Chapter 42: FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT

I would definitely describe the symptoms of depression as darkness.  To bring the light back in to my body and life has taken all of the following:

Trip to the Amen Clinic in Newport Beach, California:  a higher level of education to diagnose and treat my specific psychiatric disorders.  The SPECT brain scans provided information to help in prescribing medication that had the highest chance of being effective for me.

Chapter 1: Depression, Amen Clinics, Amino Acids
Chapter 2: Back to School, Father Died

Chapter 3: Teaching Position, Major Depression

Chapter 4: No To Suicide, 15 Drug Combinations

Chapter 8: Amen Clinic, Newport Beach, CA

Chapter 9: Three Days At The Amen Clinic

Chapter 10: Detailed Treatment Plan

Chapter 11: My Brain Scans, Outside Surface View

Chapter 12: I Hate Clonazepam, Supplements 

Chapter 13: My Brain Scans, Inside Active View


SPECT Brain Scans:   Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography

Chapter 11: My Brain Scans, Outside Surface View
Chapter 13: My Brain Scans, Inside Active View

Medications 

Generic Luvox:  50 mg morning 75 mg afternoon
Effexor XR:  112.5 mg morning
Generic Neurontin:  300 mg 4 times per day


Effexor XR 

Chapter 15: Clonazepam The Beast, Effexor XR 
Chapter 16: Effexor XR, Live My Life In The Now 
Chapter 19: Effexor XR, Enlightened Relationships 
Chapter 25: Effexor XR, $260.59 or $160.80 Every Month 
Chapter 35: FEELING SOME RELIEF, Antidepressant Medications 


Getting Off The Drug Clonazepam 

Chapter 12: I Hate Clonazepam, Supplements 
Chapter 15: Clonazepam The Beast, Effexor XR 


Supplements

Chapter 10: Detailed Treatment Plan 
Chapter 12: I Hate Clonazepam, Supplements 
Chapter 32: 6,000 mg Of Fish Oil A Day 


Fish Oil, Omega 3 Fatty Acids 6,000 mg Per Day 

Chapter 32: 6,000 mg Of Fish Oil A Day 


Raised My Vitamin D Level from 20 to 45, then to 72  

Chapter 29: Do you know what your Vitamin D level is?


Depression is a Disease  

Chapter 23: Angry At The Disease 
Chapter 24: Effexor XR, Please "Kick In" Soon
Chapter 31: Don't Stop Believing
Chapter 36: Blood Type & Diet, Healing Depression Symptoms 


Exercise & Endorphins

Chapter 10: Detailed Treatment Plan

Chapter 33: Endorphins - Natural Morphine 


Reading the Books, The Power of Now, and A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle.  Changing my thinking and living in the Now.

Chapter 5: A New Earth, Changing The Way I Think 
Chapter 6: Ego, Pain-Body, Live In The Present 
Chapter 14: Normal Day, The Power of Now  
Chapter 16: Effexor XR, Live My Life In The Now  
Chapter 18: "Fulfillment, Peace, Life in all its Fullness." 
Chapter 39: The Constant Chatter In My Mind Is Not Me 
Chapter 40: EGO 
Chapter 41: PAIN-BODY


Enlightened Relationships 

Chapter 19: Effexor XR, Enlightened Relationships  


Reading the Book, The UltraMind Solution, by Mark Hyman, M.D.  This led to food sensitivity testing and diet changes.

Chapter 7: Keys To UltraWellness, Food Sensitivity 
Chapter 12: I Hate Clonazepam, Supplements 
Chapter 21: Healing A "Broken Brain" 


The Link Between Inflammation and Depression 

Chapter 37: Treat INFLAMMATION Ease DEPRESSION?
Chapter 38: Depression and Inflammation ARE Linked 


Mercury Toxicity 

Chapter 26: Is Mercury Toxicity Causing Depression?
Chapter 27: Has the Mercury I Have Been Exposed to Caused Toxicity?

Chapter 28: Heavy Metals Testing Is Extremely Controversial!


Reading the book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, by Daniel Amen, M.D. 

Chapter 22: Serotonin, Deep Limbic System


Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation 

Chapter 34: Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation


Acupuncture 

Chapter 20: Acupuncture, Relaxed Wanderer


Viral Meningitis  & ADHD 

Chapter 17: Effexor XR, ADHD & Viral Meningitis


Blood Type and Diet 

Chapter 36: Blood Type & Diet, Healing Depression Symptoms   

Chapter 41: PAIN-BODY

This is the conversation my ego (E) and pain-body (PB) had this morning with my higher self (HS).  E & PB:  "Why do we have to wash the fry pan you cooked bacon in yesterday?  It's gross, the inch of fat has been sitting over 24 hours, it stinks and it has solidified into big chunks.  We don't even like bacon.  There is a TINY bit of meat on it and the rest is fat.  Fat isn't good for you and we don't think pork is even that good for you.  Why do you even buy it?  We think some one else should wash this pan."  HS:  "I think you are making a bigger deal out of this situation than it is.  Other family members love bacon, and sometimes I do things because people I love would like it.  We don't have it very often, and I did have one piece of bacon with breakfast yesterday.  I could ask someone else to wash the pan, but I would like to get it done now so the smell of bacon doesn't last too much longer.  This is not an important issue in my life."

"The greater part of most people's thinking is involuntary, automatic, and repetitive.  It is no more than a kind of mental static and fulfills no real purpose.  Strictly speaking, you don't think:  Thinking happens to you.  The statement 'I think' implies volition.  It implies that you have a say in the matter, that there is choice involved on your part.  For most people, this is not yet the case.  'I think' is just as false a statement as 'I digest' or 'I circulate my blood.' Digestion happens, circulation happens, thinking happens."  Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, page 129

My heart and soul now understands and believes the information in the above paragraph.  I have to work at it every day, but I am now able to "catch", or observe my ego and pain-body when they have overtaken my thinking.  Sometimes my ego seems to be in control of the conversation, sometimes my pain-body is the culprit, and sometimes they join forces and become really obnoxious.  

When my ego or pain-body are in control they tell me things that are not true, are blown out of proportion, do not agree with my higher self, and many times remind me of what a child might say.  If I do not become Present and let my higher self stop the chatter, the conversation is often repeated over and over.  What they say can cause emotions that are based on a made up story and I begin to feel sad, angry, or depressed.  Making progress in helping my higher self be in charge of my mind and thinking is helping me feel better more of the time.  It is so hard for me and I have to practice every day.  I am not implying that I don't need antidepressant medication.  Changing my thinking helps the medication be more effective.

I think these are important points to know about the pain-body.  Taken from the book, A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle.

1.  p. 135  EMOTIONS AND THE EGO

"The voice in the head tells a story that the body believes in and reacts to.  Those reactions are the emotions.  The emotions, in turn, feed energy back to the thoughts that created the emotion in the first place.   This is the vicious circle between unexamined thoughts and emotions, giving rise to emotional thinking and emotional story-making."

 2.  p. 136  EMOTIONS AND THE EGO

"Almost every human body is under a great deal of strain and stress, not because it is threatened by some external factor but from within the mind.  The body has an ego attached to it, and it cannot but respond to all the dysfunctional thought patterns that make up the ego.  Thus, a stream of negative emotion accompanies the stream of incessant and compulsive thinking."

 3.  p. 140  CARRYING THE PAST

"Because of the human tendency to perpetuate old emotion, almost everyone carries in his or her energy field an accumulation of old emotional pain, which I call "the pain-body." 

 4.  p. 141  CARRYING THE PAST

"We can learn not to keep situations or events alive in our minds, but to return our attention continuously to the pristine, timeless present moment rather than be caught up in mental movie-making.  Our very Presence then becomes our identity, rather than our thoughts and emotions.

Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now; and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?"

 5.  p. 142  INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE

"The remnants of pain left behind by every strong negative emotion that is not fully faced, accepted, and then let go of join together to form an energy field that lives in the very cells of your body.  It consists not just of childhood pain, but also painful emotions that were added to it later in adolescence and during your adult life, much of it created by the voice of the ego.  It is the emotional pain that is your unavoidable companion when a false sense of self is the basis of your life.

This energy field of old but sill very-much-alive emotion that lives in almost every human being is the pain-body."

 6.  p.142-143  INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE

"The pain-body, however, is not just individual in nature.  It also partakes of the pain suffered by countless humans throughout the history of humanity, which is a history of continuous tribal warfare, of enslavement, pillage, rape, torture, and other forms of violence.  This pain still lives in the collective psyche of humanity and is being added to on a daily basis, as you can verify when you watch the news tonight or look at the drama in people's lives."

7.  p. 144-145  HOW THE PAIN-BODY RENEWS ITSELF

"Any emotionally painful experience can be used as food by the pain-body.  That's why it thrives on negative thinking as well as drama in relationships.  The pain-body is an addiction to unhappiness.

In most people, the pain-body has a dormant and an active stage.  When it is dormant, you easily forget that you carry a heavy dark cloud or a dormant volcano inside you, depending on the energy field of your particular pain-body.  How long it remains dormant varies from person to person:  A few weeks is the most common, but it can be a few days or months.  In rare cases the pain-body can lie in hibernation for years before it gets triggered by some event."

 8.  p. 147  HOW THE PAIN-BODY FEEDS ON YOUR THOUGHTS

"Emotion from the pain-body quickly gains control of your thinking, and once your mind has been taken over by the pain-body, your thinking becomes negative.  The voice in your head will be telling sad, anxious, or angry stories about yourself or your life, about other people, about past, future, or imaginary events.  The voice will be blaming, accusing, complaining, imagining.  And you are totally identified with whatever the voice says, believe all its distorted thoughts.  At that point, the addiction to unhappiness has set in."

 9.  p. 148  HOW THE PAIN-BODY FEEDS ON DRAMA

"If there are other people around, preferably your partner or a close family member, the pain-body will attempt to provoke them---bush their buttons, as the expression goes---so it can feed on the ensuing drama.  Pain-bodies love intimate relationships and families because that is where they get most of their food."

10.  p. 149  HOW THE PAIN-BODY FEEDS ON DRAMA

"A deeply unconscious person whose pain-body habitually replenishes itself through physical violence often directs it toward his spouse or children. . . he is truly sorry and may say he will never do this again, and he means it.  The person who is talking and making promises, however, is not the entity that commits the violence, and so you can be sure that it will happen again and again unless he becomes present, recognizes the pain-body within himself, and thus disidentifies from it.  In some cases, counseling can help him do that."

11.  p. 151  DENSE PAIN-BODIES

"Some people carry dense pain-bodies that are never completely dormant.  They may be smiling and making polite conversation, but you do not need to be psychic to sense that seething ball of unhappy emotion in them just underneath the surface, waiting for the next event to react to, the next person to blame or confront, the next thing to be unhappy about.  Their pain-bodies can never get enough, are always hungry.  They magnify the ego's need for enemies."

12.  p. 153  ENTERTAINMENT, THE MEDIA, AND THE PAIN-BODY

"Why do violent films attract such large audiences?  There is an entire industry, a large part of which fuels the human addiction to unhappiness.  People obviously watch those films because they want to feel bad.  What is it in humans that loves to feel bad and calls it good?  The pain-body of course.  A large part of the entertainment industry caters to it.  So, in addition to reactivity, negative thinking, and personal drama, the pain-body also renews itself vicariously through the cinema and television screen.  Pain-bodies write and produce these films, and pain-bodies pay to watch them."

13.  p. 153-154  ENTERTAINMENT, THE MEDIA, AND THE PAIN-BODY

"If films show violence in its wider context, if they show its origin and its consequences, show what it does to the victim as well as the perpetrator, show the collective unconsciousness that lies behind it and is passed on from generation to generation (the anger and hatred that lives in humans as the pain-body), them those films can fulfill a vital function in the the awakening of humanity.

Such films do exist and they do not fuel the pain-body.  Some of the best antiwar films are films that show the reality of war rather than a glamorized version of it.  The pain-body can only feed on films in which violence is portrayed as normal or even desirable human behavior, or that glorify violence with the sole purpose of generating negative emotion in the viewer and so become a 'fix' for the pain-addicted pain-body."

14.  p. 155  THE COLLECTIVE FEMALE PAIN-BODY

"Nobody knows the exact figure because records were not kept, but is seems certain that during a three-hundred-year period between three and five million women were tortured and killed by the "Holy Inquisition," an institution founded by the Roman Catholic Church to suppress heresy. This surely ranks together with the Holocaust as one of the darkest chapters in human history.  It was enough for a woman to show love for animals, walk alone in the fields or woods, or gather medicinal plants to be branded a witch, then tortured and burned at the stake.  The sacred feminine was declared demonic, and an entire dimension largely disappeared from human experience."

15.  p. 156  THE COLLECTIVE FEMALE PAIN-BODY

"What is it that suddenly made men feel threatened by the female?  The evolving ego in them.  It knew it could gain full control of our planet only through the male form, and to do so, it had to render the female powerless.

In time, the ego also took over most women, although it could never become as deeply entrenched in them as in men."

16.  p. 157  NATIONAL AND RACIAL PAIN-BODIES

"Certain countries in which many acts of collective violence were suffered or perpetrated have a heavier collective pain-body than others.  This is why older nations tend to have stronger pain-bodies.  It is also why younger countries, such as Canada or Australia, and those that have remained more sheltered from the surrounding madness, such as Switzerland, tend to have lighter collective pain-bodies.  Of course, in those countries, people still have their personal pain-body to deal with."

17.  p. 158-159  NATIONAL AND RACIAL PAIN-BODIES

"Spiritual practices that involve the physical body, such as t'ai chi, qigong, and yoga, are also increasingly being embraced in the Western world.  These practices do not create a separation between body and spirit and are helpful in weakening the pain-body.  They will play an important role in the global awakening."

18.  p. 159-160  NATIONAL AND RACIAL PAIN-BODIES

"It doesn't really matter what proportion of your pain-body belongs to your nation or race and what proportion is personal.  In either case, you can only go beyond it by taking responsibility for your inner state now.  Even if blame seems more than justified, as long as you blame others, you keep feeding the pain-body with your thoughts and remain trapped in your ego.  There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet:  human unconsciousness.  That realization is true forgiveness.  With forgiveness, your victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges---the power of Presence.  Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light."