Origin of inspiration, depression and the way out of depression

Both inspiration and depression are a result of the mind not properly understanding the situation. The most remarkable fact about inspiration and depression is that they are interchangeable.

It is an undisputed fact that inspiration is preferable to depression. So, let us assume a person has faced a situation which is unpleasant, and his mind is not properly able to understand it, and he feels depressed, which is natural. Since I have said that depression and inspiration are interchangeable, the person can just change this destructive depression into some constructive inspiration by telling himself a simple fact and thereby, giving his mind another choice so that it can choose to be inspired or to be depressed. The fact which may be supplemented by any other fact or facts relative to the situation is - "still the choice is mine".

This realisation throws the person hard and jerks him back to reality and then he decides, out of sheer ego, to be inspired and not depressed. One more way would be to explain to the person (or if he can do it himself, still better ) that getting depressed is a lot easier than getting inspired. It is not hard to brood gloomyly over any unpleasant situation, but what is hard is to look at it with a level-headed attitude. (the fact being that both getting depressed and inspired are equally hard and equally easy. The above lie is to be told so that the person, instead of directing his energies towards getting depressed, gets inspired). This solves half the problem of not letting the person get depressed. The other half of inspiring him would be to sow the seed of hope in him. One has got to let him defuse the hindering emotion linked with the depression by whatever means. (note that depression and the emotion linked are two separate things. Depression is persistent even after the linked emotion has been defused. As far as the origin of this linked emotion is concerned, I'm not quite sure, I have got to think). After the linked emotion has been defused successfully, the person automatically comes into a receptive mood. (the most common way of defusing the linked emotions is by crying). (the receptive mood is the product perhaps of submission. Once the linked emotion is diffused, the person is better able to receive what is being fed. I am not quite sure why. It perhaps is because the moment the linked emotion is diffused, the person suddenly feels lonely. This has something to do with relative emotions. I have observed that when exposed to say, ten degrees of cold, I shiver. Then , when exposed to say five degrees, I shiver more. Then, when I'm exposed to ten degrees again, I stopped shivering, simply because ten degrees is now hotter than five degrees. The same way, depression alone creates suffering at first. Depression and the linked emotion together create more suffering, but for a short period of time, after which the state of mind is back to depression alone. Now the person doesn't suffer, in other words, the person doesn't feel sad. In still other words, earlier the person had something to do, that is, feel sad, brood, etc. Now, when the linked emotion is diffused, the person has nothing to do since he has already finished feeling sad. Now he's only depressed and this feeling (though it is more of an attitude than a feeling) can be defused easily as the person's mind is receptive.

An understanding person can help the depressed one by instigating hope in him. this is easy. By saying things that fill the other person's heart with enthusiasm, and a will to do something, which is exactly the opposite of depression, when a person wants to and has a strong desire to do nothing. One must make sure that this newly instigated enthusiasm is stronger than and more persistent than the depression, otherwise the depression again overpowers the enthusiasm, or shall we now safely call it inspiration. The sole motive of ours when we create enthusiasm in the depressed person's mind is to dwarf the depression. We have to create a stronger emotion than the depression, if the person is unwilling to come out of it (or if the person has not yet defused the linked emotion). But if he is willing to come out of it, (never should it be directly asked as we are supposed to hide our motive. The depressed person has a strong tendency for no reason in particular, to stay as he is. And if our motive for bringing him out is known to him, he would resist it, thus, in effect making our job still more difficult. Under normal state of mind, the person would have quite naturally guessed that the other one's aim is to get him out of his depression, but in such a state, no. He is not able to visualise anything) we need not use a stronger weapon to combat depression, as the depressed person himself would make a conscious effort to dwarf the depression, thus making our job easier. When this is achieved, we can know that this has been achieved by observing the person. He would not feel sad as his eyes would say. He would behave in a relatively normal way, blinking his eyes frequently, as if to disperse the tears in his eyes, breathe deeply and in summary, try to gather himself up. At this stage, he is ready to independently analyse the situation and understand it properly. Now it is preferable he's left alone so that he can run his thoughts everywhere and finally, but temporarily understand the situation that has caused the depression. Now he himself would feel that he had needlessly felt so depressed because of something that was not worth it. This would finally, but temporarily bring him out of the depression. The last bit that can be done now, to render this change permanent, is that he must be able to divert his mind elsewhere so that the feeling of depression does not recur. (The feeling of depression now recurs again mainly because the human clock works drastically slowed during the depression face and minutes seems like an hour. Thus, even if the person who was depressed for a small period of time, he would feel that he had been depressed for a very long time, close to forever. Thus, the person has a feeling that depression is normal and not the inspiration pumped into him just now. So, the moment he stops thinking of the inspiration and understanding the situation, he should be made to engage himself in something or the other. The moment his mind is free, he starts to visualise this new inspiration as temporary after overcoming which, he should and must return to the depressed phase, which is, according to him permanent, was from forever, will be forever. This turns up solely because of the slow working of the human clock and also because the linked emotion (if remaining) forces the person to become depressed again. So, it is essential that the linked emotion is properly defused before pumping in inspiration. The linked emotion can be compared to a group of cancerous tissue, a malignant cancer, which if left behind, even the part of it can regrow to form the whole emotion again).

His mind should be occupied and nothing said, shown or done should even hint that you remember or even are aware of him being depressed earlier. This would remind him of his depressed phase and create a fertile ground for the regrowth of the cancerous emotion which would drag him back to depression. It is safe not to be careful only when we are sure that the relative time of depression as felt by the person is less, far less than the duration of the inspiration that we have produced.

Furthermore, our main purpose in dwarfing depression is that because the person is not able to view anything beyond depression, we should be able to establish a continuity from his life before depression that is not visible to him and the future, about which you have filled his heart with enthusiasm.

I may even go to the extent of analysing that depression is due to the thought of the future and the linked emotion is due to the thought of the past.

The more mentally mature the person is, the less of others help he needs in solving this problem. Help is always advisable. The ultimate result depends upon the ability of the person to explain to himself the situation. All we can do is rendered his state of mind conducive to do so.

--Depression is an abnormal attitude that ripens into a habit.

--Sumeet Saxena