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What Is Depression?
First and perhaps most important, let’s define depression. What is it? I get horribly depressed. I get a heavy feeling in my head. An imbalance that makes you feel unmotivated to do much of anything? How much of this is connected to health and in particular MS? Depression is despair about life and has many…
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Needs Of The Mind
Depression is potentially inevitable. It’s so much a part of our potential that whole types of music and art are defined by it. Whenever you struggle to the point your strength fails you, you will go into at least a temporary depression. Mostly, we get in trouble with depression, because of our beliefs surrounding the…
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Controlled Depression
How can we be depressed on purpose? How would one live with a controlled depression? Is there really much difference between clinical depression and just feeling sad, or is it just a matter of severity? It’s actually a matter of balance. Both can be equally severe, but they don’t necessarily involve the same things. For…
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Permission To Be
I’m reading a book called “Reality Is Broken” which is about games and how they are designed to put us into the zone and make us happy. Would game playing help with depression or would it just be avoidance? It actually helps. It helps a lot. Some people take the attitude that everything is a…
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Live It
You will always fail. The game will always be over. You will always lose. Bushido teaches that the secret to developing genuine virtue, genuine values and ethics and meaning, is to see yourself as already dead. Then look at the world. When it’s all over anyway, what can upset you? When there is nothing to…
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We Can Grow
To take depression somewhere useful… A plant grows from its roots. We grow from that lowest of our emotional points, but we can grow. If the forces we choose for ourselves are too harsh, we grow twisted, like a blighted tree. But if we grow from our inner game, we will grow in the true…
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Life is Flow
Life is flow, and as with all forms of flow you will encounter turbulence. Does it not seem strange that no matter how smart or skilled or self knowing you are, you just can’t avoid having a rough day periodically? Also, have you noticed that you can almost never pin down a single clear cause…
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Viewer in the Brain
Well, maybe I should jump ahead of the metaphysics lesson and speak of something relatable… Have you ever heard a new sob story? An entirely new form of trouble, some brand new sort of suffering. If so, what was the new suffering? It might provide valuable insight. No. They all tend to be the same…
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Your Mind Isn’t Brainless
Shall I go into the mind as it relates to life flow? Life energy is not the mind. It is stimuli and like the electromagnetic spectrum it ranges the entire bandwidth of potential existence. Your mind does occasionally have an impact on this system, the system of life energy that your brain is plugged into.…
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Absent the Mind
What do you choose? And this question is for anyone, what do you choose? Do you choose what is on your mind as they commonly say? It’s hard to do so. Often I need to do things while they are on my mind or they don’t get done. I am thinking of that Marcus Aurelius…
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The Way Back
Let’s take the walking dead shall we? Though their brain has stopped giving them a reason to live, so to speak, or even the sense that they can live, even though they can easily understand that other people are alive, and even show social comprehension toward others, empathy of a sort, they understand that they…
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After the Fear Paralysis
I have a form of “after the fear” paralysis. The worst has happened in many things. I lost my home and family. I could do it again with my new home and family but it is less fear than it is irritation and pursuit of self-vindication. That pursuit of self vindication is depressing you. Your…
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In My Moment
If you have ever felt suicidal, well, I will ask you this, did society make sense to you in that moment? Did your social experience seem coherent in that moment? For me it did. Am I strange? I would say it didn’t have anything to do with society. It was just that the pain was…
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Rough Patches
Rough patches are turbulence, and they are impersonal. Your rough day isn’t about you, and you aren’t served by knowing why the flow of things seems to be giving out beneath you. The airline pilot keeps you alive during your flight, not by keeping track of individual wind currents, but by keeping the principles of…
Category: Depression
Our minds break because our thinking requires concepts that we get really emotionally invested in. We come to see our lives as defined by certain emotions and beliefs, and when these are challenged, it causes us a lot of stress. Mostly, we get in trouble with depression, because of our beliefs surrounding the state of being. Our value judgements, or the idea we have or were taught regarding how to deal with depression.
Depression is a clarity of awareness. It’s your body and mind telling you the game is over. It isn’t fun anymore. But it is not telling you that there will be no other games. It’s a chance to actually, deliberately, choose this time.
“If depression is creeping up and must be faced, learn something about the nature of the beast: You may escape without a mauling.” Dr. R. W. Shepherd
“Depression opens the door to beauty of some kind.” James Hillman