About Depression …

Posted on November 13, 2014 Updated on November 13, 2014

By:

Aubrey Forest Zonneveldt

For Scott.

Having faced and conquered many demons of the soul I have learned a sad, but ultimately freeing truth: Depression is the Ego being confronted with the failure of its previously held assumptions or constructs.  The Ego, now confronted with the actual and literal Truth of a given situation must now adapt or perish.  Depression is the result of the Ego in self-perpetuated inaction.  In the state of Depression, the Ego refuses to move, unable to cope or deal with letting go of its false understandings or misconceptions.  Depression is literally “Self-Indulgent.”

Ultimately, the primary combatants in the fields of Depression are the Ego and Reality.  The Ego, being what it is, assumes a great deal, and one of the greatest assumptions WE make relative to our own Ego is that It is acting in OUR best interests.  Truth is, the Ego is a fantastic evolutionary tool at our disposal.    The Ego keeps us aware and centered on survival.  This is fantastic when you encounter only a few people at a given time, and are generally concerned with where your next meal may be originating, but in our modern world the Ego is easily turned in and upon itself, much to our disadvantage.

Our entire Western Culture is Ego-driven.   We are literally raised on a diet of our own Ego and by the time we reach adulthood we have become so full of ourselves that we have lost the capacity for any REAL introspection.  Instead, we content ourselves with what we are told about ourselves from external sources (which are plenty).  We know that if we act a certain way we are accepted, and if we do not we are shunned.  In this way, the Ego’s own narcissism is modulated by external forces which are imagined.   But ultimately, all we have created is a house of cards, pure vapor, that will vanish and disrupt given the slightest of challenges or opposition.   Depression is our Ego grieving over its perceived losses and our own inability to simply LET GO, and at last BE FREE.

In depression, it is the Ego which speaks to us, and it is not our friend.  Oh the voice we hear is ours, and one we have trusted our entire lives.  It says, “Trust me, I got you this far, I’m your friend ….” but nothing could be farther from the truth, for the ultimate design of the Ego when left unmanaged can be death, real actual death.  This is the Ego gone mad, unable to adapt or change, unwilling to LET GO of its treasured illusions and misconceptions.    The pain we feel seems real, but when the appeal is made to the Rational Mind, we find none.  The Rational Mind calls us to a different sort of action, and demands we LET GO, seeing no value or worth in holding to the loss of pure vapor.   It is to the Rational Mind that we must seek refuge in cases where in the Ego  has gone mad and overwhelmed our better judgment.

But all this requires that you stop and THINK.  Really THINK, REASON, not feel.  The Ego does not want you to Think, it wants you to FEEL.  It claims that FEELING is superior and that it is Human and essential to who you are, and because it is your voice that you hear in your mind, and because it is familiar, you believe what you hear rather than remain still for a moment and allow the silent ministration of the Rational Mind to distill upon you like dew.

Feeling is not superior, and it is not essential to being human; it is merely one small part of our own greater whole.  This is what you already know.  If you are suffering from real soul-crushing depression, depression wherein ceasing to live seems logically preferable to continuing on, then you have heard the admonitions of the Ego’s desire to end its suffering rather than LET GO and MOVE ON.  And between every breath of the Ego’s appeal, you hear in the silence of your mind a smaller voice that is calling you forward.  That is also part of who you are.  It is small and frail, and malnourished from years of abuse and neglect but it is ever there, our Higher Self, that aspect of ourselves that is capable of driving us to extraordinary heights if we only apply ourselves.  In times of depression it holds a small light amid the glowering darkness which permeates the soul fed continually by our Ego feeding upon its losses like some feral beast; and while it may not fully understand the emotions and feelings held by the Ego, it knows the way out of the darkness.

When I was fighting my greatest battles I finally realized (in my last, final struggle with Real Depression) that Depression was ultimately a form of Narcissism; a really nasty, vicious, and disgusting form of narcissism, but narcissism nonetheless.   I suddenly realized that all that I was feeling, all the anger, the frustration, the bone-numbing aggression, turmoil, and inwardly focused hate and sadness was all bullshit.   I literally stopped and thought to myself, “What the fuck?!?  This is so fucked up it’s unbelievable!!!”  In one instant, I was gifted with pure insight and perspective and I suddenly burst out laughing as I realized that me living or dying didn’t really matter all that much in the scheme of things.   Ordinarily my Ego would have looked up from its meal of self-loathing and said, “Ya got that right, better off just being dead!  No one cares anyway.”  But this time it remained silent and simply watched.  It was the laughter (or so I think).  I suddenly realized just how ridiculously silly I was to think that my life had any meaning at all!  How absurd.  In my mind’s eye I suddenly saw the whole of human history standing there before me, and I realized that In the totality of human history pretty much all of those people have felt pretty much every emotion I thought was exclusive to me, and they survived it … and no one cares.  Perfect, blissful, meaningless, irony.  I think my Ego began to even laugh at itself at that point.

We feel sad and depressed because we CHOOSE to.  Of course if you are sad and depressed right now you are probably thinking I don’t know anything.  But the truth is simple, and the simple Truth is this: no emotional state can be sustained indefinitely.   Furthermore, in spite of what we have been taught by our precious media and our Ego-Driven Western Culture, happiness is not everything.  In fact, “The Pursuit of Happiness” is one of the single most destructive things ever imaginable.  It is nothing short of granting the Ego carte’ blanche and informing the True Self (the real you inside) that any emotion short of pure happiness is unacceptable.  Well guess what people, the emotional state of most human beings is dynamic!  You feel happy, you feel sad, and most-often, most people go about their day with very little variation in their emotional state, being generally (and very healthily) indifferent to most of life’s experiences, because most of life’s experiences are generally unthreatening and uneventful, they just are.

So how do you (or rather how have I learned) to get by?

My Keys to Happiness:

1. Let Go.  The number one technique for overcoming the Ego and is to learn to LET GO and allow the world to manifest itself to you at its own pace and rate.  Because the Ego is impatient, it demands haste and makes hundreds, sometimes thousands of assumptions daily to get by.  Again, ordinarily this is not necessarily a bad thing, but when the Ego is confronted by its own short-comings because the countenance which it placed upon another — be it a person or situation — is not what actually lay beneath.  The Ego, in frustration, usually will lash out against the Other  in an effort to save itself embarrassment by casting the blame of the imagined injury to the other for not measuring up to the Ego’s expectorations.  The solution: LET GO.  If you are confronted with your Ego’s short-sightedness realize that it is just that.  If your life is not what you thought it should be, perhaps you should be asking yourself this, “Exactly what kind of life am I ‘supposed’ to have?” because the reality is, the only life you are “Supposed” to have is just a life.  Any meaning to your life is SELF-GENERATED.  Should your life’s meaning be externally generated it is vulnerable to EXTERNAL changes and the Ego’s misapprehension of reality.  LET GO of all that you think is harming you, all that you think is “Supposed” to be and be at peace with the Truth of life’s reality.  You are.  You ARE.  Explore that for a while.  Which leads me into the second point …

2. STAY in the PRESENT. The Ego is a tool for planning and survival. It is the part of you that even an hour after a questionable conversation or encounter continues to relive it over and over by saying (often aloud and to yourself as you re-enact the conversation) the things the Ego wished it had said, or by re-envisioning the Other’s reaction when something was said or done.   This, of course, can also turn in upon itself if left unchecked, but ultimately all of this is a function of the Mind not staying in the Present.  Since the Ego exists outside of Time, it floats through the concourses of memory and guides you like Virgil guided Dante through the Rings of Hell, asking him what he saw, and giving context to the various encounters.  Again, this can be helpful if the Rational Mind is invited along for guidance and commentary; but can be ultimately destructive.  The key to escaping the Rings of Hell (as they are ever within our Minds deepest recesses): STAY PRESENT.  The Truth of your situation is this, you are NOT in Hell — real or imagined — and any physical suffering you have endured has been shared by many others over the course of human history; your suffering is not unique.  No matter how awesome painful it may be now, get real: you are not the first to experience whatever you struggle against, and you shall most-certainly not be the last.

Staying Present allows us to recognize the course and flow of our emotions and recognize that they do, in fact, course and FLOW!  The Ego, in a fit of self-loathing and depression is happy to ride the concourses of Memory and feed over and over again on perceived losses.  DON’T LET IT.  No matter what, no matter how much you THINK your EGO is important to you, it is your enemy.  It does not want you to be Present because the Ego’s domain is not IN the Present.  The Present is the Domain of the Higher Self and the Rational Mind.  The Ego resides in the Past and its perceived Future.

3. Motion Creates Emotion! This is by far one of the most amazing realizations I ever made. The Ego, fixated upon its endless journey between what was and what might be, needs the body to remain still and fixate along with it.  Simple movement, getting up, bathing, cleaning the house, watering the plants, walking the dog, walking yourself, getting OUT and SEEING other people can be extraordinarily helpful and Consciousness Altering.  Go grocery shopping, even if all you need is a half-gallon of milk and some bread.  Go to the Mall (well maybe this time of year might be stressful, so use some judgment), or the park.  If you have a pet, take it for a walk or play with it.  If you don’t perhaps you should get one.  Even a hamster (my first personal pet years ago … really killed the loneliness of my first apartments!), a parakeet, or a guinea pig can be a tremendous boon and pull you out of a funk!

4. HEAR THE TRUTH. By this point, I guarantee you that if you are struggling against depression, bone-crushing depression, you have heard your inner voice cry out at least once and say, “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about! I ACHE!  I SUFFER!  I am DYING INSIDE!  He knows nothing.”  To which I will say, “I told you so.”  If you take just a moment and allow the Rational Mind to have the stage you will realize that all you feel right now, the pain, the sorrow, the grief, the anger, the frustration, all of it … it has no substance.  You cannot touch your anger, you cannot hold your grief or your suffering, and yet we create within our minds a vessel wherein our grief appears to have substance and so we embrace it full on and carry it like Sam-wise carried Frodo up the rocky and treacherous sides of Mount Doom.   And like Frodo, our Ego will betray us at the last!   HEAR THE TRUTH.  What you feel is merely that, A FEELING.  IT WILL PASS.  As laughter passes into a sigh, so to shall your sadness pass, leaving only a sigh and some wonder as to why you ever held on to your pain for so long.   Pain from depression is like holding onto a hot coal, and doing so willingly.   LET IT GO.   Sure, easier said than done, but guess what, even in your pain you acknowledge that IT CAN BE DONE.  So do it.

5. Live YOUR LIfe. Happy is the man or woman who is all out of shits to give for what everyone else thinks they should be doing. Only WE can give ourselves meaning.  No religion, no science, no culture, no guru, no one can give your life meaning but YOU.  This puts you in a very interesting position, because it make YOU responsible for pretty much everything.  The Ego hates that, and will deny the Truth of it; which, by now, should be confirmation enough of the Truth of the statement.   One of my own personal challenges has been to accept a life that is inconsistent with the paradigms of “Success” within my own Western Culture.  Having never really been all that concerned with material possessions, I have failed to accumulate what most others believe are tangible signs of my success as a man in the Western World.   For a long time, my own Ego was constantly berating me for my failure to accomplish these material goals, until I realized that it just wasn’t my priority.  That was the key, realizing what actually WERE my priorities.  We all have them, the things we would rather be doing that doing the things our Culture has told us we “Ought” to be doing.  Our dissatisfaction (and ultimately depression) comes from the Ego being confronted with its failures to meet imagined expectations and then further imagining consequences for failure to measure up.   This “Measuring Up” is the artificial tool used by the Ego to validate itself.  The fact is, all this “Measuring Up” is done without context.  No one stops and considers what was sacrificed in order to obtain the material possessions others seem to find so valuable.  Were relationships sacrificed, personal integrity, or something more; for the truth is, something is always created from the use or sacrifice of something else.   Rather than feeding the Ego, just remember, “Happy is the man or woman who is all out of shits to give for what everyone else thinks they should be doing.”

6. Stop making assumptions. I became happiest when I stopped placing my countenance (my face, how I thought others should act) upon the actual face and countenance of others. When I did I stopped thinking, “They should do this or they should do that,” and started trying to understand what it was that they actually DID do, what were the consequences and what were the costs, my compassion increased as did my empathy and understanding.  I abandoned the entire concept of “Ought to,” or “Should have,” for myself and ESPECIALLY for everyone else around me.  Having done so I am often mildly surprised when people “do their job” or what is generally expected, or when people actually listen to my advice and take it, because I really have no expectations for anything other than my own personal conduct;  and perhaps that is the greatest key of all.   If people act a way that is unexpected, perhaps that is because I choose to place upon them a face that was not their own, instead of seeing them for who they ARE instead of who I BELIEVED or EXPECTED them to be.  This works for institutions, work situations, religions, or anything seen through the lens of the Ego.  LET GO of the Ego’s expectations and allow people and situations to SURPRISE you!  You may think your range of emotion has only one level right now, but there is an entire spectrum of emotion to be explored, from irritation to elation, so get out there and FEEL some things — new things, and THINK and REASON your way through your feelings!  Finally, I keep ever-present in my mind that we are all so very fragile, so very frail, and that we each tend to our own artificial constructs we believe to be real. People are delicate — including ourselves — handle with care.

7. Learn to love yourself for who you are and not for who you think you should be.  This is a real process of discovery, and a journey well worth taking.  It is our own “Undiscovered Country,” and one which requires vast periods of exploration and introspection.  This journey can only commence when the Ego is mastered, for the Ego is not the travelling companion you need on this journey.  Instead, I suggest an appeal to the Rational Mind, and from there to the Higher Self.  But in the meantime, stay focused, realize you are human; and being human entitles you to draw upon the collective strength of all of mankind.  Being human is not a weakness, it is not an excuse for making mistakes or being prone to error.  Being human means all of that and a great deal more!  It means that we are also as strong as we think we are weak.  It means that we have the capacity to exceed our perceived limitations and reach beyond ourselves to something greater.  It is a noble birthright, and one which requires we seek to actualize the greater purpose of who and what we are.  What that is remains only for YOU to discover, and not for someone or something else to state for you.

Ultimately, when Depression is distilled into its actual essence, it goes something like this …. The Ego cries out in its perceived loss, anguish, and pain, and says, “Unfair, Why Me!?!  This isn’t how it should be, things should be different!”  And the Rational Mind replies, “Ought to be?  There is no “Ought” to be.  Things simply ARE as they ARE.  Accept it and move on.”   LET GO!  Let go.

I know this works, and I promise anyone out there that I know what REAL bone-crushing, soul rending depression is about.  Been there, circled with Virgil all the way to the Ninth Ring of Hell and got the tee-shirt.  The battle with one’s Ego is the greatest battle we shall ever engage upon in our lives, and truth be known, our very lives depend upon our victory!  To you who struggle with real depression I wish you the best and hope for your success!  You got yourself into this, and only you can get yourself out.   And if you hear that little voice in your head saying there is no hope, I will tell you now: THAT is your opponent!  Get busy and kick his ass!