Is Enlightenment the end of all Anxiety/Depression?

[Arhattobe]

You are not enlightened if “it” goes away. Even on a shallow level.

[Arhattobe]

@rounder if you have constant non dual awareness. Not “knowing”, but seeing and feeling wise, but have a lot of destructive behaviours and act “egoic” and etc. Then yes.

Its quite normal actually.

[AlwaysBeNice]

Yeah, the meaninglessness or no rules can be quite a hit on the mind, and I don't feel/know I am enlightened, so I can't speak on that, but as for relative happiness, I find these guidelines to be useful.

In short you can say, respect and build your house on God, your love, your awakenings.

1. I chose to value and respect this body-life I've been given. 

//Use it for the highest values, to Love, play, discover, experience the path of awakening.

2. I chose not to murder my life or sentient (human) beings: 

//To not cause unnecessary pain, to respect other people's will and life, and because I don't know what happens after death (as no one knows).

3.I choose not to worry about things beyond my responsibility.

//Giving my worries or pains, to God/Silence, which always works.

[Arhattobe]

There are rules and directions. Instinctually you want to avoid pain. That’s what drives you towards enlightenment in the first place. 

That drive. Is a part of the direction I speak of.

That direction is what allows us to do our dharma. To awaken. To grow and etc.

[Rinne]

3 hours ago, pluto said:

It all comes down to awareness.

?

[Matt8800]

13 hours ago, Tony 845 said:

i battle with an extreme case of OCD or pure O they call it. will enlightenment truly end this suffering for me?

since awakening my kundalini it hasn't been nearly as intense, I do self inquiry basically all day long & mediate everyday.

but I still have spats of anxiety & some pretty fucked up thoughts sometimes that I can still identify with, but not nearly as much as I once did. 

Self inquiry, sds sits & mediation have really helped me eliminate much of theses neurosis but they are still there on some level..

it would be cool to see a graph on the different depths or levels of enlightenment, maybe the 1st stages still remain some suffering, but at the deepest levels it gets eliminated?‍♂️ I'll tell ya what, something has defiantly changed in me for the better, I was all fucked up for a while..

Sometimes anxiety and depression is caused by our interpretation and ruminations of the "objective" world and sometimes it is caused by neurochemistry. 

If they are caused by interpretations and ruminations, enlightenment will be the end of those. If by neurochemistry, the brain still creates the sensations but "you" realize it doesnt matter.

[Bobby]

@Tony 845 once you reach the End, yes!

but after the first enlightenment, those issues often get worse before they get better. after my first big shift (which I'm still dealing with), life became the hardest it's ever been. But the end result is absolutely worth it-- further! 

Edited December 20, 2018 by Bobby

[SBB4746]

 @Bobby yeah "After ecstasy, the laundry" they say. My depression and anxiety got so much worse after awakening to. The mind has a trillion tricks up its sleeve to keep you in trapped, its actually quite remarkable.

[Tony 845]

@Bobby after my kundalini opened up, I feel much better, but i know ego backlash is a real thing, so I'm always watching ? My 3rd eye literally pulsates all day, there is deifanlty a shift in conciousness, not sure how deep cause the rabbit whole goes very deep, but I'm not the same as i once was for the better. It's not quite Enlightenment, but I am defiantly  into some kind of Kundalini awakening or some shit lol maybe I am into some kind of very 1st stage of enlightenment now that I'm thinking about it, my crown chakra blew the fuck open, I sat there like the goddman Buddha for like 5 minutes ?‍♂️ Or maybe it's just the ego thinking it's more then it is, who knows?‍♂️ Could use a guru right about now lol

Edited December 20, 2018 by Tony 845

[Blissout]

Liberation is the end of suffering.

 

Please don't listen to people like LEO. they are totally clueless.

From what I have seen there are at least 2 genuinely members on this forum who are liberated and ended suffering completely, never to arise again.

Self Realization is very rare. so most who claim that and say they still suffering... ARE NOT DONE!.

Be careful and good luck on your path.

[Leo Gura]

@rounder Falling back asleep is very common until you gain tons of practice and some deep enlightenment experiences.

Eventually the awakening "sticks". But there are also various depths of it. Very very few people reach the deepest depths of it. There are depths that even awakened people have not reached.

The deepest depths are totally unimaginable and only attained by tiny handfuls of people.

[SpaceCowboy]

2 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

There are depths that even awakened people have not reached.

How would you know?

[pluto]

Once you wake up to your true self, you realize that your anxiety/depression and other illusory concepts you bought into never existed to begin with as you are literally a whole new you

[Enlightenment]

I live in non-dual/no agency for 2 years and still had to occasionally take benzos for anxiety because I couldn't sleep, just overactive amygdala I guess. In my experience anxiety is much harder to crack than depression and enlightenment doesn't really affect objective physiological measures of your anxiety. Enlightenment will most likely cure depression unless it's purely caused by noradrenaline/serotonin deficiency. For anxiety, I would recommend trying psychedelics, those can lower amygdala activity long-term.

[Preetom]

43 minutes ago, Mikael89 said:

 

Self Abidance 

[Inliytened1]

A great book on post enlightenment is The End of Your World by Adyashanti which goes into more depth on what happens after awakening and the two types of awakening.  One is the non-abiding awakening which is what most people have, vs an abiding awakening which is very rare.

Most people (myself included) get a non-abiding awakening.  This means you have a glimpse of the absolute, of total clarity and non-duality, but this glimpse can be a few moments or a few weeks, or even a few months.    For me it was a week.   It doesn't endure, and you return to the "dreamstate" as he calls it.   This means there are still components deep within you that remain dual/divided in his perception.  

For these people the next phase is to do some serious, honest self inquiry and deep, sincere consciousness work and work towards an abiding awakening (one that endures for the remainder of your life) which can take years if ever.  

So for most, as Leo pointed out I believe earlier, to even get an initial awakening you have do a lot of inner work which would indirectly improve your depression/anxiety.   While awake, you are completely one with reality and non-dual, so mental illness would not be present.  But after you return to the ego  - the very reason you returned to your ego at all - is that you still have some of these issues that need to be worked through.

 

 

 

[Salvijus]

Why would someone who experiencially knows that he's not the body, who is in a state detached from his body would ever suffer. This I can't understand. Maybe someday.

Why would someone who's not afraid of death would ever have anxiety? Ultimately that's the only fear that exists. And it goes away after you realize you're eternal.

Depression and misery is just ignorance. Unawareness. It's ignorance of the truth. They take themselfs to be something that they are not. This is the only problem. Why would someone who's not ignorant. Who's fully immersed in truth still be depressed. 

Why why why...... My mind is blowing out. It's simply unlogical. 

 

 

 

[Jack River]

Is Enlightenment the end of all Anxiety/Depression?

 

I don’t personally concern myself with conceptions of “enlightenment”, but depression/anxiety is nevertheless manifestations of time. 

Holistic understanding of this whole structure/nature of time itself is action that ends this continuity psychological evolution. 

Psychological evolution; as in “the entity” that meets moment to moment with “its” likes and dislikes/should be’s or should not be’s. This activity being born of past experiences and resistance to the fact of those experiences, in which determines-modifies “the present”(as depression) and projects its hopes and fears “the future”(as Anxiety). 

All of this is to move within the field of psychological time. 

All of that is psychological movement away from what-is to what should or should not be. 

This resistance to what-is is always born of the past and that resistance sustains perpetual compulsive thinking (depression) about “the past”, and as such is projected as anxiety about “the future”. 

As long as there is this continuity of “time” as “the I” who is always trying to become or not become anything other that what-is, this depression/anxiety(conflict/suffering) will continue as a never ending cycle/process. A self feeding loop of time/thought. 

Can this time loop be seen in its entirety? 

Can this loop be seen holistically and therefore a complete negation of action/reaction to that process altogether? 

After all to see the danger in moving along with that process psychologically is complete and total action now isn’t it? 

To step out of that loop of time because of the obvious implicit danger. Isn’t that what is referred to as intelligence/intelligent undivided action? 

 

Edited December 20, 2018 by Jack River

[petar8p]

11 hours ago, SpaceCowboy said:

How would you know?

Good question..

[Inliytened1]

@SpaceCowboy

Intuition.  Because he came back.  Once you actually awaken you become...IT....no words will be able to describe it so all the fucking names they give it..awakening..enlightenment...consciousness..spirit..guess what? Those are all just labels.  It's just fucking ....it.  and its not right either. Because Its pure fucking being dude.

When and if you actually return to the ego you can't unsee it.  Ever.  Your ego will try. Trust me it will.  But the fact that you returned at all provides fhe intuition that there is more work to be done.

Unless you are awaken you wont understand.

Sad thing is that's where im at now and so i dont mean to come off as condescending but thats precisely why my awakening wasn't abiding.

Edited December 20, 2018 by Inliytened1