Life Ruining Existential Crisis

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tl;dr
1. How the hell do I adopt a religion? How do I speak to god? I CANNOT live as an Atheist. I give up.
2. How do I feel less lonely. How do I connect with people?

So I'm just gonna make this short and simple. I already posted this in the philosophy section but no one's gonna see it so I'm posting the link here for anyone who can PLEASE help me. Thanks.

viewtopic.php?t=342896

The main problem is I'm totally lost. My brain is incapable of understanding a damn thing. I want to know if Asperger's can make it difficult to "ground yourself" in society. The reason I believe this is because so many people who I talk to have social norms and mannerisms to regulate their minds, to keep them in place in society and from thinking deeply. my profound isolation is a result of not having these. I wander off into dark depths of a cyclical reality where I go through the same thoughts of confusion and anxiety over and over again, and I'm SERIOUSLY considering forcing myself to adopt a religion, and to shut myself away inside of a mold like everyone else. I will go insane eventually, and I will be stuck that way for the rest of eternity (Which is non stop, I cant even ever fill this post with enough 0's to represent the amount of painful emptiness that comprises most of our universe). I'm just in panic and it's probably the alexithymia which is keeping me from figuring out what the EMOTIONAL side of the problem is. Before I get into a tangent and make this the same post as the others I made, I'm going to ask if anyone knows how to solve this (The Link) OOORRR knows how to convert to a religion and believe it totally. I don't want to live in denial of anything, I just need to end this existential torture.

The more you look at duality, the more it subdivides. The antidote is not religion per se, but the experience that inspires people to use all those different metaphors to describe it. If you focus on your breathing, it becomes like the waves on the shore, or the tides, or the seasons, and all these vibrations go back and forth, but those opposites are also parts of one cycle. Spend some time soaking in the oneness, and other things tend to settle down more harmoniously.

I cannot believe in a God as it requires an ontological leap and that's beyond me but I do believe in the Dalai Lama. He is real and kind and thoughtful and insightful. When I feel lost, which is often, I read his writing. It helps me.

Investigate the historical evidence for the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. If this is true, the credentials for his claim of being the Son of God increase. Let us know what conclusions you reach.

When I went through a similar experience to you, I came across the term the dark night of the soul here on WP and it made the experience more normal/human, but it was the idea of interconnectedness that brought the kind of hope you describe back into my life. I guess you have to find something you can believe in, learning about Taoism was a turning point for me, the ancient observations on human nature in the older religions/faiths are still of value, I took an aspect I liked from different systems and used them as a theme in my individual approach to spiritual wellness.

My own current successful phase is Biocentrism, as a book written by Lanza. I've ordered Beyond Biocentrism by the same author.

https://www.amazon.ca/Biocentrism-Consc ... iocentrism

It sounds to me like the direction of your thought is similar to what I found in that book, so I thought I'd mention it.

Anything that ruins an existential crisis is a good thing, IMHO.

I may be going through a similar life ruining existential crisis, which has also been caused by my Asperger's. I also find it difficult to ground myself in society and to have social norms and mannerisms to properly regulate my mind and behavior. And because of this, I am relatively socially isolated. I'm really afraid that I will never be able to keep a close friendship or hold a romantic relationship. Now I definitely don't have alexithymia, because I have a very active imagination. This is actually part of the problem as I often create unhealthy fantasies for myself. I'm a Christian, specifically Catholic, but I struggle with my faith a lot. And this crisis has only caused me to struggle even more with my faith, even though my faith might be the only thing that gets me through this crisis.

The incident that has led me to have this crisis (whether it's existential, life ruining, or not) is I met this new guy friend who is about my age. We have a lot in common, especially our career interests, which involve an area of public service. We hit it off right away or so I thought. I developed a strong emotional connection with him that I rarely develop with other people my age. I had and still do have strong feelings of brotherly affection for my friend. But in electronic communications with him (however, not in person, which is weirdly ironic), my Asperger's-related quirks and flaws scared him off and caused him to break off contact with me. When I first met my new friend, I actually thought that God may have finally brought me a buddy who I could be close to, open up to, and have intense shared experiences with. Part of me still thinks this, but part of me isn't sure about it now.

And the ironic thing about my situation is that my new friend, if I can still call him that, is an Atheist like you currently are. He never told me that he was an Atheist, even though I gathered from him that he wasn't very religious. I found out that my friend was an Atheist from his Facebook profile before he blocked me on Facebook. But I also found out from Facebook that he was raised a Christian, specifically a Catholic like me. His sister posted a certificate that was presented to my friend by his Catholic elementary school when he was like 7 or so. The certificate listed his achievements for that school year, including that he was a good Christian and he had spoken at the church's mass services one time. His name was also preceded by the word "Saint" on the certificate. Now my friend was only 7 at the time and you really can't tell much from a 19 year old certificate. However, I sensed or gathered that this must have been a result of how my friend was raised. I really wish that I had downloaded the picture of the certificate before my friend blocked me on Facebook, because the certificate is so cute and touching.

After finding out (and pretty much at the same time) that my friend was raised Catholic, but became an Atheist, I thought that God wanted me to be friends with him in order to help him through whatever issues led him to become an atheist. But now I'm not so sure of that anymore. Why would God be torturing me like this? I have actually yelled at God several times since this whole thing started, which I have rarely done before. However, I have wondered if this is kind of like what my friend went through or has gone through that led him to become an Atheist. I have wondered if God is making me suffer for my friend so that I know what my friend has gone through. And maybe my friend is suffering for the same reasons so that he knows what I go through.

Even before I found out that my friend was an Atheist, I came to believe that my friend has some kind of issues. I am rarely socially assertive, but I was socially assertive toward my new friend. I came on strong to him in electronic communications, which I shouldn't have done. But I did that partly because my friend came on strong to me and was very socially assertive during our first outing and even before we met in person. However, after our first outing, my friend's behavior toward me was anything but strong. My friend's behavior after our first outing was totally opposite what his behavior was during and before our first outing. He didn't initiate any of our Facebook message exchanges during the first week after we met, though until he told me that I was coming on strong, he didn't seem to mind all of my messages. And my friend's behavior toward me morphed into a puzzling hot to cold shift and a complete 180. I think that my friend may have simultaneously wanted to be friends with me, but was also scared of getting close to me.

I have thought that my friend might have Asperger's or another condition. Or his underlying issues might be something else entirely. But I really do believe that he wanted and even needed a new friend in me as he told me that I had a new friend in him. And I blew it by acting like an emotionally needy or clingy idiot! I really don't know what to do! I'm really trying to patch things up with my new friend, but I haven't done a very good job at it so far. I'm also hoping that if God is torturing me, He's doing it in order to bring me and my new friend closer together than we would have before. But if I can't patch things up with my new friend, then I really do fear that not only will I not be able to hold a close friendship or romantic relationship in the future, but that I might lose my faith in God. Because why would God do this to me? Of course, as I have also told myself--or maybe it was God telling me-- "O ye of little faith." And maybe that's why God has brought me and my friend together. Because we both might need to work through our respective issues together and with God, while doing something great together in our shared public service career.

Last edited by futuresoldier1944 on 17 May 2017, 3:57 pm, edited 2 times in total.

cannot remember where it was read, so the paraphrase is probably quite butchered... but someone said something like “the miracle is not that a man could walk upon water. the miracle is to even be able to walk upon earth.”

it is neither hard to find belief in nor the ear of an unnamed creator if to look into the science of how impossible this life experience would appear, or to even take a look back and note all of the improbable events that have shaped one’s life up until that point. to give a creator a name however, that requires having faith in omniscient peers to know the name to herald as all’s maker.