What is the link between depression and low consciousness?

[MM1988]

How are these two connected? Can you be depressed when you are on a higher-than-average consciousness but nowhere near enightened?

[RichardY]

Alcohol is a depressant. So I would say you may or may not, have a  level of awareness or no awareness, but as for consciousness no. 

[purerogue]

Higher consciousness experiences can lead to depression, it is nothing new.

[Salvijus]

Happyness and enlightenment are not necessarily connected.

Happyness is just an emotion. An experience. 

Enlightenment is not an emotion or experience. It's just a boundless freedom or nothingness where there's no suffering.

There're ways to generate happyness very fast. Like kundalini, kriya or some tao techneques can get you into brain orgasms very much but it's not enlightenment. It's not freedom. It's just an emotion.

 

1 hour ago, MM1988 said:

Can you be depressed when you are on a higher-than-average consciousness but nowhere near enightened?

It depends what kind of practices you do. Being happy is not a big achievement actually. It's the most basic thing.

Edited November 27, 2018 by Salvijus

[Shadowraix]

I see a lot of people who are depressed also have some frayed connection with the world around them. Starts with a negative repeated outlook then repetition sinks you further and further in until it becomes increasingly difficult to break.

For me, my realizations repaired such frayed connections. I let go. I stopped resisting which dramatically reduced my suffering. I was no longer restricted to such one sided perspectives which allowed me to regain control.

Enlightenment and happiness it is true it isn't necessarily connected but through the process of enlightenment your own personal development can go up repairing yourself.

[lmfao]

@MM1988 There's a correlation between those two things and there's also a link that is partially causal between those two things. 

The way I see it, only a subset of people with low consciousness end up depressed. But if you're depressed, high consciousness will inhibit depression. 

[now is forever]

mh - it seems like there is still some major disagreement about what conciousness is and what not. sometimes we talk about it as if conciousness just was, and sometimes it can be lower or higher. but isn’t conciousness just conciousness and what is higher or lower is awareness? if there is a sponge and a bubble and the bubble exsponges into the sponge is there lower and higher conciousness or is there lower and higher awareness? 

wouldn‘t conciousness get an additional meaning when it could be higher or lower? - it would get a quality!

so i don’t think there is higher or lower  consciousness related to depression - but if consciousness can contain a quality there is maybe a connection.

Edited November 28, 2018 by now is forever

[Nahm]

You are happiness, it is true nature. "Higher consciousness" = Happiness.  

You are free. You are so free, you can choose to deny, or reject yourself - (happiness).

That takes a lot of work though. It's exhausting. 

[Jack River]

Divison (divided movement/action)

the above implies escape/psychological becoming, attachment/resistance/identification which then comes conflict/suffering. 

Edited November 27, 2018 by Jack River

[universe]

The link is ego.

[Orcoda]

@MM1988 my experiences are that depression is your mind/ego resisting what your subconscious wants to let go. I suffered from major depression most of my life until I learned I was resisting these changes. I stopped being depressed when I started accepting how I felt/ let it go. These days theirs brief moments I feel that way but I just let it go and I'm happy again. I hope this helps!

[purerogue]

I will put this simple, you have experience where you understand that life has no meaning, you do not exist, all is illusion etc, now you have this realization , but your state of consciousness will not help you against ego fears, it is not even that state of consciousness will not help you ,you can not keep one state of consciousness at all times probably until very advanced levels, which makes it decrease and increase based on your determination so to say. 

[FoxFoxFox]

@MM1988 

Lets rank consciousness like this:

1. Self-realized

2. Mind-realized

3. Sub-mental

The first one is blissful. Depression really cannot survive here.

A large portion of people at the second level are depressed. Even if they are not clinically depressed, they are not at ease due to the inner sense of separation and abandonment (that they might not even be conscious about). To quote Thoreau: The masses of men live lives of quiet desperation. 

3. The third one is very difficult to reproduce in (socialized) human beings outside of extreme cases where an individual's psychology is utterly fucked with. 

It's hard to know what you mean by "higher than average" but unless you are enlightened then you can most likely be depressed. Although I assume as you feed the mind less and less of your energy then the lower the chance will be.