Vitality

I've written earlier about something Elizabeth Gilbert once said about depression. How the opposite of depression is not happiness, it's vitality. I still deal with depression. I won't say struggle, because I believe I've reached the tipping point where it will no longer drive me the way it once did. But I still have remnants and shadows and blocks that I must be working at steadily and always.

Cleaning up after the depression that gripped me for most of my life is my greatest responsibility. It's easy to get distracted with the outside evidence of my depression: clutter, grime, debt, but the most important work is my internal state of mind. That is where I can make the deepest and most influential changes. In my gut, my tan tien. In my heart, and through that my brain, or whatever that grey stuff is in my head.

The day my depression died

Something changed last night.

Insomnia, I just couldn't seem to get that oxytocin self soothing I've been able to induce when I wake up in the middle of the night. Just this rigid, impotent buzzing.

So I decided to stand.

I guess I'd been standing for about twenty minutes, pushing it, and surrendering, the sort of push pull I experience when I'm doing this. I started to feel this very strong and concrete post of energy. My arms and hands started to shift around in some weird feeling branchy ways. I was just quietly being still with this energy. Trying to rest in cool detachment, trying not to get too excited and trusting that it would come back when I seemed to be losing it. And then suddenly this lame, annoying stale energy came back. Or rather I became very conscious and hyperaware of the part of my brain where this energy came from. I was outside of of it, just watching it kind of flame up, and I realized that this part of my brain was kind of having one last hurrah, because I was about to leave that part of my brain to die. I realized that even if I ever felt that feeling again, those neurons would never have the same power they once had.

And then gradually I started to make my way to the new part of my brain. The pre-frontal cortex maybe? That part of my brain felt fresh, calm, strong, confident. Vital in a really flourishing, not manic way. That was the new place for me. It was a place I knew well, but had been visiting from time to time. It was my new home though. I knew it.

Did some counting realized that I was six months from my birthday. My real birthday if you believe my mother, since it was my due date.

I'm going to celebrate this day, January 31 for the rest of my life. The day when my real brain came alive. The day when the best part of my life really began.

the opposite of depression

I've been watching Daniel Gilbert's PBS documentary on emotions. In the second installment Elizabeth Gilbert said something that has struck me like a bolt of lightning. The opposite of depression is not happiness. That is the opposite of sadness. The opposite of depression is vitality.

This is of course what I'm doing in this practice and with my chronotherapy. Setting up a life structure that will maximize my vitality. That would be the aim of a healthy diet, if I were to get back to that! Cleaning, eating and sleeping well, meditating. All these things are about creating a life that will bring in the vitality that will eventually flood out this depression. It seems so simple, but never is to my depressed mind.

Dark night

Dark night of the soul last night. Or dark hour. Lay awake for a while frozen in fear with a vision of a life of poverty, not enough money. Just not enough. I couldn't seem to shake it. And then suddenly my brain shifted not to what I had instead of what I didn't have. I remembered that I have this flowering of peace inside me that I've been developing for the last two month in these morning meditation, and developing for years in my mid morning meditations. I focused on that and my mind shifted eventually from my fears to my sense of security.
This morning I'm tired. I know I'm not getting enough sleep, and I hear a voice telling me I'm depressed. So I decide to take twenty minute to stand and look at the sky. I realize that I am carving a permanent place for peace in my brain, that these morning practices, once established, are less likely to get tossed aside. I'm planting the tree of peace in my brain, and that is the most precious source of abundance that I can have. Greater than any bank account. I know this is true, but it may take some time to feel it.

blocked

So, a break from my commitment.

Cousin's elopement celebration last night. I drank, I ate a midnight souvlaki, I didn't bother to set the alarm. I feel pretty crappy. At least I don't have to spend the day preparing for the exterminator.

I guess I still have some bad habits.

Yesterday evening before I set out I was feeling a massive level of lethargy. I didn't want to go. The voice in my head kept telling me how depressed I was. And then I decided to change things. I'm not depressed I said. I'm blocked. I did some standing meditation and felt immediately better.

I'm going to try this for a while. Instead of identifying with the bad feeling that seems to be permanent. I'm going to see it as a mere blockage that in time I can dislodge.

Right now for instance I feel terrible. But I'm going to just stand for 20 minutes and see where that takes me.