If you don’t know it’s a thought it becomes your reality. <Anon>

There seems to be as many “causes” for depression as there are people who experience it.

• I’ve lost my job.
• My marriage has fallen apart.
• It’s raining.
• I’m in alot of physical pain.

Having suffered from chronic depression in the past, I finally came to a stunning realization. None of the above cause depression. It’s the way I relate to what is happening, not what happens in the world “outside” myself, that causes depression.

“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” – Shakespeare

and

We don’t attach to things; we attach to our stories about them- Byron Katie, author of Loving What Is

In other words, ego is the basic cause of depression, whether chronic or otherwise!

Put very simply, habitual patterns arise from grasping at a manufactured self, ego, that doesn’t actually exist.

Supporting this habitual grapsing is an ego-mind produces thoughts, discursive chit-chat and subconscious gossip and afflictive emotions of of all kinds based on its original mistake: the creation of a Self. And then, by extension, the Other. And we believe it. That’s the problem.

• “You don’t have a job. So you’re worthless and a loser.”
• “They have more than I do.”
• “I’m the best!”
• “I’m the worst!”

As a sole support mother, being without a job sometimes was especially troubling for me. I finally realized that depending on external conditions (e.g. a job; the opinions of “Others,” others that I myself — ego —have created) for my self-esteem was the problem. I had a belief that, to feel worthwhile, I had to have a job.

That’s what ego does to convince itself that it exists in a solid, permanent way in an “external” world.

It doesn’t. It knows that, but will not give up the struggle to prove that it exists.

This conflict — knowing it doesn’t exist and struggling every minute to prove it does — produces depressions of all kinds when it gets undercut by our daily experience in the world.

I said above that the problem is that we believe our own thoughts, our own projections.

The thoughts will keep coming, but the belief in them will stop – Mooji

If you have no interest in a thought, it has no power.
You oxygenate them with your beliefs and interests – Mooji

The good news is that it’s both the problem and the promise! We can relate in a non-ego way to our thoughts by practice.

I’m so relieved when I remind myself of this quote:

We don’t have to believe everything we think. <Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche>

After all, it’s just a thought……keep it that way so that it doesn’t become your reality.

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