We are
thrust into this dream world. We pursue and avoid and manipulate in order to
make the dream more comfortable or interesting. When we succeed we consider
life to be good, meaningful, and important. Success keeps us immersed in the
dream.
It is when
things don’t go our way that we begin to wake up. We get an inkling that the
life we’re living is meaningless because it’s just a continuous pursuit of
temporary enjoyments, fraught with inevitable bouts of both mental and physical
pain. Even when we succeed, the victory is short-lived, for we will tire of our
gain and see something else we want, turning our satisfaction into desire once
more.
Trying to
reach a state of continual happiness via external gains is a futile endeavor
because things do not always go our way, and even if we “win” every battle, the
fact remains that we are always fighting battles, which makes it impossible to relax.
Plus, eventually we will lose everything: our health, our wealth, our loved
ones, and our very lives.
This perception
can bring existential despair. We might see no point in existing at all because
we are in a situation where we and everything/everyone we care about is doomed.
This can take the wind out of our sails.
The
emotional letdown caused by our insight is a predictable result of realizing
that the dream is an absurd game that perhaps we would be better off not
playing. People who have not yet begun to wake up consider this letdown to be a
disease (“depression”) because they cannot understand how anyone can avoid
being blindly immersed in the dream of social status, money, possessions,
fashion, competition, and cheering for the local sports team. They do not
realize that the “ill” person is aware of something that they aren’t, and that
if they knew what s/he knows, their bubble would burst too.
Whether this
life is “all there is” or a prelude to something greater, there is a lot of
learning, growth, and enjoyment to be had in it. If we are not experiencing
them, it is only because we have been searching for them in the wrong places.
This is why the dream has not delivered what we want and we are depressed.
Depression,
like all feelings, is caused by thoughts. The reason depression is so difficult
to deal with, diagnose and treat is that while we feel the feeling, we are not
aware that our thoughts cause it. Our erroneous thoughts have been swimming in
our minds so often and for so long that either we don’t even notice them or we
just accept them as true. They cause and perpetuate negative feelings such as
depression, anger, resentment, and fear.
It is not
merely the presence of thoughts that create feelings – it is the fact that we
believe them. Thoughts are constantly appearing and disappearing in our active
minds, so it would be extremely difficult to stop them, but we can realize how
wrong some of those thoughts are so that when they appear they will have no
power over us. For example, when the negative thought “Things will never improve
for me” appears, we can question it. Do we know for a fact that things will
never get better?
When they
feel that the world has let them down because life itself has no meaning, some
people turn to religion for a sense of meaning. They might consider this an
inward process, similar to finding oneself, but it isn’t. It is just another
form of searching outside oneself for validation or security. They pray to an
external authority figure, perhaps reciting prayers or lighting candles or
counting beads, in an attempt to get to a more enjoyable place or win the
authority figure’s favor.
If life
truly is meaningless, i.e., we have been thrust into a meaningless situation,
then it is only the situation that is meaningless. It does not mean that we are
somehow worthless, because it is not our fault if life has no meaning.
Perhaps we
feel that life is meaningless because we are relying on externals for enjoyment
or a sense of self-worth. Do we really need them? Can we not enjoy the
awareness of our own existence? Do we have to own or do something worldly in
order to enjoy being? Maybe we can simply rest in who we are and enjoy the bliss
of self-awareness.
