“What once motivated me seems to have fallen away.”
The substance of our life that gives it meaning is false. The imperatives that drive you forward are imposed from your environment — in one way or another. This provides a false substance. “I’m driven therefor I am.”
There are occasions when this false substance may fall away. This can be as a result of accident, illness, shocks, or special forms of self work. At first glance we might interpret this as a lack of substance.
While it is true that something has diminished leaving an observable hole, this is not substance. Fact is, experience in human realms does not train us how to recognize real substance. At this point it is highly unlikely we would recognize true substance if it bit us in the butt.
The world is repetition. Periodicity is another word for it. Probably a better word because it does not carry the impression of self-initiation that repetition does.
Eat, don’t eat, eat, don’t eat.
Sleep, wake, sleep, wake.
Get up, go to work, return from work, go to bed, get up, go to work, return from work.
It is all periodic. A wheel turning over and over and over.
“How does one get off this wheel of repeating cycles?” You can’t. You can’t in the same way you can not exit a car you are not in. Nor, can you get down from a horse you are not riding.
The world is not repetitious in the way we think it is. On the surface it may appear so. But this is a result of how the brain works. We live by closest match. As raw data is coming in through the senses as soon as the brain recognizes a match is stops looking at the raw data and points to a recording of a previous near match. A previously recorded near match is substituted for the raw input. This saves time which was important when running from predators.
One method of short-circuiting this process is to hunt for anomalies. Train yourself to recognize anomalies.
Another method would be to come into present time. As you come into the now there is less and less repetition. There is still eating, not eating, eating, not eating. But it is not repetitious. We could call this non-repetitious repetition. Which if you do will sound to others like just so much gobbledegook. That’s okay since this is not the kind of thing that does well in conversations around the water cooler or at the office.
The “being” that you imbue in your life gives it substance.