On a cold, clammy, day I was in the yard with my dogs, throwing their ball, enjoying the cool damp air, the thin rain, the dark rolling clouds. I was in that state of mind. In another state of mind, in the same weather, I could feel miserable, the weather embodying my mood. I can't demand a positive state of mind, but I can step back, inwardly, from the sullen, angry state I am in, look objectively at that state and cease to identify with it. And suddenly the weather feels fine. #spirituality
@JohnShirley2023 I've always felt energized and even downright exultant by exactly the sort of weather that you describe. Might be some influence from early childhood, might just be the way I'm wired, but it really goes to show there's nothing objectively real about the way it dampens some people's feelings.
@JohnShirley2023 Yes. I've always understood in an abstract, intellectual sort of way that you don't have to feel any way you don't want to. But I think for many of us it takes a long process of growth to get to a point where you can actually reify that understanding. (Corollary: another case of "youth being wasted on the young".)
I've known a few people to whom that faculty is relatively innate and I'm very jealous.
@pieist I don't mean to say that one can escape from, say, clinical depression that way. If it's clinical, it's clinical. It's very hard on people. But there is a process which--yes!--requires a period of learning, which makes it possible to non-identify with a given state; a state of anger, or pointless sadness or self loathing or anger...But it requires training.
@JohnShirley2023 Yes. People who insist to the clinically depressed that they can just shake it off are doing far more harm then good. If anything that's just going to increase their self-judgement.
I was clinically depressed from (best guess) 10 or 11 years old until my mid-30s. But finally coming up with a constructive, realistic plan and following it yielded really excellent incremental results -- I got appreciably better in the space of weeks and was substantially depression free for long stretches within about 8-10 months, and so forth.
Maintenance is much easier than getting there...
@pieist The process I describe does help with any state *if* one can be determined enough to relocate to it and remain there but really difficult states, clinical depression or profound grief, are so all encompassing it's difficult for people to find the inner space to move the base-point of attention to objectivity of one's state. If it's accomplished, it isn't a state of disassociation, it allows all feelings, but it changes one's relationship to those feelings.
@JohnShirley2023 Acceptance can be almost magic. I remember the first time I hit on it. I was trying to sleep and hideous thoughts were tormenting me, but instead of wrestling with or wallowing in them I tried instead, "yep. Absolutely. I'm sure that's all very true. And I'll worry about it tomorrow." And the effect was gorgeous. Peace. And sleep. Took me about three nights to learn to sleep like a baby for the first time in forever.
@pieist Yes that's a thing too...But...i've failed to be clear it seems. the point is that my state, people call it a mood, determined my feelings about the outdoors that day. We're much more identified, lost in our states, than we know. On one day I happened to be in a good mood; on another a bad one. Same weather, different feelings about it. I find that I can undergo a process of inner objectivity that makes it possible for me to step out of one state, letting a freer one arise.