The key to holding yourself back is repetition.
Mental repetition is all that is necessary for you
to stay dissatisfied, anxious, irritated and normal.
Even though all human problems are questions at heart, (and illusionary ones at that), the only freedom therefrom is via their relentless, totally unprejudiced scrutiny. It is not with the intent to find an answer to some specific question, (such as: “Why am I not properly appreciated?” “Why does badness seem to overwhelm goodness?” “Does my life have a purpose or not?” etc.), but rather to keep holding such a question before your mind and asking yourself: “Why is there such a question in me?”
This approach alone will yield the liberating insight. It is not an answer to such questions that will awaken you from the routine human mental daze, but rather an understanding of the nature and purpose of such questions. But take needed note, that the apparent seriousness of all such questions/human problems, is not only undergirded by the mind’s repetition of them, but moreover that the mind strongly resists all attempts to restrain this activity. By physical habit-of-instinct is man made healthy. By mental repetition is he made normal and kept in check.
A man whose thinking is not totally controlled by repetition is a man out of life’s mainstream control. Repetition is to mental stability and continuity as the laws of physics are to material predictability and dependability; via these laws you know each morning that when you turn on a faucet, water will come out just as it did the day before. Via repetition, you know that the mental personality of the person you wake up in bed with each morning will be the same as it was the day before and indeed, it is also by the repetition that seamlessly goes on in your own mind that you are able to maintain the sensation to yourself of you being the same person from day to day.
The body depends totally on repetition of physical conditions, while the mind does likewise regarding the thoughts that give it life. But this repetition serves the overall needs of life, via collective humanity, and not the particular interests of any individual man. If you are going to pursue questions that do not attract other men, (and thus do not directly serve life’s immediate interests), you must do so completely on your own, and in head on conflict with the almost irresistible force and magnitude of repetition.
J.