Hi Irene
Think of it this way:
What is depression ?
You
feel depressed. What is the cause of these feelings ?
Usually things like a negative self-image, constant recurring thoughts, stories made up by the mind that can only be temporary. The mind is extremely unstabile. There is a constant fear of the mind that you will see the truth about thought, so it advertises it's own "truth" constantly, and quite loudly.
When you believe the advertisements as truth, the negative thoughts that are meant to feed and strengthen the mind's position, the body will react to it.
A nice way to illustrate the unstabile nature of the mind are stories like this one:
You have been having a bad day. When walking to the bathroom you hit your toe. When squeezing the tube the toothpaste came out the back end of the tube, on that nice shirt you were planning to wear to work today.
The car wouldn't start right away, so you had to hurry to work, and almost hit another car.
By now, the mind will have made a story. "This day is a complete disaster", "I should have stayed in bed".
When you arrived at work, your boss calls you to his office. You arrived 5 minutes late, so in your mind there is allready a big fight raging about you "being only 5 minutes late, and what is the big problem anyway, I always work late, what kind of a boss are you anyway".
You come in, and the boss smiles at you.
"Irene, I have decided that your work here is so wonderfull, that you will get a raise."
Wow, suddenly this day can't possibly go wrong anymore.
You walk around on top of the world, the mind feeds you with memories of the talk with your boss, your colleagues seem extra friendly today, everything is wonderfull !!
and then you spill your entire cup of coffee on your dress.
The stories behind the events keep going and going. The events in itself mean relatively little. So, you hit your toe. The pain passes after a few seconds, and after that, it is history. If you were to focus on the Now only, after the pain has subsided, the event of hitting your toe doesn't exist anymore. Right after hitting your toe even, the moment of hitting your toe is gone, and all there is is pain in your toe, the actual
hitting it is allready a story fed into your mind "I have pain in my toe because I hit it". But the hitting has allready passed.
Without the story, small events like the toothpaste incident in the physical world mean only 2 things: You need a new tube of toothpaste and you need to wash your shirt.
The feelings behind it, anger, annoyance, come up and that is fine. They come up and there is nothing you can do about that. They pass after just a few seconds, like all feelings do. Unless you remember them, linger on them, confirm the story in your mind to be true.
Now it is quite easy to see the lies in the negative events.
But how about the promotion ?
The stories that your mind makes up about how wonderfull your life is, are they true ? Do you feel happiness ? Or joy ? What is left of these feelings when you spill your coffee on your dress ?
THE THOUGHTS HAPPEN AFTERWORDS ! So they can only be lies, as the event they react to has allready passed.
When you take a sip from your coffee and it is too cold, you, your Being will register this right away. The fact is inescapable.
Only
after your Being registered it, will mind tell you "This coffee is too cold".
Well DUH !
Tell me something I don't know !
Being knows. It experiences, constantly. Knowing without having to think about it.
When mind stops making stories, the negative
and positive feelings caused by it will stop.
Sounds scary huh ? Your mind will now probably think "But does that mean that the world will become tasteless, no good, no bad ? Isn't that boring, won't we become emotionless, indifferent to what happens ?"
This is because mind tries to make a concept out of something that can never be understood with the mind.
I can only try to tell you what it is like, but it can only be experienced. You feel Love, Unity, like coming Home and staying there. The shallow emotions still pop up, joy, anger, annoyance.. They only stay for a few seconds, and then they are gone. You are able to be completely calm only 2 minutes after having felt complete rage about a situation. Because that rage is in the past. The Now is constantly changing.
Freedom from stories completely changes your world ! You welcome both the positive and the negative as part of You, because you know that You experience it. Everything you see, hear, smell, feel, think, is caused by You.
Without You, there is no experience.
This freedom is usually named "enlightenment". The ego, the storyteller is gone. Everything you do in the physical world happens by itself, as it does right now allready, the storyteller just claims copyright to actions that happen by itself:
"I made a wonderfull poem today".
Did you really ? How ?
"Well I sat down, and waited for the words to come up."
Hm, doesn't sound like something you did.
"But I reasoned about the words"
With who ? And when you were unsatisfied with a word or sentence, what did you do to change it ?
"Well, I thought "that isn't right" and waited for a better sentence to come up".
Hm, I don't see why your ego is so proud of itself, it did absolutely nothing to create that poem.
Another good example for male readers:
" I am an excellent driver ".
If you don't understand the meaning of this one, we can do a similar discussion
When ego is gone, depression is gone as well. Depression is caused by stories.
"But what about the chemical unbalance that the psychotherapist talks about, he sais I need anti-depressants ?"
Only in rare cases is the body directly responsible for depression.
Usually the chemical unbalance is created by negative thought and stories, that affect the body by making glands work less effective.
Not just those that produce hormones, but also for example the glands that produce the protective layer inside your stomach, so that the agressive stomach fluids reach your actual stomach's skin and create an ulcer.
I am not saying that nobody needs anti-depressants. They can be effective in bringing the vicious circle to a halt. But they aren't a cure for depression, they are a cure for the physical reaction to thought. They don't cure the cause, they cure the reaction. But especially people who are totally unaware of what ego is, who firmly believe the stories told by thought about themselves, those people need to get more positive, that is, make a less negative self-image, and anti-depressants can be of huge help to create that.
But, that person is still troubled by the ego, it just is a slightly more positive ego.
A very long answer, but the conclusion is: Yes, with enlightenment, depression will disappear alongside with the ego.
