I tapped into some very deep dark harsh realities with it. I’m not at all saying that that is what anyone else will experience with it.
It put me in touch with a very base, buried part of humanity as a whole, with the need to survive. And it put me in touch with something bordering on nihilism. I think humanity at a very unconscious level is having a great struggle against nihilism or meaninglessness.
I’d say it was a positive experience as a whole, as I worked through the issues and re-found my own foundations for believing in purpose and goodness.
The whole experience brings to mind Viktor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning”, which he wrote while in a holocaust camp. He said that if man has a strong enough “Why” he can endure any “How”. So a takeaway from that would be that we maybe don’t need How-to self help books quite so much as we need to know Why we are trying to move forward.
After noticing my lack of motivation towards my greatest goals (which should seem paradoxical to anyone who thinks about it) I realized that my real desires were hidden from me. The goals are just packages which we believe will bring us the things we really desire. But when we forget what those things are, we can lose motivation and have a hard time figuring out why. Our goals are real world achievements, but our desires can be less tangible things like feeling loved, feeling worth, etc.
When we line those things up, when we connect our goals and desires together in our hearts, we can go far.