For Those Lost at Sea, Hiding From Life, Missing the Light

April 13th, 2021

By Andriana Eloha

Guest writer for Wake Up World

This article is a letter, which was originally written as a response to an individual who I have known for a number of years since their pre-teens. Some time ago this, now adult, with no physical disabilities of any kind and more than enough social advantages, got stuck in a self-induced psychological and spiritual crisis/drama where they voluntarily chose to remain. The reason is simple: the pain of their current discomfort does not yet exceed the fear of the new (=unfamiliar) experience.

The parents of this individual, as is usually the case in the circumstance of this particular kind, have provided them with excessive support across the board, not realizing that after the age of 6 or so, kids require not a parent acting as a nanny but a parent acting as a life teacher/coach. The one who consistently and everywhere encourages the kid to be capable and self-reliant, willing to explore and apply their potential in unfamiliar and new situations without constant parental supervision or presence.  As a consequence of never stepping into the role of life coach to prepare their kid for life, not protect them from it, these parents deprived their kid, later teenager and now adult of healthy and necessary life challenges, dealing with which usually trains the kid/teen in the art of self-empowerment and creates so called “I can” states.  Naturally, it has backfired. Co-dependency has become this young adult priority, since it is more familiar and thus more desirable for them, while self-sufficiency, independence, self-reliance, initiative, exploration of the unfamiliar, risk taking and conscious personal development is now seen by this individual as scary and dangerous, rather than inspiring, desirable and energising.

All personal identifiers related to this person, above and below this point are intentionally anonymised, hence my choice of wording and pronouns for this article, no other reason.

When I had finished my written response to this individual, the reason for which will be given later, I realized that the information presented in this letter maybe useful for others who are experiencing the same or similar predicament. And I do happen to know one other such person, coincidentally, of the exact same age, sex, level of education, etc., who created the exact same problem for themselves under the exact same conditions, on the other side of the planet. I presume, the information below may also be valuable for parents who still have a chance to correct their parental mistakes in the area where the balance between support and challenge they have offered their children is seriously off and must be corrected before serious damage to their kids development is done and gone unnoticed. This article may also be informative for the family friends of such individuals. Those friends, who genuinely want to help them but realize that no one and nothing can help the one, who is unwilling to help himself/herself, and becoming a nanny of a capable and perfectly healthy adult is simply ridiculous. Thus, for those who metaphorically speaking, “have healthy bodies, yet demand wheelchairs for life” (or their friends and family), this article is written.


So, you want me to give you a map for life? This is something you need to create yourself as you walk, crawl, pass through or fly over various life landscapes where you deal with whatever it is that presents itself to you there and begin to understand the nature of that landscape. Your inner landscape is revealed to you when you deal/engage with the before mentioned various “lifescapes”, that will consist of challenges, various stimuli, issues, opportunities, and areas that naturally demand or attract your inner attention in order to be explored. You then learn from and through this process of exploration, both – about yourself and the subject of your exploration, whatever area of life or yourself it may be. This information is useful for you to have, because it tells you a lot about you and how the world around you really works. This is how you learn and grow. It’s called gaining experience, – the only tool and process that gives you true knowledge. It’s never theoretical, it’s actual, real and applicable. Your next step is to integrate this knowledge into your life by applying it whenever  and wherever required. You take what is valuable and useful from an experience and discard what is no longer of use or is irrelevant. If you made a mistake, it means there are blind spots in your awareness and internal database. It means that within yourself you hit the areas with incorrect information, either about yourself or the world (or both). And it is crucial for you to know for further success (if you intend to have it), specifically WHERE and WHAT blind spots you have. Once again, these blind spots are the areas where you either lack information or have incorrect information about yourself or reality.

So, instead of beating yourself up for a mistake (i.e., “wrong” outcome) you’ve made, be grateful for the opportunity to learn what you must, in order to know and use accurate perceptions, interpretations, vision and more appropriate actions that will naturally allow a different outcome next time. To sit for months and lament because things didn’t work for you the way you hoped they would, is a form of stupidity and a choice to remain unconscious (to your own internal and external actions that ensured the outcome you didn’t like). It feels terrible for a damn good reason, which is to show you that whatever it is you are choosing, doing and thinking is off the target and naturally and predictably leads to the outcome you disliked. What you should be doing after you’ve made a mistake is: instead of getting upset or shutting yourself down to further experience in the given area, carefully review the experience that delivered the wrong outcome with curiosity and purpose in order to identify:

1)   What was useful for you to discover through that experience?

2)    What has to change and where?

3)    Specifically how and when will you implement the change?

4)   What is it that you don’t know you don’t know, yet mistakenly assume you do, so the wrong (i.e., unexpected) outcome in the given area became inevitable?

This is how you make mistakes useful, i.e., make them work for you not against you. This is how you learn from your experience (not hide or suffer from it) and this is how you become wise and learn making better choices based on accurate assumptions, which brings you peace, better balance and satisfaction as a side effect.

You need to discover your inner landscape, which is unique to you, i.e., specific to your inner nature and configuration. Then explore it. Unless you choose to copy the intentionally dumbed down collective, and their version of inner landscape, based on mediocrity, sameness, strange version of “success” and all the rest that makes you become an unconscious zombi, who only knows how to mindlessly follow external instructions (however ridiculous) or the next shiny object or someone else and bear zero freedom and responsibility for anything.

Freedom IS responsibility. And responsibility IS freedom. And having life on your terms is your birth given right and privilege IF you claim it and choose to exercise this right. It requires two things. First, being in touch with your inner truth which implies being honest/truthful with yourself at all times. And second, you must assume full personal responsibility in the area where you plan to have freedom.

The reason you don’t know what you want is because you have never made it YOUR personal goal and priority to frigging find out! Young kids usually have many glimpses of awareness and gravitation towards what makes them fully engaged with life, what makes them light up inside. At your current age and stage, the reason you don’t know what you want is because you are unhappily married to your numerous pretenses and divorced with your inner, authentic self. In other words, you are currently being your fake self that only knows how to follow socially imposed trends, needs, comforts and directives, and who constantly requires and is controlled by other people approval and disapproval. E.g., this fake self of yours, habitually converts everything that was said to you into either approval or disapproval, which reduces the meaning and value of everything that was said to you. It also makes you depend on approval of any kind and run away from any form of disapproval, rather than staying present and aware to what is actually happening and what is being conveyed. How very mechanical and thus predictable? Is it satisfying though? Not really, but how terribly addictive! Between being nice to others and being real and true to yourself, which option would you choose? Which of the two versions of you will get more approval from others? Which of the two versions is more appealing to you in terms of perceived benefits? Choices have consequences and consequences are realities that those choices reveal and actualize. You will know your choices by living their consequences. You will either suffer the consequences or learn from them in order to understand the choices you have made and make better ones next time.

Paradoxically, most people believe suffering from the consequences of their choices is easier than learning from them. And you are one of these people. For how much longer? It’s a form of self-abuse, and who is doing it to you? YOU !!! I refused to witness it any longer and so I walked away after I had realized you absolutely insist on doing it ad infinitum. Well in this case, suffer away, just don’t you dare to blame others or outside circumstances for that your very own act of pure, undiluted stupidity.

At your current stage of self-confusion and inner numbness, you need to start doing a number of different things you may not or will not like initially, to gradually but surely discover what it is you do like. And you need to engage in the experience of doing these different and new to you things, at least for a couple of months to get the idea and then inner knowing, that this or/and that occupation is clearly not your calling and not your thing but your thing will need to have this or that element to it. This will also give you an added benefit, which is – you’ll get a valuable experience/knowledge along the way that you can use later,- somewhere.

This is how you discover and get informed about what are your things/activities. Those are the ones that make you energized, enriched, joyful and willing to achieve mastery or high level of expertise in the area where these things and activities are present. And there is usually more then one such area. Engaging in an active and consistent self-enquiry on the topic of, what it is you will like doing and in which occupation these particular skills are most in demand or abundantly required, will greatly speed up the process, but I seriously doubt you’ll utilize this option, taking into account your past and current well established patterns of behavior. So I predict the self-enquiry simply will not happen or you will start and then give up somewhere near the start, which still means this option will not happen.

Gregg B

Your true self wants you to explore and discover, it wants you to create your own life environment – unique to you. It wants to have a new life experience every day. It wants to be independent and free to express its essence in the areas where it has talents, skills and lasting, natural interests. Which are important to you to identify and to develop. When you shut down your true (authentic) self in favor of whatever, it withdraws together with all its life force and abundance of energy, so you feel lifeless and your body feels numb. And there is stress behind this numbness, the stress of being someone or something else who is afraid to be.

Making a leap into the unknown is always worthwhile, especially in your case, because for you, at this point, pretty much everything in life, except your room maybe, is the unknown.

I.e.,

  1. Identifying and knowing your values and priorities in anything- unknown zone, zero experience;
  2. Advanced computer and Internet skills – unknown zone, zero experience;
  3. Making good and independent decisions in any area of life- complete unknown, zero experience;
  4. Making independent choices (=not blindly copying other people choices) – unknown zone, zero experience;
  5. Telling self-reliable, self-aware, emotionally stable and mature romantic partners from players and parasites- unknown zone, zero experience, very foggy area;
  6. Independent travel (which would teach you everything mentioned above and below) and organizing your short (3months+) or long term (1 year+) life in a new and unfamiliar environment without help of your parents or whoever else- complete unknown, zero experience;
  7. Self-knowledge, knowing what resonates with you, what works for you, what grows you, what expands you, what shuts you down, what makes you one with yourself- unknown zone, zero experience;
  8. Independently organizing your life, budget, work, self-education, recreational activities and gaining local knowledge in an unfamiliar/foreign/new, independent from your parents life space, – pure unknown, zero experience;
  9. Meeting new people, consistently offering and sharing with them your skill and awareness, based on YOUR self-knowledge and direct life experience, so that you are worthy of their quality attention and interest to the point that they build friendship with you – complete unknown, zero experience;
  10. Identifying smart, psychologically mature and self-aware individuals and being able to engage with them in a meaningful conversation – the area of complete unknown for you, you have zero experience in this department as well.
  11. Quickly and efficiently exploring and scanning the job market or creating a job/skill offer for yourself that potential employer will have a demand for, doing it successfully, independently and efficiently, locally and internationally.
  12. Being self-employed. Developing useful skills (forget the diplomas, they are useless if not supported by the actual skills) and knowing how to market these skills in the right place – unknown zone, zero experience;
  13. Creative, focused, sharp, mature, well organized, original and to the point thinking and writing which is a very valuable skill. – unknown zone, zero experience.
  14. Being responsible for anyone other than yourself, including a group of people- pure unknown, zero experience.
  15. Having a realistic, overall orientation in global, ongoing political processes, which is done through consistent and highly educational research and well developed awareness that allows you to separate facts and truth from lies and deliberately fabricated misinformation and propaganda. – unknown zone, zero experience;
  16. Efficient conflict and self-conflict resolution – unknown zone, zero experience;
  17. Learning and applying practical ways of working with and navigating your emotions (there is enough info online if you search), choosing and living your preferred emotional state daily (which is your state of vibration), developing self-awareness and self-knowledge through any form of meditation and/or deliberate self-inquiry and self-observation. – unknown zone, zero experience;
  18. Being a leader for yourself, self-reliability – unknown zone, zero experience;
  19. Shall I continue? Aren’t you alarmed to the n-th degree already? I am.

And by the way, all of the above (1-19) could have been learned/acquired by you over the last 10 years. Easily. And applied by now where required, with no drama involved. Now you require drama to evolve.

What will work for you now is forcing yourself to enter every one of these before mentioned unknowns, which are quite known to a whole lot of people, walking, talking and living around you. Force yourself to a new territory, far away from your parents, borrow money from them for the rent of another place elsewhere if you must, and the situation itself will force you and support you in your rapid growth through fast gaining of all required experiences. You live in their house on their charity anyway, is it fair and kind to them or not? Is it an appropriate and responsible thing to do for an adult? …For THAT many years? Since you borrow their resources on a daily basis anyway, you can as well do it in an open manner, but move out by all means. Will it be difficult for you? Hell, yes. But then, it will be easy. How soon, – will depend on you. And sure as life, it will worth it. After a while, you will be grateful to yourself you did it. If you don’t do it, then in 8 or 10 or 15 years, you will deeply regret the lost possibilities, untried things and what you didn’t do now to start evolving instead of de-evolving. And that’ll be your new inner pain by then, which you don’t have to create with your current choices and you know what they are.

You are currently in a mature adult body, yet your current mental, emotional and social age is 12 at best, due to everything mentioned above. Do you really think a self-sufficient and actively evolving (not stagnating) adult person of the opposite sex will be interested (besides sex, and only for a while) in keeping you as a meaningful partner long term? Do you think that accomplished, creative, psychologically sound and balanced people with high enough level of self-awareness and brain on active duty, who are also financially independent and capable of creating the life that supports them, will be inclined to spend much or any quality time with a psychological child?

At present, it is virtually impossible to hold a meaningful and versatile conversation with you about anything that requires sufficient personal experience, which is everything except the school subjects.

You have appallingly limited and distorted for your calendar age overall orientation in life and reality, and equally limited understanding of how this reality works or what makes it work for you. Something that you learn only by participating in the ongoing reality, i.e., by deliberately interacting with it – and actively so, not by avoiding this participation. You don’t learn this skill from books, lectures or videos, you learn it through direct experience of your own. All experience is valuable, good and bad is a personal perspective, which is usually biased and differs from person to person and from one time period to another.

I gave you great, working and very practical resources and books that can easily be found in the Internet, read and their info applied as you read them. Did you even attempt to find them and at least read the synopsis of those books? No, you didn’t. You declared that one of the books title didn’t mention your specific issue and thus the book was not worth your while. I also gave you a well researched  site of a certain expert that has expertise in the area where you lack it and where you currently require the perspectives and insights this expert offers. Through his site and lectures, by now and back then, you could have at least identified and prioritized your core values to begin with, and already have a better clarity regarding where you are at. You could have familiarized yourself with useful implementation of other ideas suggested by this self-made individual who used to be in a situation worse than yours but found many working ways out of it. Did you go for it? Hell, no! You watched one of his video presentations, found him a “real deal”, and then did nothing else. How many weeks or month have you practiced the Heart-Math Institute meditation which was offered free of charge, btw? Oh, you didn’t or it was 1 time only! And then you expected things in your life to change for the better while YOU remain the same? Your life is an extension and a reflection of who you are at any given moment. If you change nothing inside, nothing will change outside. You can’t fool life consciousness, you can only fool yourself but that’s impractical.

Here is the truth K.: unless you are screwed up so much, it is intolerably painful to carry on the way you have been carrying on so far,- only then you’ll do what it takes, not what’s convenient in order to turn your life around. And to turn your life around you must start making new choices and decisions, then follow through on them, whatever it takes. New choices and decisions will create a new, not the same reality, unless you choose to resurrect your old choices and decisions.

Saying to yourself that you “can’t”, “it’s complicated” or “it’s scary” is only appropriate and acceptable for a physically disabled person or a 3 year old kid. You are not one, but you act like one. How has it been working for you so far? I forgot to mention that historically, everywhere where you declare you “can’t”, “it’s complicated” and “scary”- you refer to the things that you haven’t even tried yet and do not have any experience with. So, realistically and practically speaking, you have no frigging clue whether you can or not, whether it’s scary or not or whether it’s easy or not.

Discomfort has a healthy purpose, it makes you explore new options that you haven’t thought of before, you should welcome it and be informed by it, not run away from it in self-induced terror.

Your life purpose is revealed to you by your inner Being, not given by another in a form of external instruction, it doesn’t work this way, never has, never will, this is something YOU need to discover through conscious and attentive interaction with life.

I am in full awareness that with everything I have spoken about in this letter, I will neither convince nor make you do what’s right and overdue, but life will. When you delay longer than appropriate doing what it takes (not what’s convenient) to change you and your life, believe me, life will find the least expected for you moment to do what it takes (not what’s convenient for you) to change you and your life in the most revolutionary, dramatic and unforgettable way you currently can’t imagine. Because life wants you to be alive, it wants to be expressed by you, not suppressed by you. And when this happens, it is very likely that you will never forget this transformation. Life is wise and capable, it does what is needed not what is careful. Paradoxically, you will later discover that what was needed, was full of care.

With that said, I choose to part my ways with you for good, all my interactions with you are now complete. You don’t owe me anything. But you do owe yourself and you have a lot of unfinished businesses with life. Make it your friend and your teacher.


Also by Andriana Eloha:

About the author:

Andriana received her formal training in the field of psychology and holds two university degrees in psychotherapy and counseling. Her main life and professional activity has always been focused on consciousness, human potential, personal development, evolution, and how one’s mind, and different levels of consciousness manifest corresponding nature of reality.

She is also gifted in the area of Arts and has a talent for uniting concrete, linear, fragmented, and logical with expanded, creative, and seemingly illogical, a big picture where all connections exist and function at the same time.

Andriana works with various modalities (among which are Transformational Imagery, EFT, Past life regression and regression to one’s Source Origin, Sedona Method, and for the most part – with her own Higher Consciousness Toolkit). She also utilizes practical knowledge of the latest research and discoveries made in the fields of psychology, quantum physics, energy psychology, wave- and epi-genetics, brain and heart science, physiology, microbiology, and neuroscience.


If you've ever found value in our articles, we'd greatly appreciate your support by purchasing Mindful Meditation Techniques for Kids - A Practical Guide for Adults to Empower Kids with the Gift of Inner Peace and Resilience for Life.

In the spirit of mindfulness, we encourage you to choose the paperback version. Delve into its pages away from screen glare and notifications, allowing yourself to fully immerse in the transformative practices within. The physical book enriches the learning process and serves as a tangible commitment to mindfulness, easily shared among family and friends.

Over the past few years, Wake Up World has faced significant online censorship, impacting our financial ability to stay online. Instead of soliciting donations, we're exploring win-win solutions with our readers to remain financially viable. Moving into book publishing, we hope to secure ongoing funds to continue our mission. With over 8,500 articles published in the past 13 years, we are committed to keeping our content free and accessible to everyone, without resorting to a paywall.