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Originally Posted by JustBe
rather than what’s going on outside of yourself.
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I think it it always best to know what's going on with yourself to a degree you aren't completely overwhelmed by... which requires some close attention, but temptations to follow after your reactions are very strong, so you have to be careful of stuff like that and be more discerning in responses - not just in a thread, but in every scenario.
In our distracted world which involves interdependence, responsibility, obligations and so forth, we don't have the fullness of opportunity. We are never freed from problems and agitations because we have to keep up with everything. We have to live with that and cannot simply dedicate our lives to the true path of purification when we're like, What about the kids etc. But there is some upside in that we can apply as far as possible some mindfulness to what we're doing, and do our best to keep an even keel through life's ups and downs.
I did the long retreats and found the same erratic agitations happen all by themselves without anything else going on, so really, all these constraints of a normal life are not the cause of such torments. The torments are still there if you sit in a quiet meditation hall all day with no external reason for them, but with external noise removed, you can go much deeper into the subtler levels of cause and understand how you generate kamma constantly in your everyday life. It can be surprising to realise how deeply miserable you really are when we usually have that hidden somewhere sub-surface so we can keep going with all of our obligatory things to survive.
Anyway, I don't even know what I'm saying at this point, so I'll leave it there.