I apologize for my silent withdrawal from the forum for a while. I'm having a bit of a troubled relationship with Zen--not you all, mind--at the moment.

I started my spiritual search over five years ago with hopes and dreams about truth and enlightenment. It's been one disappointment after another ever since. I'm left now at the point where I'm not sure such things exist. Not only is it disappointing, but as a person who staked nearly everything on the quest of truth, without it and with dwindling hope it is possible to be realized, I'm left feeling bereft of dignity.

It feels to me now that maybe spirituality is just a form of self-entertainment, and I wonder if the past several years of my life haven't just been some childish game. Have I simply been keeping myself distracted from some underlying issue that is "purely psychological" in nature? Maybe I'm just depressed and messed up and too broken to relate to people in a way that feels real or meaningful, and my solitary spiritual search has been a way to frame that in a way that makes my life seem better, more important or meaningful, than it is.

When I do have moments where I seem to get a flash of meaning, of what *is* true about all I've practiced and studied for years, it's a bitter pill. Because it seems to me what it's all about is giving up oneself completely to compassion for others. Which is lovely, but also dreary. It makes me think of something a man I loved told me once: The bodhisattva is the one who makes the toys that the rest of the world plays with. It's a very lonely position. Is that it? For the rest of my life? Be the Giving Tree that the boy cuts down to a stump? Sometimes I can occupy that position joyfully, but sometimes I feel like I have no fuel of my own to sustain that sort of existence. And then I feel like a moral failure as well.

The answer seems simple, perhaps: just find stuff that makes me happy. But what if the only thing that has ever really made me happy now seems like it was an illusion--that is, meaning? I don't know why I feel like I've finally run out of hope with religion, but I've had that feeling for some time now, even when I haven't felt despair as acutely as I have in the past couple of months.

Can anyone here relate? Can anyone speak to my condition? Even just a little tidbit of insight would be a huge relief.