Chapter 18: "Fulfillment, Peace, Life in all its Fullness."

Sixteen days on Effexor XR, seven of them on the higher dose of 75 mg in the morning.  I decided to not lower Luvox quite so quickly.  I am taking 25 mg in the morning and 37.5 mg in the afternoon.  In three more days I will increase Effexor XR to 112.5 mg and lower Luvox to 25 mg on both doses.  I have had short periods of time where I feel the depression symptoms are lifting.  I am still not feeling side effects or withdrawal, which is a huge positive!

I am still hopeful.  I am trying to take life a day at a time.  Prayer and faith in my Higher Power to give me direction are sustaining me.  Listening to Eckhart Tolle every day helps me stay focused on the Now, not spending much time in the past or making up a possible future.  Chapter 8 in, The Power of Now, A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, Tolle explains what he believes salvation is.  

"True salvation is fulfillment, peace, life in all its fullness.  It is to be who you are, to feel within you the good that has no opposite, the joy of Being that depends on nothing outside itself.  It is felt not as a passing experience but as an abiding presence.  In theistic language, it is to 'know God' --- not as something outside you but as your own innermost essence.  (I believe this is my spirit, which Tolle calls the inner being.  I believe my spirit is a literal offspring of my Higher Power.)  True salvation is to know yourself as an inseparable part of the timeless and formless One Life from which all that exists derives its being.

True salvation is a state of freedom --- from fear, from suffering, from a perceived state of lack and insufficiency and therefore from all wanting, needing, grasping, and clinging.  It is freedom from compulsive thinking, from negativity, and above all from past and future as a psychological need.  Your mind is telling you that you cannot get there from here.  Something needs to happen, or you need to become this or that before you can be free and fulfilled.  It is saying, in fact, that you need time --- that you need to find, sort out, do, achieve, acquire, become, or understand something before you can be free or complete.  

You see time as the means to salvation, whereas in truth it is the greatest obstacle to salvation.  You think that you can't get there from where and who you are at this moment because you are not yet complete or good enough, but the truth is that here and now is the only point from where you can get there.  You 'get' there by realizing that you are there already.  You find God the moment you realize that you don't need to seek God.  So there is no only way to salvation:  Any condition can be used, but no particular condition is needed.  However, there is only one point of access: the Now.  There can be no salvation away from this moment.

There is nothing you can ever do or attain that will get you closer to salvation than it is at this moment.  This may be hard to grasp for a mind accustomed to thinking that everything worthwhile is in the future.  Nor can anything that you ever did or that was done to you in the past prevent you from saying yes to what is and taking your attention deeply into the Now.  You cannot do this in the future.  You do it now or not at all."

Fulfillment, peace, life in all its fullness ... a state of freedom --- from fear, from suffering, from a perceived state of lack and insufficiency, wanting, needing, grasping, and clinging ... freedom from compulsive thinking, from negativity, and above all from past and future as a psychological need.  This is what I want.  I am getting better at Living in the Now everyday.

Chapter 14: Normal Day, The Power of Now

I am longing for a regular, normal day.  I want to feel well; a day where survival is not my main goal. My sister has a quote on the bottom of her emails I like.  It says, "Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are," by Mary Jean Iron.  This is the full quote:  "Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are.  Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart.  Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow.  Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so.  One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return." 

I know in my soul that wanting a regular, normal day is not appreciating the day I am having.  This has been a challenge for me as I have been experiencing withdrawal symptoms from clonazepam, and healing depression.  I am trying to live in the moment, to be present.  I have been listening to the audio book ,The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle.  Daily prayer, and the teachings in this book are sustaining me each day.  If you have read other posts on my blog you know I am a fan of Tolle.

On page 15 of, The Power of Now, A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, Eckhart Tolle says, "The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement:  'I think, therefore I am.'  He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error:  to equate thinking with Being and identity with thinking.  The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness, in an insanely complex world of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind.  Enlightenment is a state of wholeness, of being 'at one' and therefore at peace.  At one with life in its manifested aspect, the world, as well as with your deepest self and life unmanifested --- at one with Being.  Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and of continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking.  What an incredible liberation this is!"

Tolle explains further what he means by living in a state of apparent separateness on page 31.  "Humans have been in the grip of pain for eons, ever since they fell from the state of grace, entered the realm of time and mind, and lost awareness of Being.  At that point, they started to perceive themselves as meaningless fragments in an alien universe, unconnected to the Source and to each other. . .Pain is inevitable as long as you are identified with your mind, which is to say as long as you are unconscious, spiritually speaking."

More about pain on page 33, "The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment.  On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity.  The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind.  The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it.  In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer.  Or you may put it like this:  The more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering --- and free of the egoic mind."

How do we stop creating time?  On page 35 Tolle teaches, "Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.  Make the Now the primary focus of your life.  Whereas before you dwelt in time and paid brief visits to the Now, have your dwelling place in the Now and pay brief visits to past and future when required to deal with the practical aspects of your life situation.  Always say 'yes' to the present moment.  What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is?  What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now?  Surrender to what is.  Say 'yes' to life --- and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you."

I believe living in the Now and helping my "higher self" run my life (not my egoic mind) will help me feel better.  I don't think it will heal the disease of depression.  This disease is too severe for me.  I am trying every day to stop my mind from making up stories of how the future is going to be, and how my day is going to be.  This is very hard for me!  I am making a good effort in exploring every possible way to help me heal, and I am staying on my medication.  I am having a difficult time being patient.