Re: Faith: An Answer to Depression (comments welcome)

[Guest guest]

Excellent questions.

You can have all the faith in the world, but when your faith conflicts with

reality, reality will always win.

I think faith is more valuable in areas where your faith can't conflict with

reality, because the situation has nothing to do with reality.

That's why I used the example of depression. The thoughts and feelings that you

have when you are depressed are unique because they don't reference anything

real. They are value judgments, completely invented by your mind. " I am bad. "

How can that be true? What in the world would make the satement " I am bad " be a

true statement? It can't be measured, it can't be verified, it doesn't

correspond to anything. It's just an emotional projection. There's a lot of

that in depression.

The problem is that you can't fight the emotional projection directly because

it's very compelling and persuasive. So you use faith in your prior wisdom,

insight, and experience to dismiss it and go around it.

Unlike depression, anxiety is a bit more tricky. A thought that you have as a

result of anxiety can be true. " I might die of a heart attack tomorrow. " Yeah,

you might. You can put faith in the idea that " I might die of a heart attack

tomorrow " is not true, but that's phony. It probably won't happen, but it

could.

With respect to your question about work competition and so on, I think the best

approach in that situaiton is not faith, but action. Do what needs to be done,

without " contracting " or " stressing " around the result. You might call it " come

what may doing. " Just do it, let the rest take care of the rest. There are

things you have control over, and things you don't, and the best way to handle

the things you don't have over is to let go of them, leave to their forces,

rather than trying to convince through faith that they will turn out for the

best. Very frequently, they will not. That's the gig: life.

If you can, expect to be upset, frustrated. Expect that things are going to be

messy, never go as planned, that they will always leave more to be wanted.

Because that's just how life works.

If things work out as you want them to, well then throw a party, celebrate the

good fortune. That's better than *expecting* it and then getting body slammed

by reality, which is going to screw you as often as it will help you.

My take.

Thanks for the comments, I'm going to tweak some things to get at these points.

>

> Thanks for this post Rato,

> Faith has often been a curiosity to me. I know it has the

> power of solace/peace of mind because I’ve seen it in others.  As I was

reading, I attempted to relate it to

> real time, actual situations that demand solid strategies. The concept of

faith

> seemed fluffy and nice in theory.

> My mind put me in a lecture theatre with and as an

> observer I watched him have a mild panic attack, a neurochemical reaction. He

> continued to deliver the lesson somewhat disjointedly but his message was

> watered down (so to speak) because it lacked confidence and certainty. No

> problem though, the message was still delivered. I returned to the next

lecture

> and it happened again, and in the next, yet again. I began to wonder why I was

> there, for the lessons or to be witness to the ability to carry on. (With the

> cost of university study I chose the lessons). Then I see in a meeting

> with his boss who is saying, “Your students are not making the grade, if you

> can’t let those physical sensations go, then we’ll have to let you go

because

> there are many other lecturers who can do the jobâ€. Then his reality/truth

> becomes real time, it is not an illusion nor delusional.

> How does ‘faith’ help in such real time situations,

> particularly when one needs to perform with the same capability as others seem

> to be able to do on a daily basis? (I acknowledge making comparison within the

> question but the truth of the matter is that workplaces are full of

competition

> and comparison, regardless of whether we buy into it or not).  

> Lou

>

>

>

> ________________________________

>

> To: act_for_the_public

> Sent: Tuesday, 21 February 2012 4:53 AM

> Subject: Faith: An Answer to Depression (comments

welcome)

>

>

>

>  

>

> Comments welcome...

>

> *******

>

> When I was depressed, I would experience certain intense emotions.  These

emotions would paint a somber, tragic picture of my life.  They would tell me

that at my core I was weak, needy, pathetic, inferior, alone, unlike everyone

else, and that in my many life mistakes, I had permanently ruined any hope for

happiness that I had ever had.  In the rational parts of my mind, I knew that

these emotions were not true.  But they felt true.  Because they felt

true, they would break me down. 

>  

> I tried to reason with the emotions†" " C'mon, you have no reason to believe

these things about yourself! " †" but that didn't work.  The emotions felt too

true not to believe.  Ironically, my contracted effort to argue them away, to

make them not feel true, would backfire.  They would become more entrenched

and more intense.  I would end up in an exhausting and counterproductive fight

with my own mind.   

>

> One day at work, after a particularly unpleasant episode of insomnia, the

following realization dawned upon me:

>  

> " I know, in the calmer parts of my mind, where things are more rational, that

these emotions are lies, unconnected with reality.  The neurochemicals in my

brain are firing them off not because they have any legitimacy, but because my

depression is acting up.  I'm stressed out, and I got no sleep last night. "  

>  

> " The problem is that even though I know this, I can't seem to make the

emotions stop feeling so true.  I try to reason with them, I beg them not to

paint such dire and depressing pictures, but they refuse.  No matter how hard I

try to escape from their persuasiveness and believability, I can't.  They have

me hooked, sold, convinced. "

>  

> At that point, I said to myself: 

>  

> " I can't change the way that these emotions feel.  It's impossible.  So I'm

not going to try.  I'm going to let them feel however they feel.  I'm going

to let them be alluring, believable, persuasive, convincing, whatever they are.

 At the same time, as a starting point, I am going to dismiss what they are

saying, categorically, unequivocally.  Rather than buy into them, I'm going to

put faith and trust in what I know to be true on a rational level, that they are

nothing but empty, unreliable illusions arising from a broken part of my

mind.  I'm going to choose not to believe in them, and I'm going to make that

choice even as they feel believable to me.  Period, end of discussion. "  

>  

> I then let go of the struggle and moved on.  Surprisingly, the emotions

faded.    

>  

> Normally, when we believe something, we believe it because our feelings tell

us it is true.  We consult our our feelings, we contact them, we follow them.

 But sometimes, our feelings are distorted by the many variants of delusion.

 In those circumstances, when we try to " fix " them, by arguing with them,

pleading with them, suppressing them, we agitate them and make them

worse.  What we need to do is bypass them, short-circuit them, take them out

of the process through which they drive and determine our beliefs.  They are,

after all, broken aspects of our mental machinery. 

>  

> The way to take them out of the process of belief is through faith.  Faith

means believing something as an unquestioned starting point.  It means acceding

to something, choosing to trust something, without being fully convinced of it,

without having your emotions back it and confirm it.  When " under the

influence " of delusion, we want to use faith to embrace the things that we know

to be true in the more rational parts of our minds, and that we would have no

trouble believing or accepting if we were not " under the influence. "

>  

> If you've ever had depression, or its close cousin infatuation, then you know

what a grand delusion it can be.  The brain creates all kinds of extreme,

irrational, chemically-driven emotions.  Everything becomes judgmental,

guilt-ridden, intense, passionate, persecutional, tragic.  Of course, when

you're inside the depression, it doesn't feel like a delusion. But when it

passes, you see it clearly for what it is.  You think to yourself, " what the

hell was that all about? "   No different from when you wake up from a drunken

stupor, or come out of a drug-induced trip. 

>  

> When the emotions of depression take hold and begin to persecute you, the

answer is to put faith in the things that you already know to be true on a

rational level, and that you knew to be true before the delusion took

hold.  You need to put faith in the prior insight, wisdom, and experience that

you have, and gently dismiss the deluded feelings that are trying to contradict

it.  In terms of what the depression is saying, you know that it's bullshit.

 You are not good, you are not bad, you are not weak, you are not strong, you

are not a success, you are not a failure.  You are just an individual playing

out the causes underneath you, traveling down the path that nature has placed

you on, doing what anyone in your shoes would do.  The judgment and persecution

that gets attached to this process is a meaningless projection of your mind.  

>  

> As you embrace this realization, you don't want to bring with you the

expectation that the persecutional feelings will suddenly change, or start

cooperating, or go away.  Since they are driven by chemical reactions in your

brain, they probably won't do that, at least not immediately.  Instead, you

want to have a mentality that understands that it doesn't matter whether they

change, start cooperating, or go away.  You've rightly gone around them,

disqualified them their vote, rendered them irrelevant.  You've chalked them

up to what they are: delusions.  To hell with them.  With that insight, you

can relax on them, let them be however they want to be, feel however they want

to feel.  They will calm down and you can move on.  

>  

> Two Conditions

>  

> Faith works particularly well as a tool to escape from the mind's deluded

oppression when the following two conditions are met:

>  

> (1)  Basis - the faith needs to have a basis in something.  Ideally, it

will have a basis in prior wisdom, insight, and experience.  To use the

example of depression, you've been through it before, you've seen it and been

fooled by it many many times.  For that reason, when the depression tries to

fool you again, it works to appeal to faith, to trust that the picture that it

paints is not the true picture, even though right now it seems convincing and

compelling.  You know why it seems convincing and compelling: because your

are caught in a delusion that you've experienced many times before.  With that

knowledge, you are more able to chalk it up and dismiss it.  

>  

> If you put faith in things that you do not have any prior basis for

believing†" hype, bullshit, nonsense†" the faith will not flow in a genuine

way.  Your mind will not be fooled by it, and doubts and insecurities will

creep in.  Fortunately, if you suffer from depression, you will have had many

many opportunities in your life to see its deception after the fact, after it

has calmed down and your mind has cleared up.  You will therefore have a solid

basis in experience for dismissing its hurtful judgments.      

>  

> (2)  Subjective with No Real-World Impact †" the faith will ideally be

applied to something that is subjective and that has no real-world impact.  To

again use the example of depression, the claims that the depression makes†" that

you are pathetic, inferior, worthless, hopeless†" are subjective value

judgments.  They are opinions, not facts, and therefore they cannot be true

or false in the proper sense.  Whether they are taken to be true or false has

no impact on any aspect of reality.  The only thing that is impacted is how

you feel.  It's a purely verbal affair.  

>

> Faith works best with things that are subjective and that lack a real-world

impact because the mind doesn't have as much of a justification for doubting

them and worry about them.  If you apply faith to a medical theory, you could

be wrong.  Your mind will recognize this, and is going to express

doubts.  If you are wrong, it will matter, and so your mind will be especially

critical and vigilant.  But if you are working with something about which you

can't be wrong, something that is subjective, opinion-based, and that doesn't

impact anything, your mind has no reason to worry.  You can set aside the

worries, let them go; they have no way to come back and haunt you. 

>  

> Contemporary, watered-down religious belief works very well as an object of

faith precisely for this reason. Generally speaking, it is kept out of science,

medicine, business, or any other field in which it could have a harmful

effect.  As a result, the believer has no reason to worry about whether it is

misguided.

>  

> If I go to a person of strong Christian faith, whose life is going very well,

and I say " Hey dude, I have news for you.  Your beliefs are totally wrong,

there is no God, only Nature " , he has no reason to be afraid as a believer. If

I am right, and yet he continues to believe, what will he

lose?  Nothing.  For this reason, his belief doesn't generate worrisome

doubts, and he is more able to support it through an act of faith.   

>

> Likewise, if I go to him and I tell him, " Hey man, you're way off, Wonder

Woman is a much better character than Batman " , he has no reason to be afraid in

taking the other side.  Like opinionated value judgments about who is " good "

and who is " bad " , comparisons between superheros are pure gibberish.  They have

no right answer.    

>

> Depression, and its close cousin infatuation, where a person gets caught up in

grand negative delusions about himself, or grand positive delusions about other

people (the romantic object), meet these conditions perfectly.  That is why

faith works very well as a way to transcend them.

>  

> Summary

>  

> To summarize, if you are suffering from a form of delusion†" in

particular, depression, or its close cousin infatuation†" and you are

experiencing the associated feelings of shame, inferiority, and persecution, try

this.  As a starting point, see if you can take a leap of faith, and gently

trust what the wiser part of you already knows, that these feelings are just

feelings, irrational neurochemical results of the depression itself, rather than

truths to be trusted.  When you take this leap, see if you can relax on the

feelings, let them be present, noticed, felt, without buying into them.  You

may not be able to, in which case other approaches will be necessary.  But if

you are able to, you may find that the feelings become harmless side-matter, and

lose their ability to oppress you.  

>

[Guest guest]

Lou, your comments and questions are intriguing. I plan to read Rato's original post more thoroughly and then yours again before adding my own comments. I need to sit with this awhile and mull it over...very interesting stuff!

Helena

To: "ACT for the Public" <ACT_for_the_Public >Sent: Monday, February 20, 2012 3:19:03 PMSubject: Re: Faith: An Answer to Depression (comments welcome)

Thanks for this post Rato,

Faith has often been a curiosity to me. I know it has the power of solace/peace of mind because I’ve seen it in others. As I was reading, I attempted to relate it to real time, actual situations that demand solid strategies. The concept of faith seemed fluffy and nice in theory.

My mind put me in a lecture theatre with and as an observer I watched him have a mild panic attack, a neurochemical reaction. He continued to deliver the lesson somewhat disjointedly but his message was watered down (so to speak) because it lacked confidence and certainty. No problem though, the message was still delivered. I returned to the next lecture and it happened again, and in the next, yet again. I began to wonder why I was there, for the lessons or to be witness to the ability to carry on. (With the cost of university study I chose the lessons). Then I see in a meeting with his boss who is saying, “Your students are not making the grade, if you can’t let those physical sensations go, then we’ll have to let you go because there are many other lecturers who can do the jobâ€. Then his reality/truth becomes real time, it is not an illusion nor delusional.

How does ‘faith’ help in such real time situations, particularly when one needs to perform with the same capability as others seem to be able to do on a daily basis? (I acknowledge making comparison within the question but the truth of the matter is that workplaces are full of competition and comparison, regardless of whether we buy into it or not).

Lou

To: act_for_the_public Sent: Tuesday, 21 February 2012 4:53 AMSubject: Faith: An Answer to Depression (comments welcome)

Comments welcome...

*******

When I was depressed, I would experience certain intense emotions. These emotions would paint a somber, tragic picture of my life. They would tell me that at my core I was weak, needy, pathetic, inferior, alone, unlike everyone else, and that in my many life mistakes, I had permanently ruined any hope for happiness that I had ever had. In the rational parts of my mind, I knew that these emotions were not true. But they felt true. Because they felt true, they would break me down.

I tried to reason with the emotions—"C'mon, you have no reason to believe these things about yourself!"—but that didn't work. The emotions felt too true not to believe. Ironically, my contracted effort to argue them away, to make them not feel true, would backfire. They would become more entrenched and more intense. I would end up in an exhausting and counterproductive fight with my own mind.

One day at work, after a particularly unpleasant episode of insomnia, the following realization dawned upon me:

"I know, in the calmer parts of my mind, where things are more rational, that these emotions are lies, unconnected with reality. The neurochemicals in my brain are firing them off not because they have any legitimacy, but because my depression is acting up. I'm stressed out, and I got no sleep last night."

"The problem is that even though I know this, I can't seem to make the emotions stop feeling so true. I try to reason with them, I beg them not to paint such dire and depressing pictures, but they refuse. No matter how hard I try to escape from their persuasiveness and believability, I can't. They have me hooked, sold, convinced."

At that point, I said to myself:

"I can't change the way that these emotions feel. It's impossible. So I'm not going to try. I'm going to let them feel however they feel. I'm going to let them be alluring, believable, persuasive, convincing, whatever they are. At the same time, as a starting point, I am going to dismiss what they are saying, categorically, unequivocally. Rather than buy into them, I'm going to put faith and trust in what I know to be true on a rational level, that they are nothing but empty, unreliable illusions arising from a broken part of my mind. I'm going to choose not to believe in them, and I'm going to make that choice even as they feel believable to me. Period, end of discussion."

I then let go of the struggle and moved on. Surprisingly, the emotions faded.

Normally, when we believe something, we believe it because our feelings tell us it is true. We consult our our feelings, we contact them, we follow them. But sometimes, our feelings are distorted by the many variants of delusion. In those circumstances, when we try to "fix" them, by arguing with them, pleading with them, suppressing them, we agitate them and make them worse. What we need to do is bypass them, short-circuit them, take them out of the process through which they drive and determine our beliefs. They are, after all, broken aspects of our mental machinery.

The way to take them out of the process of belief is through faith. Faith means believing something as an unquestioned starting point. It means acceding to something, choosing to trust something, without being fully convinced of it, without having your emotions back it and confirm it. When "under the influence" of delusion, we want to use faith to embrace the things that we know to be true in the more rational parts of our minds, and that we would have no trouble believing or accepting if we were not "under the influence."

If you've ever had depression, or its close cousin infatuation, then you know what a grand delusion it can be. The brain creates all kinds of extreme, irrational, chemically-driven emotions. Everything becomes judgmental, guilt-ridden, intense, passionate, persecutional, tragic. Of course, when you're inside the depression, it doesn't feel like a delusion. But when it passes, you see it clearly for what it is. You think to yourself, "what the hell was that all about?" No different from when you wake up from a drunken stupor, or come out of a drug-induced trip.

When the emotions of depression take hold and begin to persecute you, the answer is to put faith in the things that you already know to be true on a rational level, and that you knew to be true before the delusion took hold. You need to put faith in the prior insight, wisdom, and experience that you have, and gently dismiss the deluded feelings that are trying to contradict it. In terms of what the depression is saying, you know that it's bullshit. You are not good, you are not bad, you are not weak, you are not strong, you are not a success, you are not a failure. You are just an individual playing out the causes underneath you, traveling down the path that nature has placed you on, doing what anyone in your shoes would do. The judgment and persecution that gets attached to this process is a meaningless projection of your mind.

As you embrace this realization, you don't want to bring with you the expectation that the persecutional feelings will suddenly change, or start cooperating, or go away. Since they are driven by chemical reactions in your brain, they probably won't do that, at least not immediately. Instead, you want to have a mentality that understands that it doesn't matter whether they change, start cooperating, or go away. You've rightly gone around them, disqualified them their vote, rendered them irrelevant. You've chalked them up to what they are: delusions. To hell with them. With that insight, you can relax on them, let them be however they want to be, feel however they want to feel. They will calm down and you can move on.

Two Conditions

Faith works particularly well as a tool to escape from the mind's deluded oppression when the following two conditions are met:

(1) Basis - the faith needs to have a basis in something. Ideally, it will have a basis in prior wisdom, insight, and experience. To use the example of depression, you've been through it before, you've seen it and been fooled by it many many times. For that reason, when the depression tries to fool you again, it works to appeal to faith, to trust that the picture that it paints is not the true picture, even though right now it seems convincing and compelling. You know why it seems convincing and compelling: because your are caught in a delusion that you've experienced many times before. With that knowledge, you are more able to chalk it up and dismiss it.

If you put faith in things that you do not have any prior basis for believing—hype, bullshit, nonsense—the faith will not flow in a genuine way. Your mind will not be fooled by it, and doubts and insecurities will creep in. Fortunately, if you suffer from depression, you will have had many many opportunities in your life to see its deception after the fact, after it has calmed down and your mind has cleared up. You will therefore have a solid basis in experience for dismissing its hurtful judgments.

(2) Subjective with No Real-World Impact – the faith will ideally be applied to something that is subjective and that has no real-world impact. To again use the example of depression, the claims that the depression makes—that you are pathetic, inferior, worthless, hopeless—are subjective value judgments. They are opinions, not facts, and therefore they cannot be true or false in the proper sense. Whether they are taken to be true or false has no impact on any aspect of reality. The only thing that is impacted is how you feel. It's a purely verbal affair.

Faith works best with things that are subjective and that lack a real-world impact because the mind doesn't have as much of a justification for doubting them and worry about them. If you apply faith to a medical theory, you could be wrong. Your mind will recognize this, and is going to express doubts. If you are wrong, it will matter, and so your mind will be especially critical and vigilant. But if you are working with something about which you can't be wrong, something that is subjective, opinion-based, and that doesn't impact anything, your mind has no reason to worry. You can set aside the worries, let them go; they have no way to come back and haunt you.

Contemporary, watered-down religious belief works very well as an object of faith precisely for this reason. Generally speaking, it is kept out of science, medicine, business, or any other field in which it could have a harmful effect. As a result, the believer has no reason to worry about whether it is misguided.

If I go to a person of strong Christian faith, whose life is going very well, and I say "Hey dude, I have news for you. Your beliefs are totally wrong, there is no God, only Nature", he has no reason to be afraid as a believer. If I am right, and yet he continues to believe, what will he lose? Nothing. For this reason, his belief doesn't generate worrisome doubts, and he is more able to support it through an act of faith.

Likewise, if I go to him and I tell him, "Hey man, you're way off, Wonder Woman is a much better character than Batman", he has no reason to be afraid in taking the other side. Like opinionated value judgments about who is "good" and who is "bad", comparisons between superheros are pure gibberish. They have no right answer.

Depression, and its close cousin infatuation, where a person gets caught up in grand negative delusions about himself, or grand positive delusions about other people (the romantic object), meet these conditions perfectly. That is why faith works very well as a way to transcend them.

Summary

To summarize, if you are suffering from a form of delusion—in particular, depression, or its close cousin infatuation—and you are experiencing the associated feelings of shame, inferiority, and persecution, try this. As a starting point, see if you can take a leap of faith, and gently trust what the wiser part of you already knows, that these feelings are just feelings, irrational neurochemical results of the depression itself, rather than truths to be trusted. When you take this leap, see if you can relax on the feelings, let them be present, noticed, felt, without buying into them. You may not be able to, in which case other approaches will be necessary. But if you are able to, you may find that the feelings become harmless side-matter, and lose their ability to oppress you.

[Guest guest]

Love the detail Raco, and especially the link between infatuation and depression - I had never heard that before.  I've been in infatuation a fair bit lately, so I could relate exactly to your description of the experience.  And my present response to my tendency towards it is to minimize exposure to the conditions that tend to encourage it.  That is not always possible, but knowing where it has reared its ugly head has allowed me to find ways to evade it.  

I am not sure if I can entirely relate to faith as you describe it.  The concept sounds similar to the ACT concept of the Observing Self, which is an inner space separate from the thoughts and feeling that arise.  I have tended to find that when carried away in depression or infatuation I cannot see any form of reasoning within; my entire world is coloured by the bleak view I hold.  In other words, I had no rational anchor that I could reach out for in those times.  I can start to see now that in practising engaging with the five senses and noticing when I am hooked by thoughts moving me away from my values, I can get to the point where in the worst possible emotional states I can stop, notice, and realize that thoughts are just " leaves on a stream " , as Russ so eloquently suggests.  Coming back to observing self, of late I have more readily caught myself getting hooked, and then deploy a defusion strategy.  

Maybe faith is such a state of defusion?  That makes sense.  Which makes faith in rationality one particular defusion strategy.  So even though I may not relate to it, that simply means that I have my own strategies that I relate more to.  Hence why Russ puts so many different ideas in the books and encourages you to develop your own.  

 

Comments welcome...

*******

When I was depressed, I would experience certain intense emotions.  These emotions would paint a somber, tragic picture of my life.  They would tell me that at my core I was weak, needy, pathetic, inferior, alone, unlike everyone else, and that in my many life mistakes, I had permanently ruined any hope for happiness that I had ever had.  In the rational parts of my mind, I knew that these emotions were not true.  But they felt true.  Because they felt true, they would break me down. 

 I tried to reason with the emotions— " C'mon, you have no reason to believe these things about yourself! " —but that didn't work.  The emotions felt too true not to believe.  Ironically, my contracted effort to argue them away, to make them not feel true, would backfire.  They would become more entrenched and more intense.  I would end up in an exhausting and counterproductive fight with my own mind.   

One day at work, after a particularly unpleasant episode of insomnia, the following realization dawned upon me:

  " I know, in the calmer parts of my mind, where things are more rational, that these emotions are lies, unconnected with reality.  The neurochemicals in my brain are firing them off not because they have any legitimacy, but because my depression is acting up.  I'm stressed out, and I got no sleep last night. "  

  " The problem is that even though I know this, I can't seem to make the emotions stop feeling so true.  I try to reason with them, I beg them not to paint such dire and depressing pictures, but they refuse.  No matter how hard I try to escape from their persuasiveness and believability, I can't.  They have me hooked, sold, convinced. "

 At that point, I said to myself: 

  " I can't change the way that these emotions feel.  It's impossible.  So I'm not going to try.  I'm going to let them feel however they feel.  I'm going to let them be alluring, believable, persuasive, convincing, whatever they are.  At the same time, as a starting point, I am going to dismiss what they are saying, categorically, unequivocally.  Rather than buy into them, I'm going to put faith and trust in what I know to be true on a rational level, that they are nothing but empty, unreliable illusions arising from a broken part of my mind.  I'm going to choose not to believe in them, and I'm going to make that choice even as they feel believable to me.  Period, end of discussion. "  

 I then let go of the struggle and moved on.  Surprisingly, the emotions faded.    

 Normally, when we believe something, we believe it because our feelings tell us it is true.  We consult our our feelings, we contact them, we follow them.  But sometimes, our feelings are distorted by the many variants of delusion.  In those circumstances, when we try to " fix " them, by arguing with them, pleading with them, suppressing them, we agitate them and make them worse.  What we need to do is bypass them, short-circuit them, take them out of the process through which they drive and determine our beliefs.  They are, after all, broken aspects of our mental machinery. 

 The way to take them out of the process of belief is through faith.  Faith means believing something as an unquestioned starting point.  It means acceding to something, choosing to trust something, without being fully convinced of it, without having your emotions back it and confirm it.  When " under the influence " of delusion, we want to use faith to embrace the things that we know to be true in the more rational parts of our minds, and that we would have no trouble believing or accepting if we were not " under the influence. "

 If you've ever had depression, or its close cousin infatuation, then you know what a grand delusion it can be.  The brain creates all kinds of extreme, irrational, chemically-driven emotions.  Everything becomes judgmental, guilt-ridden, intense, passionate, persecutional, tragic.  Of course, when you're inside the depression, it doesn't feel like a delusion. But when it passes, you see it clearly for what it is.  You think to yourself, " what the hell was that all about? "   No different from when you wake up from a drunken stupor, or come out of a drug-induced trip. 

 When the emotions of depression take hold and begin to persecute you, the answer is to put faith in the things that you already know to be true on a rational level, and that you knew to be true before the delusion took hold.  You need to put faith in the prior insight, wisdom, and experience that you have, and gently dismiss the deluded feelings that are trying to contradict it.  In terms of what the depression is saying, you know that it's bullshit.  You are not good, you are not bad, you are not weak, you are not strong, you are not a success, you are not a failure.  You are just an individual playing out the causes underneath you, traveling down the path that nature has placed you on, doing what anyone in your shoes would do.  The judgment and persecution that gets attached to this process is a meaningless projection of your mind.  

 As you embrace this realization, you don't want to bring with you the expectation that the persecutional feelings will suddenly change, or start cooperating, or go away.  Since they are driven by chemical reactions in your brain, they probably won't do that, at least not immediately.  Instead, you want to have a mentality that understands that it doesn't matter whether they change, start cooperating, or go away.  You've rightly gone around them, disqualified them their vote, rendered them irrelevant.  You've chalked them up to what they are: delusions.  To hell with them.  With that insight, you can relax on them, let them be however they want to be, feel however they want to feel.  They will calm down and you can move on.  

 Two Conditions

 Faith works particularly well as a tool to escape from the mind's deluded oppression when the following two conditions are met:

 (1)  Basis - the faith needs to have a basis in something.  Ideally, it will have a basis in prior wisdom, insight, and experience.  To use the example of depression, you've been through it before, you've seen it and been fooled by it many many times.  For that reason, when the depression tries to fool you again, it works to appeal to faith, to trust that the picture that it paints is not the true picture, even though right now it seems convincing and compelling.  You know why it seems convincing and compelling: because your are caught in a delusion that you've experienced many times before.  With that knowledge, you are more able to chalk it up and dismiss it.  

 

If you put faith in things that you do not have any prior basis for believing—hype, bullshit, nonsense—the faith will not flow in a genuine way.  Your mind will not be fooled by it, and doubts and insecurities will creep in.  Fortunately, if you suffer from depression, you will have had many many opportunities in your life to see its deception after the fact, after it has calmed down and your mind has cleared up.  You will therefore have a solid basis in experience for dismissing its hurtful judgments.      

 (2)  Subjective with No Real-World Impact – the faith will ideally be applied to something that is subjective and that has no real-world impact.  To again use the example of depression, the claims that the depression makes—that you are pathetic, inferior, worthless, hopeless—are subjective value judgments.  They are opinions, not facts, and therefore they cannot be true or false in the proper sense.  Whether they are taken to be true or false has no impact on any aspect of reality.  The only thing that is impacted is how you feel.  It's a purely verbal affair.  

 Faith works best with things that are subjective and that lack a real-world impact because the mind doesn't have as much of a justification for doubting them and worry about them.  If you apply faith to a medical theory, you could be wrong.  Your mind will recognize this, and is going to express doubts.  If you are wrong, it will matter, and so your mind will be especially critical and vigilant.  But if you are working with something about which you can't be wrong, something that is subjective, opinion-based, and that doesn't impact anything, your mind has no reason to worry.  You can set aside the worries, let them go; they have no way to come back and haunt you. 

 Contemporary, watered-down religious belief works very well as an object of faith precisely for this reason. Generally speaking, it is kept out of science, medicine, business, or any other field in which it could have a harmful effect.  As a result, the believer has no reason to worry about whether it is misguided.

 If I go to a person of strong Christian faith, whose life is going very well, and I say " Hey dude, I have news for you.  Your beliefs are totally wrong, there is no God, only Nature " , he has no reason to be afraid as a believer. If I am right, and yet he continues to believe, what will he lose?  Nothing.  For this reason, his belief doesn't generate worrisome doubts, and he is more able to support it through an act of faith.   

Likewise, if I go to him and I tell him, " Hey man, you're way off, Wonder Woman is a much better character than Batman " , he has no reason to be afraid in taking the other side.  Like opinionated value judgments about who is " good " and who is " bad " , comparisons between superheros are pure gibberish.  They have no right answer.    

Depression, and its close cousin infatuation, where a person gets caught up in grand negative delusions about himself, or grand positive delusions about other people (the romantic object), meet these conditions perfectly.  That is why faith works very well as a way to transcend them.

 Summary

 

To summarize, if you are suffering from a form of delusion—in particular, depression, or its close cousin infatuation—and you are experiencing the associated feelings of shame, inferiority, and persecution, try this.  As a starting point, see if you can take a leap of faith, and gently trust what the wiser part of you already knows, that these feelings are just feelings, irrational neurochemical results of the depression itself, rather than truths to be trusted.  When you take this leap, see if you can relax on the feelings, let them be present, noticed, felt, without buying into them.  You may not be able to, in which case other approaches will be necessary.  But if you are able to, you may find that the feelings become harmless side-matter, and lose their ability to oppress you.  

[Guest guest]

Thank you for investing the amount of time it must have taken to write this

post. Other people's perceptions and great ability to explain them, as you

have--help me to sort out and put into order disparate thoughts I have. It will

clearly help me to explain my thoughts and feelings and ACT better than I have

been able to before. I think your line " If you've ever had depression, or its

close cousin infatuation,.. " is wonderful. A comparison I never would have

thought of in a million years, and I had a great joyous laugh as I read it! It

felt like I had come across a great discovery…a great eureka moment (I agree

with what you wrote and hope you understand my laughter in this context).

I especially appreciate the distinction you make between Faith and god or

religion or whatever. I considered myself christian per se, for a very long

time AND had many doubts and questions that I could find no answers to—or even

anyone to even just discuss with! Only upon his death, did I discover the

writings of Hitchens and have begun to find many of the answers I

have been seeking

Normally, I couldn't imagine suggesting a change to something someone had

written, and when I read later into the responses, that you were going to do

some tweaking, perhaps you would like this tiny addition: " Normally, when we

believe something, we believe it because our feelings [or thoughts] tell us it

is true. " Thanks again, Wanda in Albuquerque, NM

ps. please post your article again with your changes, and mark it in the title

so I won't miss it.

[Guest guest]

I totally see the truth in what you say because it has worked for me with my depression. I just didn't call it "faith." Could you not use the word "trust" just as accurately? I do not trust my mind's messages, but I do trust what I know to be true, which is based on my prior insights and experiences, and I have learned that I cannot trust what my mind is telling me when it is depressed. I guess you can call that faith as well, but to many people, the word faith has religious connotations, as a belief in something "other" than or outside themselves, and I don't think you mean it in that sense. Still, stretching the meaning of the word to include faith "in your wiser self" or your "higher self" seems a fine idea, especially in the sense of taking a "leap of faith." I like to say I trust my higher self rather than my mind, or I could say I have faith in my higher self. Others insisit that their faith is in a higher power that is outside of them. So the word faith can get a little confusing.

Not sure if I have clarified or confused!

Helena

ato branco" To: "act for the public" <act_for_the_public >Sent: Monday, February 20, 2012 1:23:14 PMSubject: Faith: An Answer to Depression (comments welcome)

Comments welcome...

*******

When I was depressed, I would experience certain intense emotions. These emotions would paint a somber, tragic picture of my life. They would tell me that at my core I was weak, needy, pathetic, inferior, alone, unlike everyone else, and that in my many life mistakes, I had permanently ruined any hope for happiness that I had ever had. In the rational parts of my mind, I knew that these emotions were not true. But they felt true. Because they felt true, they would break me down.

I tried to reason with the emotions—"C'mon, you have no reason to believe these things about yourself!"—but that didn't work. The emotions felt too true not to believe. Ironically, my contracted effort to argue them away, to make them not feel true, would backfire. They would become more entrenched and more intense. I would end up in an exhausting and counterproductive fight with my own mind.

One day at work, after a particularly unpleasant episode of insomnia, the following realization dawned upon me:

"I know, in the calmer parts of my mind, where things are more rational, that these emotions are lies, unconnected with reality. The neurochemicals in my brain are firing them off not because they have any legitimacy, but because my depression is acting up. I'm stressed out, and I got no sleep last night."

"The problem is that even though I know this, I can't seem to make the emotions stop feeling so true. I try to reason with them, I beg them not to paint such dire and depressing pictures, but they refuse. No matter how hard I try to escape from their persuasiveness and believability, I can't. They have me hooked, sold, convinced."

At that point, I said to myself:

"I can't change the way that these emotions feel. It's impossible. So I'm not going to try. I'm going to let them feel however they feel. I'm going to let them be alluring, believable, persuasive, convincing, whatever they are. At the same time, as a starting point, I am going to dismiss what they are saying, categorically, unequivocally. Rather than buy into them, I'm going to put faith and trust in what I know to be true on a rational level, that they are nothing but empty, unreliable illusions arising from a broken part of my mind. I'm going to choose not to believe in them, and I'm going to make that choice even as they feel believable to me. Period, end of discussion."

I then let go of the struggle and moved on. Surprisingly, the emotions faded.

Normally, when we believe something, we believe it because our feelings tell us it is true. We consult our our feelings, we contact them, we follow them. But sometimes, our feelings are distorted by the many variants of delusion. In those circumstances, when we try to "fix" them, by arguing with them, pleading with them, suppressing them, we agitate them and make them worse. What we need to do is bypass them, short-circuit them, take them out of the process through which they drive and determine our beliefs. They are, after all, broken aspects of our mental machinery.

The way to take them out of the process of belief is through faith. Faith means believing something as an unquestioned starting point. It means acceding to something, choosing to trust something, without being fully convinced of it, without having your emotions back it and confirm it. When "under the influence" of delusion, we want to use faith to embrace the things that we know to be true in the more rational parts of our minds, and that we would have no trouble believing or accepting if we were not "under the influence."

If you've ever had depression, or its close cousin infatuation, then you know what a grand delusion it can be. The brain creates all kinds of extreme, irrational, chemically-driven emotions. Everything becomes judgmental, guilt-ridden, intense, passionate, persecutional, tragic. Of course, when you're inside the depression, it doesn't feel like a delusion. But when it passes, you see it clearly for what it is. You think to yourself, "what the hell was that all about?" No different from when you wake up from a drunken stupor, or come out of a drug-induced trip.

When the emotions of depression take hold and begin to persecute you, the answer is to put faith in the things that you already know to be true on a rational level, and that you knew to be true before the delusion took hold. You need to put faith in the prior insight, wisdom, and experience that you have, and gently dismiss the deluded feelings that are trying to contradict it. In terms of what the depression is saying, you know that it's bullshit. You are not good, you are not bad, you are not weak, you are not strong, you are not a success, you are not a failure. You are just an individual playing out the causes underneath you, traveling down the path that nature has placed you on, doing what anyone in your shoes would do. The judgment and persecution that gets attached to this process is a meaningless projection of your mind.

As you embrace this realization, you don't want to bring with you the expectation that the persecutional feelings will suddenly change, or start cooperating, or go away. Since they are driven by chemical reactions in your brain, they probably won't do that, at least not immediately. Instead, you want to have a mentality that understands that it doesn't matter whether they change, start cooperating, or go away. You've rightly gone around them, disqualified them their vote, rendered them irrelevant. You've chalked them up to what they are: delusions. To hell with them. With that insight, you can relax on them, let them be however they want to be, feel however they want to feel. They will calm down and you can move on.

Two Conditions

Faith works particularly well as a tool to escape from the mind's deluded oppression when the following two conditions are met:

(1) Basis - the faith needs to have a basis in something. Ideally, it will have a basis in prior wisdom, insight, and experience. To use the example of depression, you've been through it before, you've seen it and been fooled by it many many times. For that reason, when the depression tries to fool you again, it works to appeal to faith, to trust that the picture that it paints is not the true picture, even though right now it seems convincing and compelling. You know why it seems convincing and compelling: because your are caught in a delusion that you've experienced many times before. With that knowledge, you are more able to chalk it up and dismiss it.

If you put faith in things that you do not have any prior basis for believing—hype, bullshit, nonsense—the faith will not flow in a genuine way. Your mind will not be fooled by it, and doubts and insecurities will creep in. Fortunately, if you suffer from depression, you will have had many many opportunities in your life to see its deception after the fact, after it has calmed down and your mind has cleared up. You will therefore have a solid basis in experience for dismissing its hurtful judgments.

(2) Subjective with No Real-World Impact – the faith will ideally be applied to something that is subjective and that has no real-world impact. To again use the example of depression, the claims that the depression makes—that you are pathetic, inferior, worthless, hopeless—are subjective value judgments. They are opinions, not facts, and therefore they cannot be true or false in the proper sense. Whether they are taken to be true or false has no impact on any aspect of reality. The only thing that is impacted is how you feel. It's a purely verbal affair.

Faith works best with things that are subjective and that lack a real-world impact because the mind doesn't have as much of a justification for doubting them and worry about them. If you apply faith to a medical theory, you could be wrong. Your mind will recognize this, and is going to express doubts. If you are wrong, it will matter, and so your mind will be especially critical and vigilant. But if you are working with something about which you can't be wrong, something that is subjective, opinion-based, and that doesn't impact anything, your mind has no reason to worry. You can set aside the worries, let them go; they have no way to come back and haunt you.

Contemporary, watered-down religious belief works very well as an object of faith precisely for this reason. Generally speaking, it is kept out of science, medicine, business, or any other field in which it could have a harmful effect. As a result, the believer has no reason to worry about whether it is misguided.

If I go to a person of strong Christian faith, whose life is going very well, and I say "Hey dude, I have news for you. Your beliefs are totally wrong, there is no God, only Nature", he has no reason to be afraid as a believer. If I am right, and yet he continues to believe, what will he lose? Nothing. For this reason, his belief doesn't generate worrisome doubts, and he is more able to support it through an act of faith.

Likewise, if I go to him and I tell him, "Hey man, you're way off, Wonder Woman is a much better character than Batman", he has no reason to be afraid in taking the other side. Like opinionated value judgments about who is "good" and who is "bad", comparisons between superheros are pure gibberish. They have no right answer.

Depression, and its close cousin infatuation, where a person gets caught up in grand negative delusions about himself, or grand positive delusions about other people (the romantic object), meet these conditions perfectly. That is why faith works very well as a way to transcend them.

Summary

To summarize, if you are suffering from a form of delusion—in particular, depression, or its close cousin infatuation—and you are experiencing the associated feelings of shame, inferiority, and persecution, try this. As a starting point, see if you can take a leap of faith, and gently trust what the wiser part of you already knows, that these feelings are just feelings, irrational neurochemical results of the depression itself, rather than truths to be trusted. When you take this leap, see if you can relax on the feelings, let them be present, noticed, felt, without buying into them. You may not be able to, in which case other approaches will be necessary. But if you are able to, you may find that the feelings become harmless side-matter, and lose their ability to oppress you.

[Guest guest]

and Wands,

Thanks so much for the feedback. I am working on a new version that more

effectively gets at the concept I am trying to describe. After Lou's post, I

realized that " faith " is the wrong term to use, which helenas post now confirms.

I will post the new version when I finish.

As for depression and infatuation, they are extremely closely related, and

involve activation of some of the same parts of the brain.

Take care,

--rato

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

> Thank you for investing the amount of time it must have taken to write this

post. Other people's perceptions and great ability to explain them, as you

have--help me to sort out and put into order disparate thoughts I have. It will

clearly help me to explain my thoughts and feelings and ACT better than I have

been able to before. I think your line " If you've ever had depression, or its

close cousin infatuation,.. " is wonderful. A comparison I never would have

thought of in a million years, and I had a great joyous laugh as I read it! It

felt like I had come across a great discovery…a great eureka moment (I agree

with what you wrote and hope you understand my laughter in this context).

>

> I especially appreciate the distinction you make between Faith and god or

religion or whatever. I considered myself christian per se, for a very long

time AND had many doubts and questions that I could find no answers to—or even

anyone to even just discuss with! Only upon his death, did I discover the

writings of Hitchens and have begun to find many of the answers I

have been seeking

>

> Normally, I couldn't imagine suggesting a change to something someone had

written, and when I read later into the responses, that you were going to do

some tweaking, perhaps you would like this tiny addition: " Normally, when we

believe something, we believe it because our feelings [or thoughts] tell us it

is true. " Thanks again, Wanda in Albuquerque, NM

>

> ps. please post your article again with your changes, and mark it in the title

so I won't miss it.

>

[Guest guest]

Best of luck on your literary revisions to talk about concepts.

> >

> >

> >

> >

> >

> >

> >

> > Thank you for investing the amount of time it must have taken to write this

post. Other people's perceptions and great ability to explain them, as you

have--help me to sort out and put into order disparate thoughts I have. It will

clearly help me to explain my thoughts and feelings and ACT better than I have

been able to before. I think your line " If you've ever had depression, or its

close cousin infatuation,.. " is wonderful. A comparison I never would have

thought of in a million years, and I had a great joyous laugh as I read it! It

felt like I had come across a great discovery…a great eureka moment (I agree

with what you wrote and hope you understand my laughter in this context).

> >

> > I especially appreciate the distinction you make between Faith and god or

religion or whatever. I considered myself christian per se, for a very long

time AND had many doubts and questions that I could find no answers to—or even

anyone to even just discuss with! Only upon his death, did I discover the

writings of Hitchens and have begun to find many of the answers I

have been seeking

> >

> > Normally, I couldn't imagine suggesting a change to something someone had

written, and when I read later into the responses, that you were going to do

some tweaking, perhaps you would like this tiny addition: " Normally, when we

believe something, we believe it because our feelings [or thoughts] tell us it

is true. " Thanks again, Wanda in Albuquerque, NM

> >

> > ps. please post your article again with your changes, and mark it in the

title so I won't miss it.

> >

>