QUESTION:
Can you comment further on the fact that depression is not reality. What does that really mean, practically speaking, in one's daily life?
ANSWER:
As long as we are complaining about, or succumbing to depression, we are safe from doing anything or thinking anything that might change the status quo. Remember that the mind feels safer with a painful status quo than striving for some better unknown. The mind reasons that we have so far survived in the status quo no matter how painful and the mind can't be sure we will survive if we venture outside the status quo in which we have so far survived. The mind is not as smart as we think it is. That is why we have to manage our mind instead of allowing our mind to manage us.
I didn't know what complaining really was until I caught myself doing it all the time. I didn't know that I was unconsciously counting on having a perfect life and was therefore impatient with a normal, ordinary, mixed-bag life which alternated success and failure. I am sure that I was influenced in this by a modern-day tendency to look upon our success as more important than our character, the circumstances that befall us as more significant than how we respond to them; to look upon our roles in life as more important than our goals.
When we alternate blame, complaint, and depression like I used to do, all the doors to new possibilities are temporarily closed. We are not connected to our own present reality, and thus are not only lost to ourselves, but there is no way for us to really connect with any one else either. Depression is a wrongly triggered automatic instinct. Getting out of depression is rational, educated thinking and behavior.
No comments:
Post a Comment