My depression has come back. I noticed myself self-censoring and speaking up over trivial matters less. Thankfully, I was able to tell my fiancee before depression told me I shouldn’t bother anyone with it. Depression lulls us into not speaking up for ourselves. It silences our voice and replaces it with its own corrupt voice. If you have depression, you should tell someone because you deserve to exist. If you’re able to and up for it, see a professional therapist.

I decided to investigate my depression. After spending some time in samadhi, I induced depressive viewpoints. I saw it sucking the emotion out of regular thoughts like the winter withers trees. I saw its negative bias. Recounting things that happened, depression twisted those memories to make me despair.

For instance, I thought about how most of my friends had moved away. Normally, I’m okay with that, even happy that they followed the next steps of their own path. Depression injected some intrusive thoughts, telling me that they left me. That I didn’t deserve friendship because of some self defacing reasons. Thankfully I stopped supporting depression’s viewpoints before it came up with “concrete” reasons I dont deserve friendship. Thoughts require attention to be thought through. Seeing these intrusive thoughts with a perspective of anatman (not-self) helps reduce their hold on me. It doesn’t make the feelings go away, but it does make them easier to bear.

Interestingly, depression didn’t exist during awareness of awareness meditation. It exists as a filter on my thoughts, and depends on a timeline, or a story, of myself. Since our awareness exists separately of both of these, there was no ground for depression to stand on. I cleansed the depressive viewpoints lingering with another dose of samadhi.

Someone once said, “Depression is like a tunnel that seems like a cave.” Meditation let’s my awareness remind me that I’m in a tunnel with many loving folks supporting me on both sides.