An aspect of the emotional pain that is an intrinsic part of the egoic mind is a deep-seated sense of lack or incompleteness, of not being whole. In some people, this is conscious, in others unconscious. If it is conscious, it manifests as the unsettling and constant feeling of not being worthy or good enough. If it is unconscious, it will only be felt indirectly as an intense craving, wanting and needing. In either case, people will often enter into a compulsive pursuit of ego-gratification and things to identify with in order to fill this hole they feel within. So they strive after possessions, money, success, power, recognition, or a special relationship, basically so that they can feel better about themselves, feel more complete. But even when they attain all these things, they soon find that the hole is still there, that it is bottomless. Then they are really in trouble, because they cannot delude themselves anymore. Well, they can and do, but it gets more difficult.

As long as the egoic mind is running your life, you cannot truly be at ease; you cannot be at peace or fulfilled except for brief intervals when you obtained what you wanted, when a craving has just been fulfilled. Since the ego is a derived sense of self, it needs to identify with external things. It needs to be both defended and fed constantly. The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. None of these is you.

Do you find this frightening? Or is it a relief to know this? All of these things you will have to relinquish sooner or later. Perhaps you find it as yet hard to believe, and I am certainly not asking you to beleive that your identify cannot be found in any of those things. You will know the truth of it for yourself. You will know it at the latest when you feel death approaching. Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to “die before you die” – and find that there is no death. Eckhart Tolle

I’ve been struggling with sleep issues for years. I have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep.  Sometimes my husband would tell me to clear my mind to fall asleep.  I would ask how do you clear your mind?  Where is the off button for your mind?  He wouldn’t be able to answer.

So I got on prescription sleep pills which treat the condition but just like the authors in the book No More Sleepless Nights say: even after decades of sleeping center clinical experience, there is simply no magic sleeping pill that will work long term.  I was on Lunesta for over a year and one day it just quit working.  Then I tried Ambien.  That pill associated with many other stresses made my depression and anxiety so bad that I was hospitalized twice in December 2012 and January 2013.

Ultimately depression is what I have to admit that I have and yet it’s an incredibly mysterious illness.  First, it’s extremely hard to understand it if you don’t have it.   If you do have it, you probably are or were in great battles against it.

The regular hospitalization did not help me.  What helped was the partial hospitalization (group therapy) program.  It gave me a support network.  I met other great people who struggle with depression and I keep in touch with them so we can check on each other.  I started buying into various CBT concepts such as vicious cycle, challenging automatic thoughts, opposite action etc.

Then I started reading the book the chemistry of calm and recently was given the book the power of now.

I made the connection earlier on how everything connect back to mindfulness.

From the book the power of now:

The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly.  Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.  To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly — you usually don’t use it at all.  It uses you.  This is the disease.  You believe that you are your mind.  This is the delusion.  The instrument has taken your over.

I don’t quite agree.  It is true that I do a lot of aimless thinking, like most people, but I can still choose to use my mind to get and accomplish things, and I do that all the time.

Just because you can solve a crossword puzzle or build an atom bomb doesn’t mean that you use your mind.  Just as dogs love to chew bones, the mind loves to get its teeth into problems.  That’s why it does crossword puzzles and builds atom bombs.  You have no interest in either.  Let me ask you this: can you be free of your mind whenever you want to?  Have you found the “off” button?

This sounds like a simple concept but it remains just a concept if I don’t actually try to practice mindfulness.  There are tons of guided meditation videos on youtube, the one I’m practicing is by concentrating on my breath.  This is often taught in the yoga classes I attend.  Concentrate and imagine when you inhale, your breath the energy source is dispersed all over your body.  When you exhale, feel the breath leaving your body and your lungs empty.   I recently found it very easy to practice this technique when I’m swimming.  You generally breath in and out when you swim.  When I exhale, I feel bubbles touching my face and I focus on the bubbles.  After I focus on the breathing for a while, I will be more in touch with my observing mind.

Then when a thought arises, I can identify it.  ”Oh that’s a thought” I’d say to myself and then return my focus back to my breathing.  I do this repeatedly when I swim laps.  Pretty soon I’d forget about my swimming all together, I become very relaxed even when I still move my arms and legs going through the motion of swimming.

I think from a few practices, I am able to identify thoughts.  When I try this in my daily life, it’s harder but I find myself stop and get connected with the observing mind more often.

The next baby step for me in my mindfulness practice will be learning to be non-judgmental and non-attaching toward any thought.

My ultimate goal is to find my “off” button for my mind so I can sleep without much struggle.  I’m not sure if I will ever reach the goal but without practicing, I will never get there.

Practice makes perfect. Learning to concentrate on ones breath is not too dissimilar to going to the gym to exercise your muscles. You don’t get ripped in one day or even a week of exercising. Instead you are exercising the “muscle” of your very essence. Consciousness. Keep practicing paying attention to your breath, COMPLETELY, 100%, and you WILL improve.

But you have to want it, and you have to keep practicing.

Practice makes perfect.

I can’t ask for a better time and better support to seriously focus on my depression.

In my initial progress, I’m able to so far work on the followings:

• Swim for at least an hour Monday,  Wednesday and Friday
• Go to yoga classes on Tuesday and Thursday
• Volunteer at my friend’s elementary school for two hours on Thursday
• Every day work on a healthy and tasty dinner for my husband and I
• Every day spend some time practicing mindfulness (I find it easy to focus on my breath when I swim. I’ve also started to practice mindfulness when I try to sleep but so far I’m still battling.)
• Every day take all of my supplements.
• Every day spend some time relaxing.  But try not to be addicted to watching Chinese soap opera.
• Every day accept the amount and quality of sleep I get and not get pissed off about my sleep.
• Every day spend time reading the self help books I’m reading and think about self actualization and how to get in touch with my consciousness/Being/self.
• Stay in touch with my support system (friends I met in the hospital who also fight depression)
• Tell all recruiters I won’t be available for work until after May.

I’m sharing some key points from the book The Chemistry of Calm: A Powerful, Drug-Free Plan to Quiet Your Fears and Overcome Your Anxiety

Balance Your Brain Chemistry

• Eating better will always improve your health, including the health of the brain. It is inexpensive and risk-free.
• Your own health can only be as good as the health of your food sources, and that includes the entire food chain.
• The best source of healthy nutrients is a varied diet of whole foods that are mostly vegetables, grains, and fruits, with limited amounts of animal protein.
• It is through diet and nutrition that we have the best chance to affect gene expression. It is possible to turn off illness genes by changing the way we eat.
• In order to work properly, the brain must have the right balance of chemicals called neurotransmitters. The only way it can produce them is for you to bring the necessary nutrients into your body.
• Nutritional supplements are not intended to replace whole foods. They are supplements to a healthy overall diet.
• When used properly, nutritional supplements and herbal therapies may help restore brain balance, soften the damaging effects of the stress response, and prevent the recurrence of illness.

Manage Your Energy

• Mental energy, like physical energy, can become depleted by the chronic stress response.  To restore it, we must first address some consequences of long-term stress that can impair energy production.
• There are a few key nutrients that often become deficient with age, illness, or chronic stress.  Replenishing them may quickly restore energy and the ability of make more of it.
• The economics of energy are like good investing: spend it wisely and you will get even more of it.  Your best investment is regular exercise, which not only protects the cells but also makes them better energy producers.

Align with Nature

• Nature is built upon rhythms and cycles: day followed by night, activity followed by rest, tension followed by relaxation.
• It is completely natural, and within your reach, to recover from stress every day.
• Sometimes doing nothing is the most restorative you can take.
• Quality sleep is a powerfully protective cornerstone of resilience.

Quiet the Mind

• While there are external sources of pain and stress in our lives, it is our own mind that creates worry, anxiety, and much of our unnecessary suffering.
• We give power to that which we give attention, and anxious thoughts have too much influence.  Without questioning them, we believe our thoughts to be true.
• Mindfulness practice provides an antidote to the unsettled mind.  It helps us to refine skills we already possess but which may be hidden: a steady mind, focused attention, the ability to explore and reflect on our experiences without judging them — or ourselves — too harshly.

Turn Toward the Feeling

• Emotions are thoughts residing in the body.  They cause distress only when they become stagnant or overwhelmingly strong.
• Emotions are meant to flow through the body like a stream or rise and fall like a wave.  Paying attention to their physical sensations allows them to flow more freely.
• If we are caught unaware by a strong negative feeling, it can quickly engage our personal “story” and increase the momentum of the emotion.
• Greater awareness allows for new response to unpleasant emotions that can break the habitual patterns of emotional reactivity.

Cultivate a Good Heart

• Emotional suffering is kept alive by the false belief that we are somehow flawed or inadequate.
• Genuine self-acceptance creates an inner sense of safety and sufficiency, the conditions for lasting resilience.
• Holding compassion for others is transformative, as it replaces an unhealthy focus on the self.
• Expressing kindness is healing both to the one who gives and the one who receives.

Create Deep Connections

• Resilience requires a genuine sense of belonging and engagement.
• When we are present, we can access deep calm at any moment, even difficult ones.
• If we listen to our inner voice, it will guide us toward the connection we seek.

A great book that I’ve been taking my time digesting.  I’ve started regular exercise and paying more attention to my diet.  I’ve started taking some of the supplements suggested.   I’ve already started seeing results as I have become happier and getting fewer and fewer anxiety attacks.