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Existential depression

neurotic said:
I have pondered hard about themes like solipsism, "all we can know is experience", "we are ultimately alone" but really it all goes away, it stops mattering at all once I connect with someone else. It doesn't matter anymore, it is ethereal, beyond words. It's as if we were hungry, starving, though trying to solve it using our intellect. No amount of thinking will fill your stomach, and I think human connection is something as primitive and essential as food.
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What a beautiful way to describe the experience of authentic human connection. I think existential depression is something that some of us will carry through life with us. I don't think there is anything negative about it. It is essential knowledge, albeit uncomfortable without acceptance. But what neurotic describes so well are the powerful moments of relief that can drain the toxicity out of depression. Then, the depression becomes simply an awareness. Something that informs rather than deforms emotional life.
 
Or, in a more practical sense, if a problem cannot be solved, you must cease worrying about it and try to move on. Difficult indeed, but well worth trying. Sometimes admitting defeat can be a solution, and empowering in unknown ways at a future crossroad.
 
swilow said:
Or, in a more practical sense, if a problem cannot be solved, you must cease worrying about it and try to move on. Difficult indeed, but well worth trying. Sometimes admitting defeat can be a solution, and empowering in unknown ways at a future crossroad.
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Which sense (yours or mine) is more practical is unfortunately not debatable. Otherwise good advice. %)
 
What if the problem is poverty, disability, violence, war, things out of our control but that are causing direct suffering?

You may not be able to change it but does that therefore mean you should be able to accept it or let it go?

I look at someone like the Buddha who told us not to argue with reality, but he lived in a palace until he was 18 followed by self-deprivation trials that he chose of his own free will in order to seek answers.
 
I think that all of life--whether you find yourself in horrible circumstances or comfortable circumstances--is a balancing act between action and acceptance.

Like many americans right now I am frequently (daily) terrorized to the point of despair by the slide towards the out and out legitimization of hatred and intolerance, the undermining of the institutions meant to protect us messy humans from our worst selves (the judiciary, outlets of free information, the departments of environmental protection, etc., etc.) and every day I claw my way back out of my own paralyzed state and get back to work. If nothing else, I have had to come face to face with my own complacency.

I had a crazy couple of years early on in my life where I lived part time with my dad in west Africa, where the poverty made American poverty look middle class, where colonial rule meant that my white skin made me completely untouchable in privilege and freedom, and where I saw what a civil war does to a country (Biafran war in Nigeria). At the same time I spent time with my mom who lived in poverty in a very poor African-american neighborhood in Detroit. It was usual for the children of my dad's company to go to boarding school in Switzerland (at the company's expense) once they reached 9th grade. I went to a girl's school with the very, very rich from all over the world, including Africa, the Middle East, Europe, South and North America and Asia. I look back on the education I got from this experience at 13-15 years old as probably the best gift I have ever been given in my life. I observed that happiness and misery both were present in every situation and set of circumstances I was placed in. The fact that some of the happiest people I met were the poorest made a huge impression, but probably even more educational for me was meeting miserable, lonely and lost people that had every material advantage possible. The Detroit part of the experience was complicated. There people were truly living in a war zone but the fact that it was not recognized as a war (between the police and the black population) and therefore was turned inward made for the most misery of all. Still, that is where I learned the power of political action--and how it can be a way to stay human (hopeful) even in the face of overwhelming odds. The actual learning that I took from this was to meet people where they are--to see their capacity for both pain and joy no matter what my own stereotypes tried to throw in the way. As for how this relates back to your original question of existential depression, I believe that when I saw people in either poverty or extreme wealth that seemed to have a natural bent towards happiness and open-mindedness, they were in fact those people that had a healthy relationship with their own minds/spirits/selves. Since I was not in that group by a long shot at that point in my own life, it was pretty powerful to at least see where I should point the arrow on my own internal compass.
 
Awesome post @herbavore

@Foreigner

It seems to me you criticize the teachings of Siddharta before you entered the path, that even he as a privileged rich kid, had to take. He began to suffer, because he could not grasp the origin of his sorrow (depression). Luckily at his time of life there was a very wise clan of spiritual practitioners established throghout the country, the vedic teachers. AFAIK they developed (or have been teached) the techniques we know as full lotus, half lotus, mandalas and much of the yogic postures.

As everyone in this thread Siddharta seeked for techniques to stop onesself from suffering (from feeling a lack of love, a negative emptyness). After he went to several vedic priests with high reputations and after sitting with them in contemplation he gained official "certificates", that proof he reached the spiritual (just repeated from memory) "space of nothingness", "space where neither nothingness nor suchness exist" and the "space where nothingness nor suchness neither exist nor not exist", he still was not satisfied and fasted for 7 days because of self-hatred. After that he still felt the pain in is heart and said to himself : "Fuck it, nothing works for me, I'm gonna sit here on this beautiful bodhi tree and just die". In that night he had a strong epiphany and realized : "The middle-path is the goal"

For me there are 3 important messages to take away from Siddharta's teachings :

- study the life-death-relationship for example via the breath ... remember also : everytime you seem to reach an accomplishment, the fruits of this accomplishment will eventually die and be useless
- pay attention on traditional physical techniques (the older the better)
- find one particular spiritual meditation involving path, that suits you and follow that one and respect its traditions, seek a sangha/group/pagan cult/church with a teacher, that suits you

I would personally suggest to try the spiritual path of your first known ancestors, of whom exist historical data, first. If you find data, that your family was a barbaric pagan, that was brutally converted by a Roman catholic, I would strongly advice against adopting the Chrstian belief system and its practices (compared to comprehensive spiritual paths, that involve physical techniques, they have not much to offer anyways).

If someone took on the Christian belief by birth or choice, although it was forced upon their ancestors I consider this as a betrayal to one's ancestors.
 
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Rich or poor, we all suffer. How does worrying about that help? Sometimes I think humans have an expectation that our sense of right and wrong have an origin in an absolute truth about reality, so we expect to see it manifest around us. The truth I've discovered is that life is not fair or structured to attain a sort of moral perfection. Its random, ineffable, without aim or guidance. It entails pain and suffering which is unavoidable. I think that's why the Buddha advocated acceptance of suffering rather than fighting, worrying or raging against it, though I'm sure he did so, pointlessly, as all humans do.

Life doesn't need to be filled with darkness. If you accept things, maybe you can see them a bit better. I struggle immensely with all of this.
 
I think existential depression can boil down to the big 'why' questions for me. i think its more advantageous to assume that there is meaning and purpose than to continually try to accept the pointlessness of everything. i just have felt like the intense pain i have experienced at various times in my life has communicated with me in an intelligent way that gives it all a purpose. thats what is ultimately is helping me out of it bc i wouldnt be able to understand what i do if it wasn't for all of it. i think it is a valuable teacher but ultimately something i wish to overcome.
 
For me, accepting the randomness and objectively meaningless nature of reality has been liberating (though it was at first confusing, and then depressing). If we're just dust in the wind, and nothing means anything, then life means whatever I want it to mean. For me, that has led to a life where I try to experience as much as I can, and be as much of an uplifting force for others as I can, free of external fears about what happens next or what has happened before. I mean obviously I struggle with this too, it's really challenging to live in the moment, but the moment is all there is. It's always "now". We're here, and every moment we have a choice about what to do with that.

To me, it's comforting to know that, whatever happens in my life, after all the intensity, all the highs and lows, I won't exist anymore and it won't matter, except to my loved ones who remain, and then after a while it really won't matter to anyone. Ahh, freedom. :)
 
Xorkoth said:
For me, accepting the randomness and objectively meaningless nature of reality has been liberating (though it was at first confusing, and then depressing). If we're just dust in the wind, and nothing means anything, then life means whatever I want it to mean. For me, that has led to a life where I try to experience as much as I can, and be as much of an uplifting force for others as I can, free of external fears about what happens next or what has happened before. I mean obviously I struggle with this too, it's really challenging to live in the moment, but the moment is all there is. It's always "now". We're here, and every moment we have a choice about what to do with that.

To me, it's comforting to know that, whatever happens in my life, after all the intensity, all the highs and lows, I won't exist anymore and it won't matter, except to my loved ones who remain, and then after a while it really won't matter to anyone. Ahh, freedom. :)
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Yeah, that same realization has had the same impact on my life as well. Though sometimes it's hard to go against the neurochemistry, and depression gets the better of me. But then again in the deciding moments I know that it's not worth it to fall into false belief of meaning or anything, and just do what's rational.
 
Xorkoth said:
For me, accepting the randomness and objectively meaningless nature of reality has been liberating (though it was at first confusing, and then depressing). If we're just dust in the wind, and nothing means anything, then life means whatever I want it to mean. For me, that has led to a life where I try to experience as much as I can, and be as much of an uplifting force for others as I can, free of external fears about what happens next or what has happened before.
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Indeed.

This was more or less the same process I went through. I think the weight of such a responsibility just get's to me sometimes, yes I know life can mean whatever I want it to but that is often the problem. Sometimes I just want to relinquish that freedom to something else but I can't because I can't fool myself. It's a strange feeling, liberating yes.. but so real. It certainly flows much easier when I just let the moment run wild and i'm usually not contemplating the existential angst because i'm caught up in the unfolding drama of life. But I always come back to it.. it's always there and probably always will be.

The means of dealing with it just gets better over time (hopefully). :)
 
when times get hard i think of things like this


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just some kids with some bikes, woods, and a clean future. never knew how free i was or how complicated life got. i hate being an adult and most of the time i don't like the world much either.
 
I remember getting a bike when I was 12. Totally changed my world. :).

The problem with being an adult is the choices. You have so many to make. But its better than not having choices. I wouldn't like to be a child again, my childhood was very strange but I remember how simple it all was.
 
A large part of our lives contains the lesson: Accept. Let go.

The crazy part of Life is that we have the ability to be autonomous, making our own decisions, etc....Yet coupled with the fact that we ultimately have no control at all. It really just boils down to 'Just Because'.

The best thing we can do is strive to be present at all times. Time is Now.

*Had to find my favorite quotes from the Master of Angst ;) Sisyphus, happy!

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. ~Albert Camus

There is no love of life without despair of life. ~Albert Camus
 
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