An Unusual View of Depression - Illusion and Sponges

Depression is like a sponge. A sponge that gets filled up with watery, emotional and negative thoughts until it is so soaked and heavy that it is dripping and becomes useless as sponge. We all have wet sponge brains at times, but in a healthy functioning body the psyche or monitoring consciousness squeezes out the water periodically. The depressed brain has delayed doing this.

How do we wring out our sponge brains - usually? In those moments when you contemplate your actions and those of others and then rationally see the situation from all the various perspectives is when you can usually disregard or squeeze out those thoughts that are irrational, untrue, or unhelpful.

A depressed individual holds onto those thoughts. How can we help a person who has done this/is depressed? In the early stages of 'spongitis' a friend can help the person explore their thoughts and help them identify unhealthy ones, however dis-guarding them or squeezing them out is the role of the individual spirit/person.

Once a thought has been squeezed out it can not return, although it can be replenished by more watery, unhelpful similar thoughts. So, one must be on guard for that repeated pattern of standing in heavy rainfall or wallowing in a bath of water.

How can a person squeeze out those thoughts for good? To take any thought and let it go consider these questions:

Why keep some thing that is harmful to you?

Why waste energy on the dissatisfaction in your life or on the circumstances which you find abhorrent or distressful.?

What good can come of that?

If you were not so focused on this negative thought what could you be doing? How might that help?

Yes, sometimes things are happening that you have to live through and/or can not see a way out. So, you then mull over the problem and worry about the outcome. Sound familiar? Yes, we all see this occur with regularity. When you have no control in a situation it is easy to fall into the closed off world of illusion.

The illusion of being alone, being helpless, being trapped, being ill, being abused. This is hard for some people to accept, but..all around you is an illusion. Do you see the molecules in the table or in another person? No, but scientifically you know they are there, just your physical eyes can not see them and so you accept the illusion of the table and the person as being solid.

A person appears to be solid yet you know that science says we are vibrating energy held together by forces and we are really all one connected massive energy field. So the solidity/mass illusion is one type of illusion we daily ignore.

Do you believe one person's thoughts about another person are all accurate and true? No, of course not. The views or opinion of any person are only based and formed from the perspective and experience of that person. But, how does illusion fit in here?

Firstly, illusion is a trick on the mind which can be temporary, permanent or eventually found out. Illusion is a state of mind created by others or yourself. In a conjurer's trick if we did not know of his art we may believe the coin has disappeared ...for a moment. In a more sophisticated trick we are baffled as to where the elephant disappears or how the man appears from another direction, yet because we know it is a magic show we accept it is an illusion.

In life, half the time, we do not see the tricks and the illusions that others create. Illusions can be created with words, pictures, films and texts. Sometimes the person is knowingly trying to deceive others, at other times he is merely reporting what is his single viewpoint. Yet we listen to the news, radio, other people expressing their views and we think it is real.

Know that no one person or source can explain the whole truth for it is impossible to cover all the viewpoints and how an incident affects each individual related to their individual prior experience and prior viewpoints. This is what I mean by illusion. Your view is only part of the truth, so you create or make up the rest to fit into what ever illusion you wish to have or adhere to. So any one other person's opinion of you will also be an illusion containing only a minuscule amount of truth.

Knowing this then means that the only persons view of you that you can really trust is your own. Now, if you feel you are rubbish, or hopeless, or unlovable STOP and think...are you saying that or thinking that because of some one else's viewpoint of you? The answer is yes. You are feeling that because it is an illusion about you? You are upset because you know inside, deep inside that it is not your truth.

Buying into other people's illusions about you leads to depression, anger or (and here is the good part) it can, by discovering the illusion, lead to your own enlightenment. You choose. How can it lead to enlightenment? The person questions how they got to the place of depression...the journey out of depression is one where the person regains power, confidence in the self and rejects the illusions which got them depressed in the first place. Next time you feel low...remember all the illusions around you, become the magician yourself and reclaim your power by the wielding of the wand and no longer being the rabbit in the hat.

Note: If you feel you are suffering from depression please seek help. My viewpoint is just that - my own personal viewpoint from a non medical perspective. I am simply seeking to give an alternative viewpoint for consideration in the hope that it may help someone out there.