of its contributing causes, not its starting point or root. This is dialectical materialism: consciousness arises from objective reality. “I” is a feeling, a composite of thought and libido that incorporates karmic obstructions, mental energy, and the id. In extremely low states and in moderate-to-high states, there is no self. In moments of true subjectivity, there is no self. When our intrinsic nature is at one with nature, no “I” is born. Living in the deeper mind is fundamentally about harmonizing the relationship among thought, the deeper mind, and our intrinsic nature.

Only in low states is there an “I”; “I” is a false subjectivity. That is why “I” is naturally close to karmic obstructions and forms no connection with our intrinsic nature. Extremely low states are not the great terror or the greatest hurdle. The combination of low state and “I” is the hardest hurdle: the bewildering maze in which the spiritual practitioner’s ego keeps going in circles. In fact, moderate-to-high states also contain low states, but without attachment to self and insistent demands. Attachment to self—the refusal to allow a low state—is itself a low state. The very act of naming something a “low state” is often an expression of rejecting the present and losing connection with it.

The essence of awakening is the dissipation of karmic obstructions and the ego, the manifestation of our intrinsic nature, and the absence of self and attachment. A low state is only temporary. Without fixation on states, our intrinsic nature unfolds naturally, allowing rises and falls. A natural state is the truly high state. We see Van Gogh’s inner turmoil and low states, but he was more natural than others. He was profoundly unpretentious and confident, without the ego of a spiritually superior person.

No Self, No Selfishness

Life and thought are gifts that nature bestows on inorganic matter. Each person’s thought is a small part of the world and nature, and all things are mutually dependent and interconnected. “I” and “mine” are the greatest karmic obstructions and forms of ignorance. There is simply no independent, everlasting soul.

Zhuangzi, “The Great Ancestral Teacher”: “Now, if we take heaven and earth as a great furnace, and creation and transformation as the master smith, where could we go that would not be fitting?” Fundamentally, there is no self. I am not an object chosen by the furnace; I am part of the furnace.

(3) Low States Are Fate

Allow fate its own rhythm. Financial freedom is not about finances; it is about freedom, wisdom, and courage. Freedom of mental energy is the same: it is not about how high or low our mental energy or state is, but about freedom, wisdom, and courage.

I was an ordinary rural child to begin with, not someone favored by the rules of the era, and my experiences have been unremarkable. Low mental energy and low states are normal. Some people enjoy favorable circumstances, high spirits, sunshine, and every blessing throughout their lives, yet never arrive at Marxism and Zhuangzi. That shows whether their states are really anything elevated, and how terrifying the Cthulhu of karmic obstructions is. As discussed in “A Classification of Human Levels,” Buffett and Munger, too, are trapped at the level of mediocrity; in his later years, Munger became muddled and came to grief. Since I have chosen to “Be a Brave Nora” and travel through the Gobi at night, suffering comes with the territory. Often, we are in a low state because we have chosen a difficult road.

(4) Low States Are the Battlefield Itself, the Front Line of Living and Fighting with the Big Other

“Our Generation’s Battlefield Is Within: Our Most Important Friend and Enemy Are Both Ourselves”: treat low states and low mental energy as friends, form a connection with our real, helpless, ordinary selves, and treat the negative self that refuses to allow us to be in a low state as the enemy. The conclusion is to live at peace in a low state.

The greedy, averse, deluded fantasies of “high mental energy” and high states are themselves the discipline imposed by the Big Other and elitism.

Van Gogh syndrome: struggling onward with low mental energy and in low states, continually producing great works, yet still consumed by inner turmoil and self-attack. Marx himself was the same. Su Shi was lonely; Van Gogh was consumed by inner turmoil and died from a gunshot wound. “1863: The First Dispute and Estrangement Between Marx and Engels”: both Marx and Engels were in low states during difficult periods. If even great people and sages cannot control their states out of thin air, how could we?

V. Living in a Low State Means Living at a Higher Level

The significance of “Living in the Deeper Mind: Returning to the Realm of the Way” lies in the full picture of the world seen with moderate-to-high mental energy.

“Living in a Low State” is part of “Living in the Deeper Mind,” “Living at a Higher Level,” and “On Living in the Present.”

The Life Remaining After Death

Low mental energy and low states are enough, and they are likely to be the norm. Allow them; it is all right to remain in a low state until death. Live in a low state.

Since we are being brave Noras, can die without regret, and live toward death; since after death we return to the universe, where all rest equally in peace—death is the only equality and justice.

Embrace death, draw on it in advance, enjoy it. Consider yourself already dead, and live the rest of your life as you please (Aurelius said something similar). The life remaining after catastrophe, the life remaining after death, the life remaining before death.

Zhuangzi’s eight absences: no self, no attachment; no ability, no action; no desire, no seeking; no worry, no care.