Depression

Depression is nothing but the mood of the mind which does not flow with life. It is nothing but the energy of your being not being able to cope up with the reality. You have two things – the imaginary life and the real life. Whenever your being does not meet the real life you fall into depression. The conflict between the real life and your being, the reality and your imagination is depression. Most of the time our attachments to the concepts, to the ideologies, to the philosophies, makes us not to move ahead. When society becomes sophisticated, affluent, depression is a luxury. You can have it only when you have other things and not if you don’t have basic needs.

Two Types of Depression

Depression has two types:

• 1) The depression supported by your ego
• 2) The depression that makes you feel total inability.

The depression that makes you feel total inability is better. You will understand that you need help from outside. The depression that is supported by your ego will be interested only in the solutions which you feel are solutions. So you may expect some teacher who will support your solution which you already have, which you strongly believe in, even in depression. Depression is not wrong, but depression supported by your ego is something seriously wrong. Even if you have depression, there is every possibility you can be saved if your ego is not supporting your depression. If your ego is supporting your depression you will not listen to the master’s teachings. You will listen only to the teacher who is ready to support your depression, your understanding, your ambition, your ideas, your thoughts. Even if the teacher is trying to move a little away from your conclusions you will shout at them. The worst thing that can happen to a jeeva (soul), the worst mess he can create for himself is supporting his depression by his ego. Depression itself is not wrong. But while you expect your own solution and expect the master to support your solution, you are in a big soup. You can’t be saved. Naturally you will start searching for a teacher who will support your ego. By fulfilling ego you can never walk out of depression.

The Science of Depression

Human being is a great potential bound by distracting, deluding kind of a net, prison. Every single cell of you is having a kind of a covering. That covering constantly represents mortality, delusion. Your cell is constantly struggling to experience immortality. Every single cell in your body, which is the smallest unit in the physical body and thought – the smallest unit in the mental body and the pure light in your conscious body – all put together constitute as the cell. All your smallest units are directly connected. All your smallest units are covered by delusion. In each level your smallest unit is struggling to break from that delusion. At body level that struggle is to get rid of disease and death. At the mental level that struggle is to get rid of depression and disorders. At the conscious level that struggle is to get rid of the delusion and achieve enlightenment. So the point to be understood here is that all your struggles are nothing but struggles to achieve enlightenment. Start struggling directly, you will not waste your time and energy in diluted, diverted attention or direction or decisions. Your struggle to get out of depression is rooted in the same unit where your struggle for enlightenment also happens.

The Only Way Out is In

Even when you have the small struggles, look into the smallest unit where that struggle is happening – that cell, where that struggle is happening. Whenever all the struggles in you are aligned, immediately you are out of delusion. Delusion is nothing but thinking or believing that all these struggles are independent of each other.

Don’t Resist!

Your being needs its own space. Your being needs a little bit of aloneness. But your resistance to give aloneness, your resistance to give space for your being only creates depression. Depression is like a black hole. If you don’t resist and enter into it, it can create a big bang. As long as you resist, depression is a death. When you allow it to happen, it just rejuvenates you totally. When you live totally you will know how to leave totally. If you know how to get depressed totally, you will know how to express yourself totally. The very word depression has a condemnation to it. You do not want to get depressed. You resist continuously with the depression. You resist the black hole. That is why you never let the big bang happen.

From Depression to Expression

Depression has become our nature now. Using the depression as a method is the only way to reach the divine, the way to reach the deep state of expression. As long as you resist the depression, except some more problems, nothing else can be achieved. No medication can help depression. As long as you fight your depression, there is no way to come out of it. It is like fighting with your own shadow. Depression is the seed of expression and expression is the way to depression. They are just cycles of life and death. They are nothing but peak and valley of your being. Peak of your being is expression. Peak of your valley is depression. If you know how to go deep with the depression, how to travel with the depression, then even depression cannot depress you. The very idea of depression will be lost. You can label any experience as a depression or as an expression. It is just your label which makes something as depression or something as expression.

Knowledge Weapons to Combat Depression

Truth from shaastra – shashtras (knowledge weapon) can create ecstasy in the inner space and energy to expand in outer space. Unless you have the courage to go near the truth, the real healing will never happen. When you fall into depression the thoughts which bring you out of the depression, the clarity which brings you out of the depression are the self-healing thoughts which are actually created by shaastra-shastras. Whenever depression attacks you, life brings different scenes in front of you, during which the shaastra-shastras (knowledge weapons) can be used so powerfully that you can just come out of the depression. The more and more you accumulate the self-healing thoughts inside your system, you will see that depression will have fear to come near you. If you want the truth to do the process of healing in you, it has to be digested, internalized. When these truths are added in to you, you will completely re-think, you will re-design your whole life. When the load is taken out of your inner space, there is nothing but healing.

Power of a Feeling Connection With the Divine

Feeling connection to something which is higher than you, either God or Guru, nullifies things from the constant harassment you go through from your body and mind. Feeling connection is the ground where, if the seeds of truth are sown, they become the reality of experience, the tree of experience. There are problems which may not be solved by unclutching, which will be solved by a feeling connection. The pains which you can’t heal, the problems which you can’t get out by unclutching, can be solved only by a feeling connection with something higher than you. A lot of things with which your ignorance survives, a lot of things with which your mind thrives, a lot of things on which your suffering is built, will be taken away from you. Feeling connection with the divinity is the capacity to convert the wisdom into lifestyle with expression, not depression.

Deeper Truths of Depression

According to the Vedic healing sciences, depression is not a physical disease at all, but the extreme suffocation of the being.

It is caused and characterized by the shrinking of the subtle body.

We rarely notice the subtle body unless it is stimulated or disturbed in some way. Have you ever felt suddenly suffocated when entering a small room or a cave, even though there is plenty of oxygen and enough space for the physical body to move around? The pressure you feel is the shrinking of the subtle body that is actually our breathing space and emotional-mental boundary.

One of the primary causes of climbing juvenile depression rates is suppression due to parental and social influences. Children are being exposed to overwhelming amounts of physical and emotional information and at an age when they are barely equipped to handle it, either physiologically or emotionally. Simultaneously, they are subjected to the severe demands of a rapidly changing lifestyle, parental expectations and peer pressure which suppress their free expression from all sides. The resultant suffocation is depression.

In the initial stages of the disorder, this shrinking of the subtle body happens due to external causes. Since the subtle body also contains our prana (life-force) reserves, the shrinking of this body plunges us into an energy low, ensuring that we never have sufficient resources to climb back out into normalcy. Unfortunately, this shrunken way of existing gradually becomes part of the bio-memory (cellular memory), casting a shadow of depression over one’s life for no reason.

A state of mild, causeless depression is a modern urban disorder that has practically become a way of life for millions today.

The spiritual way out of depression

Inner expansion is the only permanent cure for depression!

Although depression can be helped by the right diet, proper sleep and cultivation of meaningful life goals, none of these can offer a permanent solution.

By nature, human beings are hard-wired for continuous evolution and expansion. Spiritual living is nothing but constantly expanding beyond the boundaries created by the body and mind. For exactly this reason, a period of deep depression can become a transformational period in your life.

Experiencing a powerful sense of suffocation automatically forces us to seek expansion in some form. At this time, if the patient is given a spiritual solution like meditation, we can ensure that he or she does not fall prey to substance abuse or suicide.

In Vedic medical science, depression is linked to energy blockages in the sahasrara chakra (crown energy center). This chakra is literally a channel to receive cosmic energies. The health of this chakra depends on how open and available we are to the influx of Divine energies.

While techniques like prayer and meditation can help melt down the resistance to these energies, yoga can help ‘lock’ these changes into our system, so that the transformational energy garnered during these processes does not drain away in regressive and self-defeating behavior.

One powerful way to get out of depression is to shift the focus of one’s life away from oneself.

Caring selflessly for another person, especially for a child or an infirm person, is a highly effective way of expanding beyond oneself.

Post-partum depression is the unfortunate product of a generation that has never experienced the joy of genuinely giving and caring selflessly for another being. While hormonal imbalances and social influences are real contributors to depression and cannot be ignored, chronic depression can be flushed out of the system only by a proper understanding of its root cause. The ideal healing process would involve an intelligent mix of lifestyle changes, a sound appreciation of possible causes and solutions, a strong attitudinal shift, some yoga training, and a steady spiritual practice.

Spiritual Powers Remove Depression From Your Life

Whether we feel depressed or not has to do with the amount of contact we are having with life. For many people, that contact point is just a needle point. When even that goes, we feel depressed.

With spiritual powers, our cognition of us changes. Enlightenment is the moment where our contact point with life has become full skin surface level. Because of spiritual powers manifesting in our lives, our love for Life and Guru (who is our connection to Life) drastically increases.

References

http://nithyanandatimes.org/walk-out-of-depression/ http://www.nithyananda.org/article/depression-–-what-way-out#gsc.tab=0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gccjRFYlhHM http://www.nithyananda.org/video/depression-and-conflict-free-living#gsc.tab=0