yeah, like what?
yeah, like what?
say AlterNation got any pics of your C99. Im about to flush mine and I wanna compare mine to yours.
Personally, I believe that chemical balances are susceptible to suggestion, but that most people have been convinced that they cannot change how they feel and see their reality. Some call that depression and some call that life. It's a matter of how one interprets the very nature of the human condition.
However, I believe in mind over matter in the sense that we can change how we feel. I also see that it is very hard to convince one's self to take that responsibility, and I don't claim to be able to do it all the time. On the contrary, I mostly flail around in between successful short windows of choosing.
Deep consideration and meditation has done a lot for me in understanding myself.. and if one digs deep enough into the nature of reality itself, the underlying phenomena is that we are actually creating our subjective realities with the thoughts we think and the belief structures we choose, and we can choose different thoughts that feel better to literally change the way we feel at any given moment.
To me, depression is a spiritual disease in the sense that it is systemic and cannot be fully resolved without addressing the system-wide burden of being a home to negative thoughtforms.
Again, I don't expect anyone to be receptive to these ideas for the most part, because it implies an inability to lean on cultural crutches that we've created for ourselves.
However... to be clear, I am not saying depression is "easily fixed" or something you "just snap out of..." --for certain, I am not discounting the negative effects of long-term belief patterns that we have ingrained into ourselves heavily.
What I AM doing, is pointing out that depression is one of these long-term belief patterns rather than an absolute truth that we have to live with forever. The key is to realize that we are capable of reprogramming our own minds.
I believe that depression is essentially the result of societal beliefs that we are not capable of this... and the implications of why this would be pushed on us are numerous and obvious, as a people unable to believe in their own power of choice of emotional state is much easier to manipulate than one that can choose their own state.
Anyway... what I really want to convey here is that we are the creators of our own realities in the literal sense that how we perceive our reality to be "colored" (depressing, encouraging, et cetera) is generated by the opinions we have about it and ourselves.
And again... let me say that I am not discounting the threat of the depression trap... we are POWERFULLY susceptible to influence, especially during childhood when we are forming ideas about how the world works. The belief in depression as a damning constant does not serve anyone.
The key is to realize that we can choose our own thoughts and beliefs, which dictate our directly perceived reality. And as for why the beliefs are defined otherwise already despite our preferences, we must realize that when we do not know we can choose our own thoughts and beliefs (or deny the responsibility thereto) then those thoughts and beliefs will be generated for us by outside forces.
"Brainwash yourself, before somebody nasty beats you to it." -Rob Brezsny, World Entertainment War
Unfortunately, someone nasty already beat us all to it, and now we have to deprogram almost as much as reprogram, which makes the whole thing very daunting and pushes it into a realm where it's easy to dismiss the possibility of conquering the defined programming and choosing for ourselves.
It is my belief, that depression is essentially whether or not a person is emotionally or subconsciously aware that this is not "right"... that we should be in control but are not. It is a subconscious hinting from the part of ourselves that we have blocked, and it will not go away until it stimulates a high enough state of awareness to realize that we literally have to choose a better thought and feeling or be stuck in the ones we have.
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I tried to word all that in a way that won't push buttons. I'm really not trying to provoke anybody into a discussion about the legitimacy of these ideas, I just wanted to share the conclusions I've reached after 16 years of manic depression in hopes that it might help someone else.
I simply encourage everyone to stretch past the ideas that others have suggested for the way your reality has to work.
Through various forms of practice, I have slowly been working on reprogramming my mind, and I see direct experiential evidence of progress, even though I still have huge dark periods where I cannot remember that I am in the throws of this process.
In my experience, yoga is one of the most powerful tools for reprogramming thoughts because it is very difficult to ignore the thoughts that do come up during it... as soon as we are being pelted by ideas like "i'm too tired for this" and "I'll never keep this up long enough to make a difference" we are already being presented with the most rudimentary examples of opportunities to reprogram.
Also... I think that most people think of repgoramming as a rather abstract concept that they can't grasp... I did for years, until I realized that it is literally as simple as thinking something. Every time you think something, you are programming yourself.
The key to recognizing the opportunities for new thoughts is in acknowledgement of the bad ones. When one finds a compulsive bad thought in mind, we can actually take that as the moment to stop and reconsider... maybe we don't mean that after all.. maybe we want to think and feel something better about that given subject... and it becomes as simple as "thinking the good thing instead" and then letting go, moving on. (The letting go process is easily facilitated by re-engaging the yogic process itself by focusing on the breath, or focusing on the act of relaxation of the physical body.)
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Anyway. Again, I'm not discounting anyone's experience. I recognize that the struggle is real. However, I have found that it only has to be real for me until I choose something else. When we surrender instead of struggling, then surrender is real. And so is the resultant peace.
I realize that some may say that this means I do not actually suffer from depression... that what they experience is a "more real" form of depression than what I have experienced. All I can really tell you is that my father is clinically depressed and he comes from a family wherein almost every person is either angry, abusive, or self-medicating with alcohol or drugs. EVERYONE in my life told me that I was trapped in this... that it is chemically-dictated and that I can't fix it myself. It was a personal choice on my part to believe in what I felt on the subject personally, instead of believing in what was being told to me. To this day I struggle to maintain my beliefs in the face of fear-based oppositions that try to tell me I'm perpetually doomed EVEN THOUGH I can see PLENTY of evidence of progress made. So take that for what it's worth I guess.
In a really far reaching sense I see depression as the direct logical response to a world so wrought with the imbalances I described above. We live in a society that demonizes certain personality types. I see "depression", as a label, as a means of demonizing, rather than an objective truth.
One more quote I like...
"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they are yours." -Wayne Dyer.
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Hope some of this was useful to someone out there. Peace and love to you all.
That was pretty well explained I think we are both drawing the same conclusions more or less but just expressing them differently. The only thing I would somewhat disagree on is the yoga as being so key. It is for you and that's fine. For me it's walking, for others it could be anything almost. As long as it's a healthy activity that one enjoys (so they'll be more inclined to stick with it) and has the benefit of getting the person outside themselves so the mind can have a chance to work thru whatever is going on with a person, absent many of the daily distractions of life.
always thinking about what I did, who i hurt and what if? i would of done it better or right.
Hempkat if you quote some you are speaking to them. There is no way around that.
Next thing is you could have quoted/spoken to me and let me know how you were feeling. I would have quickly eased your mind and let you know that I did not find your post towards DAT Harsh or un-nurturing. I would not have Agreed with you if I thought you gave fowl advice.
Simple scenario say you tell little Jon there is no such thing as Santa and I say your right , but dont loose the Xmas spirit.
You could remove your text towards me and I would remove me agreeing with you. Unless you have no good intention in this situation
Having a bit of a hard time in life in general as I have been planning to move/buy a place but having a hard time making it happen due to circumstances and financial limitations... it's coming around but I'm really burnt out now because it takes so much effort for me to conquer big things like that. And winter's sneaking up quick and making it feel more hopeless to get it done before the season hits.
Yeah moving during cold weather months can really suck but on the upside the real estate market tends to slump in the fall/winter months and so as a result you might find you can get a better deal then what you might get in the spring or summer. You know those real estate agents are feeling the pressures of the holidays and the gift giving that goes along with it so they might settle for a lower price to secure a commission rather then have to draw down on savings to finance the holidays. Just a thought.
The main point I wanted to convey is that just because our chemicals are balanced a certain way does not mean we have to accept it as our permanent lot in life. Like the chicken and the egg, chemical balance can dictate mindstate, but mindstate can also influence chemical balance. One does not cause the other in a one-way path, it is a two way street and they are inevitably interlinked and come together... i'd go so far as to say they are one unified phenomena, and it is only the lens through which we view it that determines how we see it.
The what if game is a very tempting one because most of us can recall a crossroads in our life where we made a choice that seemed to not work out to well. So it's tempting to imagine how things might have been had we made that other choice. Ultimately we didn't make that choice though and we come back to the present no different. Perhaps even more depressed because we can't go back and undo things.
What I find helps when I slip into that game is to start realizing all the good things that happened in our lives might not have happened had we made that other choice. Like say you regret not going to college and you fantasize about how much better things would be if you had. But then lets say you met the love of your life during those years you might have otherwise been at college and so never met the love of your life because she was away and her life course moved away from yours by the time you finished college and maybe the love you find in place of that fails miserably and ends in a painful break up.
Trying to rethink the past is a waste of time. Better to try to rethink your future rather then condemn it to the depression of regret.