How to Address Not Allowing Yourself to Lie Flat

How to Address Not Allowing Yourself to Lie Flat
I. Causes
Being unable to lie flat means being unable to love yourself, or to understand and enjoy the usefulness of the useless. It is the opposite of Zhuangzi’s outlook.
And when you have suffered severe physical and psychological blows yet still refuse to let yourself lie flat, this goes beyond being unable to be yourself or love yourself. It means having lost the instinct to “save yourself.” It is self-destructive behavior, severe self-instrumentalization, and a profound estrangement from the tranquility of your authentic self and your deeper mind.
The trauma behind this: a harsh superego. In other words, “who” is refusing to let you lie flat? There is what Horney calls the tyranny of the shoulds, and what Winnicott calls an internalized toxic object.
Other common underlying sources of trauma: a rescuer personality, empty-heart syndrome (an existential crisis), anxiety disorders, social Darwinism, and so on.
A lack of presence and ease: unconditional confidence, freedom, and ease.
Estrangement from innate wholeness and the tranquility of the authentic self.
II. Solutions
As with “How to Address a Harsh Superego and Self-Attack,” you need to keep healing, from foundational issues through more advanced ones, until your inner core becomes strong, you regain the tranquility of your authentic self, and you turn inward to rediscover innate wholeness.
As with the earlier article “How to Address an Inferiority Complex About Educational Credentials,” these are common afflictions among small-town exam takers. You need Marx + Zhuangzi to reshape your worldview, outlook on life, and values, and to heal your inner core.
“How to Address Year-End Anxiety” takes a similar approach: separate yourself from the issues of your family of origin, and make peace with yourself, the past, and time.
“How to Embrace Your Dark Side” introduces embracing avoidance, anxiety, distracting thoughts, karmic obstructions, shame, and guilt, and accepting mediocrity.
These articles are so similar because people’s various problems have similar roots, and the paths to resolving them also converge: the authentic self is innately whole and innately clear and tranquil.
“Petty-Bourgeois Malaise” discusses the roots of the petty bourgeoisie’s various classic afflictions from the perspective of historical materialism.
“Gilligan’s Psychology: The Taoist-Oriented Psychology Closest to My Own” introduces connection with the deeper mind.
Articles such as “How Ordinary People Can Experience Innate Wholeness” introduce Marxist healing: seeing all beings, seeing more than a billion people struggling in pain, and drawing on compassion, empathy, and confidence in everyone’s innate wholeness to summon compassion and empathy for yourself.
“An Overview of My Marx + Zhuangzi + Psychology Framework” offers a relatively systematic introduction to Marxist proletarian healing and good-person healing, as well as Zhuangzi’s healing through lying flat, non-action, and nature, breaking free of the fixation on “striving” and the small-town exam-taker affliction, and healing existential crises. “Zhuangzi’s Eight Absences: No Ego or Attachment, No Capability or Action, No Desire or Seeking, No Worry or Anxiety”
III. The Positive and Practical Value of Lying Flat
Many people do not understand the positive value of lying flat, or even its practical value.
Just as many students’ parents do not understand the practical value of sleep (physical sleep) for learning.

1. Rest, healing, and recovery.
   Restoring vitality, bringing your energy field into harmony, and working through issues involving thought, emotions, trauma, and so on. A lack of understanding of the deeper human mind, vitality, and psychic energy. See the earlier articles “Psychic Energy/Libido Determines Destiny” and “My Structure: The Real Self Accompanies Libido.”
2. The usefulness of the useless.
3. Pluralistic values, rather than linear values.
   This helps improve your understanding of the world and society, and the way you relate to others. With a thin, linear value system, especially in the bitter winter of the current downturn, it is hard to avoid falling apart, and hard to move toward success in the conventional sense.
   Fear of stagnation, getting stuck, or losing time reflects an overly shallow understanding of life and the world.
4. Reorganize your worldview, outlook on life, and values, repair your inner core, and set out again.