Journal about creating my own depression

[infinitenrgy]

I started reading, "Taming Your Gremlin" about a week ago. That is where I picked up the phrase, "simply noticing". The past few days I have been crawling out of a stressed and depressed state and started feeling much better because of it. This is a journal I wrote earlier today, I'm curious what others will think of some of these insights I came across recently and even just while writing it. Thank you for reading.  

The more times I fall back into a depressed state, the more times I come out of it feeling effortlessly happy. I noticed this time that each time I start to feel happy again, I have the same exact realization, that the only reason I had been unhappy and depressed was because I was choosing not to be. This choice is not some clear thing in my mind in the moment of it happening, but it is there in a very subtle way. My mind is always uncontrollable and thinking back on my depressed states, I notice that during them I am taking my mind very seriously.

All the endless questions and confusion that my mind brings up creates a feeling of tension when I am taking it seriously. By taking it seriously I mean that I convince myself somewhere along the line that the questions and concerns in my mind are something I need to actively be figuring out, and once I am convinced again to do this it becomes a nonstop endeavor. I end up constantly straining my mind trying to figure myself out just by thinking about myself and my "problems".

This starts to build up a lot of "should's and should not's" in my mind. It is very subtle, but I start to get frustrated with myself because of everything I believe I should be doing and everything I shouldn't be. Good examples would be, "I should be meditating every day" or "I should have quit smoking by now" or "I shouldn't be smoking weed everyday". These beliefs set up some kind of a set of rules that I have for myself and if I am not following those rules than I start to feel guilty and frustrated and question why I can’t be who I wish I was. This leads to constantly trying to "figure out" how I got to the place I am now (thinking about the past) and how to go about changing myself by means of some chronological order, like if I want to be like this, then first I need to change this, then this, and then that will create the domino effect of success that I am looking for.

Doing all of this thinking and planning out of my future takes me far away from the present moment and leads me to only wishing things were different. This is exactly how I am creating the depression for myself! I literally won't allow myself to enjoy the present moment and who I am today because of who I strive to be like. Solving this starts with simply noticing exactly how I am imprisoning my own self with all my personal judgments. If I am not on the track I believe I am supposed to be on it creates resistance of happiness from all the worrying and thinking about how to fix or change it. If I want to be a less stressed and angry person, I need to accept the present moment of who I am and not live by any self limiting rules.

This doesn't mean never try to change anything about myself, only not to worry about the changing process. Let change happen naturally. Let go of control. Simply notice who I am and what I want to change. Simply noticing allows me to take a step back from myself and just observe my ego without being involved in doing any of the changing myself. While I am in the mindset of simply noticing I see much clearer how I wont allow myself to be happy when I am so involved in all the thinking, worrying, and figuring out.

Simply noticing is very counterintuitive because my mind doesn't understand it. My mind believes that if it is not actively trying to make these changes, it will never happen and I am not truly working towards anything really life changing. It convinces me that If I continue certain behaviors any longer, I wont get anywhere that I want to be and that those behaviors are what is actually preventing me from thriving on life and figuring out how to fix that is what I am supposed to be doing.

While it may be true that behaviors like smoking weed everyday, vaping, and jerking off to porn too much may be preventing me from being the best me I could be, worrying about all of it and trying to change it is just another thing on that list. All I really need is the vision of my best self, who I want to someday be, and the process will happen on its own.

This is so counter intuitive because my mind does not believe it. This makes me wonder what my mind is really even good for. I'm not sure, it seems to trap me and lead me away from my goals more than it helps me move towards them. I mean, the only reason I have goals at all is because of my mind. It is terrified of living an unfulfilling life and wants to do whatever is possible to make sure that wont happen, but while worrying about creating a fulfilling life for myself my mind is unaware of the fact that it itself is what created the idea and belief of what a fulfilling life is! It's like a dog chasing its own tail.

My life is already fulfilling everyday regardless of where I want to be in the future, as long as I focus on being happy regardless of the outcome of things and just making the most of what I have today, then the future doesn't even matter, it never even existed in the first place! Only the present moment matters. I wish my mind understood this more regularly, in fact maybe this is what I should be striving towards more than anything else.