How Can We Stay Present While Depressed? | Eckhart Tolle

That's an extremely important part of awakening. In fact, you need that to provide fuel for the arising of presence. Our listener writes, how can we stay present and in touch with consciousness on days when we feel depressed and lack motivation? Right when sometimes, that is in some, in quite a few people, associated with periods of low physical energy, because energy fluctuates. And so from occasionally you may experience low levels of physical energy, and this can affect the mind too. The important thing is, first of all, when you talk about being depressed and so on, to see whether there is what kind of thoughts are being created in your mind during that time, ask yourself whether, or examine whether the certain types of thinking create that feeling of depression. Thoughts like, oh, it's all pointless anyway, or what's. What's the point of it all? I hate this world. There's no point in even struggling anymore. I'm fed up, completely fed up with life. I can't take any more that type of thinking. Are you aware what is the relationship between the emotion that you feel and your thought processes? Are perhaps your thoughts creating that emotion? Or could it be that the emotion is creating the thoughts? So when you are depressed, there will be certain thoughts going through your mind, and probably there will not be pleasant thoughts. So be aware of the relationship between what you're feeling, this depressed feeling of sadness, depression, you feel dejected, and your thought processes. And if in the moment of thinking, those types of thought that accompany the feeling of depression or pointlessness, if you can be there and observe those thoughts, then again, as in the first question, answer to the first question. When you recognize those thoughts, you no longer completely believe in them. You recognize them as a conditioned movement in your mind. And then you may be able to come to an acceptance of whatever it is you're feeling at this moment, without adding the baggage of thought to it. So what remains then is this feeling of perhaps low energy? Or it could be an activation of your pain body. To some extent you feel emotion in you that doesn't feel good, but you're then no longer fueling it with your thinking. So if there's enough awareness in you while you're going through a period of depression, allow yourself to feel what it is you're feeling, but be careful that you don't fuel it with your thinking. And if you, if you feel what you feel, that's all you have to do is surrender to the your experience of this moment. You accept your experience of this moment, which at this moment may be not pleasant, but that's what is inside you. So probably the greatest spiritual practice is to accept whatever it is that you're experiencing at this moment. So if you're experiencing depression, then that's the isness of the present moment. And as much as possible, you step out of your mind and just be the awareness. Observe. It may be the case that there is an addiction in you that periodically arises. And that's the addiction to unhappiness, the addiction to negativity. And that is usually connected with the pain body that needs to renew itself periodically. Most of you will know what I'm talking about. You've read about the pain body old emotion that still lives in you. Sometimes it's dormant, sometimes it needs to feed to take in more so that it can stay alive. It's a semi autonomous energy field in you. And so in the absence of its favorite way to feed is on other people's reactions. So it will create drama. It will create push your partners or other family members, people's buttons, so to speak, so that they get, you get a negative emotional reaction. And so that it loves the drama of the emotional drama and will provoke drama. And that's how the pain body loves to feed. But if that's for some reason is not possible, for whatever reason, the pain body is quite happy also to feed on your thoughts. So it will periodically rise up into your mind. And then you will think thoughts that feed the pain body, but the thoughts themselves already created by the pain body. And then it's a vicious circle, the negative thoughts that you don't want at that moment, you do not want to let go of that type of thinking because there's not enough awareness in you at that moment. That moment when I say you don't want to let go, or when I say you are addicted to your unhappiness. When I say you, it's not really you, it's a mind pattern with which you are that moment completely identified. And that's why I call it you. So in that moment it is you. So there are many, many people who are addicted to their unhappy state states, the unhappiness in them. And if some people have it almost continuously, but most people have periods when this happens and then it subsides. And that's the typical way in which the pain body arises from its dormant state, feeds on several hours or even days of deep negative thinking and then subsides. And then for a while you're free again. So addiction to unhappiness. This is one way of speaking about it. Be careful, see whether you can detect in yourself when in the moment of it happening, you're almost, you're indulging in this feeling of. Could be self pity or condemnation of life or others or whatever it is. You love it. You love that. You love those feelings and those thoughts and you don't want to get out. If somebody at that moment said to you to come out of it, you say, oh, shut up, I don't want to hear. Now some people have that so strongly that the addiction to unhappiness has become part of their conditioned personality. So they are. Part of their identity is a very unhappy sense of self. And if that is a terrible place to be in. But again, the only way that you can transcend that and escape from that prison is to be aware when it happens. So a good question therefore is, am I enjoying my unhappiness in some weird way? Do I love my unhappiness? And if I love my unhappiness, who is that I that loves unhappiness? It must be a weird and crazy I that loves unhappiness. So maybe that's not really me. Maybe it's just an unhappy self in me that loves. I know that I had that very strongly for many years in my 20s. So you have to be really alert and see whether you enjoy your unhappiness. And once you notice it, you say, oh wow, I'm really enjoying this. In the moment of noticing it, you've made it conscious. And then it's very likely that you cannot go on very much longer enjoying it because this can only continue when you are unconscious. It needs your unconsciousness. That's this false self. It's an aspect of the false self, that is the ego. It needs your unconsciousness to continue to survive. But when you make it conscious, then there comes a moment of surprise and says, oh, wow, I'm actually enjoying this. I don't want to let. I love these negative thoughts. Love in a. A perverse way almost. This is the egoic kind of love. And then you might even ask, is that, is that who I am? Who am I? Why? Why do I love this? This awareness is coming, awareness is arising, and then suddenly you step out of identification with that mind pattern, mentally motion. And that is the. That is part of the awakening. So those things for many people are a very important part of their spiritual awakening. A very important part of spiritual awakening is to become aware of the unconsciousness in you. The various ways in which the unconsciousness manifests in you. That's an extremely important part of awakening. In fact, you need that to provide fuel for the arising of presence. The dysfunctional states, the dysfunctional mental emotional states in the negative mentally emotional space the mental emotional states that create so much suffering ultimately they provide not only motivation for awakening they also provide the fuel for awakening. So be grateful when you detect those things in yourself that so it's not it's not a bad thing it's a wonderful thing to detect the unconsciousness in you to become aware of the unconsciousness in you and realize that it is not you. Ultimately it for years it had been it pretended to be you and you were so identified with it yet you thought it was you and suddenly or gradually another deep I. It's the deep I that is now awakens and the deep I which is presence recognizes that the surface I is a conditioned entity and it's ultimately it's not who I am. It is there and that's a disidentification and that's all part of the awakening process. It.