depression
Posted by Clarity on 25 Jun 2002 at 09:50 pm | Tagged as: Uncategorized
feeling kinda depressed today. Went to a farewell party last night for a fellow civil soldier
here… I don’t know what is with me and parties, but I just find them totally
boring. People getting drunk and making fools of themselves, I mean what is the point
in that? And then of course I think something must be wrong with me, because everyone else
seems to be enjoying themselves. Old feelings of loneliness and being out of place came up pretty
strong. Thoughts of Trungpa Rinpoche kept coming up and his insistent talking about
aloneness, how important it is. I could never quite get what was he talking about
and I still can’t… Feeling mad and sad at the moment.
So, what to do? Wallow in it, oh, poor me who’s at the mercy of these horrible feelings,
or is there something else?
Found this quote from Trungpa Rinpoche on the net:
“When you walk into this world of reality, the greater or cosmic world, you will find the way to rule your world - but, at the same time, you will also find a deep sense of aloneness. It is possible that this world could become a palace or a kingdom to you, but as its king or queen, you will be a monarch with a broken heart. It is not a bad thing to be, by all means. In fact, it is the way to be a decent human being - and beyond that a glorious human being who can help others.”
Chogyam Trungpa, Shambhala - The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Shambhala, Boston & London, 1988, p. 142.
I’ve lately heard Ani Pema talk about tasting, hearing,
touching, smelling your emotions. Hmm… How on earth does one do that??
taste depression? yucky thought!
I *think* the trick is to walk straight into your emotion, to not turn away. Turning away is the first impulse, the habitual pattern which happens when negative or bad emptions are encountered. Instead, you try to stay, to look this so-called monster straight in the face, then you can taste and swallow it.
Trungpa Rinpoche and Pema Chödrön both have given advice to do this with emotions if I remeber correctly.
It is not very easy in the beginning and it also needs kind of a “worrier” motivation, some courage. It is like having a very scientific curious set of mind: “Let’s see what comes here, what this depression is made of, how it really fully feels, what it is and also why I keep running away all the time.”
It actually feels like running into the emotion, towards it, not with aggression, but straight, saying: “Whatever, I will not turn away. I have nothing to loose. Let’s go!”
This technique of walking straight into your feared emotions or even embracing what you fear is very tricky. I read about it first in a relationship book by Charlotte Kasl, I think, and it didn’t give any advice on how to do this. It stated merely that you should. I tried and it ate me alive. Total panic, anxiety, etc.
I think there are definite techniques and exercises that make this process much more managable. I found some of them in books by Cheri Huber. I also found that increased exercise in meditation in general helped. I found that increasing my ability to disidentify with my thoughts/emotions helped. An increased awareness that “thoughts are not reality” helped. It is one thing to know this in your head, but it is another thing to know this in your heart. There is a big difference between knowledge and experience.
Oh, and it takes patience.
That originaly panic was more than a year ago. And it has taken this much time for me to get more familiar with its sources and how to deal with it — how to not panic when the feared emotions arise. And it was like an onion — each time I thought I had discovered the “bottom” of the emotion, I peeled back another layer.