What is depression ultimately?

This is a longer post. But whoever is interested to delve into this huge
subject matter – Depression – will find this highly enlightening.

Truthseeker247:
I think for me, depression is largely a misunderstanding. Misunderstanding of my position in the world at large, so to speak. For me, my depression, at least at its root causes has been a fundamental misunderstanding about the universe in which I thought for some reason I was somehow supposed to know, with 100% absolute certainty, what I was to do in the world. I asked myself terribly difficult questions, big questions, that I expected myself to be able to answer – questions like “Why am I here?” This was all at very young age, or at least started when I was quite young. But I took them quite seriously, I was expecting and expected to know the unknowable. That is, quite frankly, the cause of my depression – at least that is how I have come to understand it.

The non-life you speak of is a result of this gross misunderstanding about the nature of life (I am not sure if these are the most accurate words). As in, I experience non-aliveness because of my misunderstanding or misinterpretation of what is knowable as a fact versus what I must just live out, experience or take action in order to sort of “find out.” I am not sure if this is making sense nor am I sure if I am expressing exactly what I want to say so I will leave you with that for now.

Me:
I “hear” your words here, but also try to reach “beyond” them too…trying to figure out what you say without (mis)interpreting you.

Indeed – this is a very different outlook: depression is for you some kind of ontological misuderstanding…interesting – I have to admit.

Let´s analyze what you say here and see what you really are saying:”For me, my depression, at least at its root causes has been a fundamental misunderstanding about the universe in which I thought for some reason I was somehow supposed to know, with 100% absolute certainty, what I was to do in the world. I asked myself terribly difficult questions, big questions, that I expected myself to be able to answer – questions like “Why am I here?”…

What strikes me here is that according to your surmise, Depression derives from your “inability” to “know”. That being said, the natural question is:

• What is “knowing” or knowledge ultimately?

• Can we split reality into Knowing and Un-knowing?

• Who knows and who knows not?…

That being said, can one know anything with 100% absolute certainty??….Especially when this “knowing” refers to “doing” something?…

• Who is this entity within you who wants to know, and expects you “to know”…?

• What do you want to know? And above all, WHY?….

Follow me on this please:

Can you see that Knowing or Knowledge means separation? That is, the Distance between “the Knower” and “the Known”.

If there was no gap between What is – You – and what it is supposed to be – Knowledge – would you need “to know” anything?…No…because if you were “whole”, you would know because you simply know, not because you expect or try to know…

What I hear subsequently, is that you have been attempting to understand what Cleavage – or Separation, or for that matter, Isolation – is about.

When you love and feel loved, you just simply know the Why-s of existence.

Meaning that when you say “Why am I here” is in fact, “Why am I not here” or
“Why am I not to love and to be loved??”… With other words, since early age, you saw instinctively the state of the present world, namely, that you were here, but not allowed to be What You Really Are: WHOLE.

No one has shown you anything but Separation from yourself, yet no one could tell you about this, as they are all separated, everybody suffers from this disease…

So again, you were trying to reach “the un-knowable”, that is, to find out WHAT HUMANS REFUSE TO SEE, NAMELY – SEPARATION!

What is knowable as a fact and what you just must live out, seem to be different things but this is pure delusion. What is knowable – or what should be knowable and what must be lived out, IS IN FACT THE SAME THING, but we don´t recognize it as such.

There is no action required from you “to know” or find out, as YOU KNOW WHAT LIFE IS ABOUT, because you are alive.

So BE ALIVE…!! That is, STOP SEEING LIFE AS DISTANCE!

You are what you are, there is no distance to What is and You, – just embrace and accept the pain you see in yourself and in the world, knowing that you are here to heal this pain!!

https://julienmatei.com/2013/02/19/depression-is-ultimately-absence-of-life/