Opium of the masses - Am I weak?

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My own meditation techniques sometimes do not work. It is really my fault, since sometimes I get too lazy to even fight away the mass amounts of depression that seem to come from nowhere. Even when I do try meditation, my lack of focus makes for lack of success.

Right after Thanksgiving, I fell into a deeper level of misery than before. One reason I have not been regularly posting in these boards is because I don't want all my posts to come across as suicidal or worse: hurtful to the other posters.

The last few days I have been fighting the urge to become religious again, like I have many times before. This is probably the longest period that I have remained a secular being while depressed. In a strange way I am proud of myself for this. But also ashamed that I seek God again. Ashamed that I must again go through the mental excercises in order to believe in an omnipotent/omniscient/benevolent deity who wants to help me.

Am I unbelievably weak? What are your thoughts? I don't really want to be religious. But I see no other remedy at this point.

You're not weak, your just human.

Religion is a very powerful thing and is intertwined in just about every aspect of our daily life. The idea that there is an unknown entity out there who sees all, controls all, and knows all is a very powerful notion to many people who devote their entire lives to pleasing this entity so that they may be blessed in the after life.

Being someone who was never exposed to church, I find the whole religion thing to be meaningless outside of the moral message the more rational side of relgion tries to send so I would think you and I might be on the same page on this.

Maybe the more religious amongst us here could answer this, but I'm sure you could find someway of giving your "one hour a week" with out going through all the fluff that you find at your average church.

I'm both strong and weak, which makes me human and you are, too.

I've been going a bit back and forth myself. I believe in God now, but I am not going to advertise him to non believers(thought i'd add that to keep your shoulders low ).

Judging by your post it seems to me that you sought comfort in religion when feeling down or used it as an excuse(perhaps self guilt? i don't know).
Whatever the reason is, you should find a substitute that won't upset you like religion does.
It would be easier to help you if you pointed out more specifically what the problem is.

I've been suicidal over Thanksgiving and am having some very similar problems. I'm not a religious person, I'm totally opposed to judeo-christian traditions that steal the rites of others, but I am fond of Christ himself, the real one, who has been almost totally veiled by the current bibles. Anyway, the oddest thing but, swear to God, God (or something like that) told me that I had AS. I'm not paying God back for it, either--going to church all of a sudden, telling everyone that Jesus loves them--because God took WAY too f*****g long to help me with this.

Even though God is omnipotent, omniscient, and whatever else, that doesn't mean that he/she/it is going to take away a single one of your pains. Please, learn this lesson now and avoid the heartache, which is unbearable. God will not get me the girl I want; God will not do my taxes or stop my legs from hurting; God has done all that God will do--make it possible. God is why it is possible--everything. And that's it. You must rely on yourself or you'll stay depressed, forever.

God made a perfect world and then he made imperfect humans, and he said, with inviolable will, "Adapt!" As Nietzsche says, man is an overcoming. Overcome. The "holy men" of time have always said "fear god" and "I fear God," because all this world is the body of God, and it will consume you, again and again. God is terrible. God is not just a kindly father or an all-giving mother. God will eat you alive and digest you in his thousand stomachs. People haven't said "fear God" to make people do right--God cares little whether you've "sinned" or not. You adapt. And if following some path of mental discipline helps, then do it. But don't do it out of some mis-guided sense that God will give you favors. If you do these things, do them for yourself so you can master yourself. God can be your pillar, sure, but God is not your friend--it's much bigger than that.

I've spent all my life chasing God, and I have found some strange things, and some truth. The biggest truth is this saying from a Sufi master,

"For yea, he is closer to you than your jugular vein."

God itself is in every person's blood. Do you understand this?

so you are considering religion---what religion?

Exactly. My initial view is that all the dogma, set rituals, and obscure traditions (that might very well all be of mythical origins,) are meaningless.

When I stop and try to find meaning, I can get pretty far, but it takes effort. In an ironic way, earthly life as a whole is identical to the structure of most the Christian religion: there seems to be no actual meaning or value on the outside... just random ideals thrown together. And even when we dig deep and look for purpose/meaning, it is hard to tell if we are seeing genuine truth, tainted truth, or a complete falsehood!

Regardless of all that though, I also think religion is indeed powerful. Whether for good or evil, or maybe a bit of both.



Yep! I reckon so.



There mostly likely are guilt issues mixed in with all of this. Though I am not sure at the moment where it would be coming from.

I mean, it's a whole bag of stuff that contributes to unhappiness in my case.

Many people on this forum have the same sources, no doubt:

(keep in mind, this is not a comprehensive list)

* Filling out applications for multiple job positions gets very tiring, and here's hoping someone will pick up one of the dozens I filled out and consider me for employment. That waiting period, when I'm unemployed and only working by washing dishes for my mother, is... well, I don't know a word for it. Belittling?

* All my original friends that I did manage to make, are officially gone now. I did find friendship in my brother, but rarely do I get to see him. Even when we get to speak on the phone, he usually wants to ramble on about some high-tech video game he played. While I do have a very mild interest in his games, it is far from keeping my attention for too long.

* Struggling to get that GED. Passing that mathematics part is going to be a nightmare, since I'm extremely rusty on algebraic formulas and the such.

* Could be in my genes. Brain chemicals might be malfunctioning, and it'll be forever until I even have a chance of getting medications. There's an eternity of appointment scheduling with the psychiatrist, there's the fact my mom is terrible at remembering to take me anywhere, there's the fact I'm not always able to remind her... etc. etc. etc. That is not even counting in the other waiting period after the psychiatrist prescribes the medication if he/she decides to. (Then again I am very wary of meds. I'll take them if it gets bad enough, but there is no way of convincing me the side-effects aren't sometimes scary.)



It does make sense. If someone were to choose a theistic viewpoint, that would be the one most people would stray from. In that sense, God is all-powerful, but does not pin himself to the human mindset. Every individual human has a predominate mental disposition... someone might be friendly, while another person is anti-social, while another person will fall somewhere in between. While I do believe the harsh God you describe is more realistic than the God many religions/belief-systems peddle around, it still is just that: harsh. Very harsh.

That's a deity that encompasses all emotions and viewpoints but sticks to none of them specifically. For instance, when we believe God is our trusting ally, he is truly helping our enemies grow stronger and stronger. When we are victorious in one battle, we will eventually fail miserably in another one, because the deity we thought was our friend managed to not step in and help... so we consider him an enemy. And after thinking for so long that God is/was our enemy, we finally realize that God never actually did choose sides. He just sets up the pieces on the board and lets them haul-ass at one another.

Reality is paramount and equivalent to the greatest of mental defeats. What we suppose we understand, turns out to be something very different at a later time. That will never end, because everything is layered with deception. (e.i. Humans portraying God as a kind friend, ruler, judge, when he's not really limited to any of these titles) There's no comfort in this, though. God, reality, and life, are utter confusion.

I personally can't comprehend it all. I guess that God can be people's pillar. But some of us do need to believe him to be a friend... or at least pretend he is. Very complicated choice: chaotic reality, or sweetened reality? The former being the truest of the two, it seems I'll only be able to find comfort in the latter, which is at its core a fabrication. Comfort obviously needs selective ignorance.



Christianity in general. My eyes are turned toward protestant branches, to be more accurate.

sweetened reality is man in an honest relation to God, taking reality as it is, but only as it is AFTER one has fallen from personal grace and then readjusted one's views. chaotic reality is man in a divided or deluded state with God/true nature. they are relative and not absolute, except in the sense of being "absolutely relative." and so once more, God IS our blood.

THere's nothing wrong with drawing strength from religion, as long as it does not make you disregard common sense.