Mindfulness and Depression

There is one symptom of the fear of un-lovability and unworthiness and that is sadness and depression. This wound of un-lovability expresses itself in the feeling of depression. The reason sadness arises from the experience of unworthiness is that it is untrue, yet you believe it. Lack of worth, lack of acceptance, lack of lovability is the great fallacy in life. But you hold worthlessness as a belief on some level and as long as that false belief is in place you will feel the symptoms of sadness and depression.

You believe you are unlovable not because you truly are experiencing yourself authentically that way but because you are gauging and judging your worth based upon the conditioning and experiences of parents, teachers, society, friends, family and spiritual beliefs. You have to fit in, excel, look, act, respond and think like they want you to in order for them to love you. And that is an impossible job with an unattainable result. You live in-authentically to be loved and you dis-connect yourself from your essential self, always living in a created self, seeking to be loved.

When you don’t get what you want you react with anger or you hide yourself away. Either way, deep inside you feel a deep and ever-present sadness. You can’t achieve being loved outside and you aren’t experiencing it inside, where it truly exists, because you are dis-connected to your essential self. As this cycle continues sadness turns to depression.

The first step in bringing mindfulness to your sadness is becoming aware of the process that has created it. When you begin to see what you are doing that creates the sadness and depression you gain the awareness to change the process and end the symptoms that arise from the wounding you are creating.  The process:

• Everything you do is seeking love, acceptance and worthiness.
• You believe you will find love from others by accepting the conditioning they have shown you. Experience reinforces this so you create a persona, a self that they will love.
• But the result is you feel incapable of intimacy, connection and love because you are living in-authentically and this causes sadness
• Ask what would it take to completely love yourself? Forgiveness, compassion, love?
• Forgive yourself because you can’t be held responsible or held hostage for an awareness you didn’t have. You were doing what you were conditioned to do.
• Fully accept the false self you created. Be grateful for it being part of your awakening.
• Know the authentic self and allow yourself the freedom to live that.
• Sadness and depression, being a symptom, evaporate in the light of awareness and authenticity.