I hope this helps someone who suffers from anxiety, panic, or depression

I think I may have stumbled on an idea of the function of panic and anxiety is first introduced to our brain functions, and the reason behind why I think depression is a by product of these circumstances. It struck me as I woke up this morning in my haziness of waking slumber. I spent the last 2 hours trying to put it into words.

Let me start by being clear, I’m no medical expert. This hypothesis is solely based on observations of personal experiences for nearly 2 decades. Nothing that what I’m proposing here is based on any medical study or expertise, just shooting from the hip here. Here goes…

I think panic and anxiety are anatomical responses to the advent of the notion of social usefulness and the never ending, constantly growing need to prove personal usefulness to self and others around. Depression is the neurological attempt at assimilation and adaptation to these constant stresses in response.

My idea is that as an animal, humans weren’t developed to live life in high stress situations. Anxiety building to panic is a primitive survival function. When we were living in the wild, we remember sounds that belonged to things that may cause us bodily harm. (roars, thunder, fast flowing water, etc) This caused us to fight of flee, the 2 primary responses to a threat. Once that threat was neutralized or gotten away from, the anxiety would subside and life could go on naturally, only needing to obtain food and shelter. We also instinctually seek other interactions, like procreative instincts and desire, but those usually come secondary to basic survival needs. Dread is the mental response to not being able to fight that threat OR flee from it. Depression happens when we don’t know what the threat is and uncertainty of our ability to escape it. Essentially, we are just experiencing and influencing our environment. Our USE was simply to survive as long as possible.

We have to first identify the traits of the human as an animal. What is the basic, primary functions of a human animal IN THE WILD? We have a relative 1/3rd of our lifetime already set in rhythm for sleep, that functions as an energy recharge and the time your body repairs itself and grows the most. The rest of the day was spent primarily seeking survival mechanisms: Food, shelter, something to cover our fragile skin to protect it from the elements. That could be several things, from mud, animal hides, primitive weaved fabrics from leaves, etc. The daily activities and functions needed for human survival were relatively basic and minimal. And most of the advancements in technology (minus military/warfare), has been to better provide for ourselves the basic things necessary up until we had relatively mechanized survival.

This happened at about the industrial revolution in the late 1800’s. At this point, industrial manufacturing of our survival tools began to grow and quickly, most of our needs began being met by industry (grocery stores, shops for clothes, home building subdivisions, gas and electric companies, hospitals, etc.) Industry gave way to the military industrial complex, and global military became the biggest industry on the planet. This is in part what facilitated WW1 and all wars since then, and those wars gave people something to feel USEFUL about. Useful to their communities, useful to their countries, useful to their friends and peers they were fighting alongside. This was a manipulation of preconceived notions of nationalism as a method of social influence. This is still a mechanism that is pushed today.

Fast forward to the 1950’s (just after WW2), and in the United States the outlook was one of a new Golden Age. Everything was possible and outlooks were positive. Many still refer to this stereotype as ‘the good ole days’. This gave rise to an economic boom of people wanting to obtain the possessions that provided a solid, secure life. A home, a car, financial abundance, all the things we consider today to be key markers in what delegates a person’s basic achievements in life was the primary social pursuit. Take care of yourself, clothe yourself, feed yourself, etc. Most of us would all agree that this should be a relative standard amongst the general population, although that isn’t always the case.

This massive influx of this demand for these possessions, along with new growth in population (Baby Boomer generation) led to increasing demand for industrial manufactured goods. Since these goods had manufacturer’s suggested retail value, this also leads to a higher overhead needed per household. Higher over head demands a higher wage. Higher wage is proposed to be obtained by a higher skill set. So, this opened up opportunity to industrial education. This available education then lead to an increasing standard in what is expected of the general person in oder to signify to themselves and the people around them that they are, indeed, successful enough to take care of their basic needs.

This outlook has lead to the global measure of success primarily being determined by bankroll, education level, and professional status. All of which are determined to a certain degree by the amount of effort you out into achieving financial and educational milestones, as well as your proficiency in achieving them. But one cannot argue the a lot of it is also based on chance occurrences. For example, certain opportunity is obtained by simply meeting and interacting with people. Often people gain access to career opportunity simply by knowing someone they were friends with in college, or some other social interaction. These friendships are often treated as if they have more value than others. If you achieve these goals in the top percentages of proficiency and happen to know just the right people, you are deemed the most useful, therefore the most in demand in your particular expertise. This goal is to obtain the best chance at obtaining the most wage to work hour ratio. To produce as much assets as possible to sustain the personal survival needs of you and any group you choose to provide for (family, etc)

This finally creates an atmosphere in which you must toil to create the most demand for yourself, your skills, and whatever else you can offer that is USEFUL to someone else that determines whether you become one of 2 things: a social asset OR a social liability. This constant atmosphere leads to an unusual set of conditions which lead from anxiety to panic to depression and ultimately to dread/hopelessness.

My goal of writing this all down and sharing it is to hopefully give myself and other a better hypothetical outlook on understanding the nature of these emotional and mental states so that I can better cope with them in the moment of experience. Hopefully, this can alleviate some of the “What’s wrong with me, and will I always be like this?” feeling when these episodes occur by my remembering that this is just a neurochemical response to an unnatural situation that I am coping with, applying scientific observation to instinctive traits. That will enable me to have a better chance at my basic human function, survival.

Be gentle to yourself. For better or worse, we live in a mechanized civilization and certain achievements are needed in order to live in a modern social environment. But try to remember, survival is your only REAL required use. Everything else is just what you choose to do. Whether or not you offer something to the world today should not be your ONLY measure of self worth. The fact that we are embodied and aware in an organic vehicle and not only able to interact with but influence our environment AND each other is in itself one of the most astounding and undeniably incredible aspect of being a living, human being. Just that alone is pretty amazing.

Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by what the world is telling you that you SHOULD be doing. Do what you think you should be doing. Do what you want to be doing. Be in your experience. Be in your body, in your life. Joy and pain are part of what indicates that we are alive, and that in itself can be beautiful. I’m doing my best everyday to not let any of the monsters or shadows in the world ruin my subjective experience as awareness embodied. Because I’ll only be me once. And I want to enjoy this ride as much as I can. I want to love, I want to create, I want to laugh. That’s more important than my survival functions. That’s my instinct, and applying instinct to intention is an approach that could make us remarkable.

Be you, be free, and remember, you are useful. You need you to experience this awareness. That’s primary. What you do with that experience is who you ultimately become. And remembering that, my friends, just might be enough to help me get through a tough day. Express your awe, lift an eye to the cosmos, and be in the universe together. We can survive this, too. That’s what our species does… Survives.

This is for you...

Everything that we do influences everything that we do.  It's the Great Cycle.  The formula for experience and the pattern of growth.  It's been referred to as the golden ratio, the Fibonacci sequence, the great spiral, and the Golden mean, as well as many other names.  The way that we spiral in and out of experience, is like a shimmering dance between the physical and non physical, embodying us in some sort of organic experiment in order to achieve a heightened level of experiencing awareness.  Its like trying to get as close to a flame for warmth without getting burnt, yet there is only so far you can go until you feel the bitter cold and need to rush back into the warmth and embrace of the universal awareness embodied in the physical.  

We ache for a connection, we yearn for it.  It permeates the human experience.  The need to understand is overwhelming, yet the means to do so are so drastically limited by the constructs of form in the third dimension.  This is the function of prayer.  The higher vibrational wavelength that is exercised during prayer is primal in nature, and therefore the universe actively and organically reacts to it.  As if a tree realizes that one of its tiny branches is injured, it will tend to it.  There is enough energy and love to go around, but part of the paradox of free will is that we want to quantify it.  I WANT TO QUANTIFY "IT". This brings me not only great joy in the gift of being embodied, but great sadness that I haven't the language to adequately express my awe, adoration, and utmost gratitude for this gift of embodiment.  Again, through aeons of fine tuning, aeons before us, that ultimate need to transcend and connect was given as a gift to us initially in the glory of the grand design that is our bodies, the Great vehicle of Experience.  Man and woman were meant to turn two experiences into one, and that union was, and is, the harmony of the cosmos.  

This is the transcendental being incarnate, and carnal, in its most primal form.  Thru this bond, we release great suffering, and glorious triumphs in order to facilitate another vehicle that the universal Consciousness can experience itself within.  This act of creation is a repetition of the dualistic primordial battle and dance of the energies of polarity, the yin and the yang, the male and female, the positive and negative, the proton and the electron, the plus and the minus.  These dualistic imprints are not only part of our programmed experience, but a shining star on the road map of life declaring and revealing we are exactly where we need to be. 

Companionship is a quantification of the unquantifiable, and is thus the ultimate response to the question of whether or not we are alone in the universe.  Absolutely not, we are right next to each other, even if we're galaxies away. Companionship is a part of the human experience, an a pivotal part of how we are programmed.  The law of attraction plays such a huge role in the way we interact and procreate, but is almost like a backbone to the living experience.  It is a response from nature to all of the questions we can ask about life before we are able to quantify a language that we can interpret.  It is union that facilitates experience, and helps it to continue.  On a microscopic level, this same natural interaction takes place.  One becomes two, becomes four, becomes eight, sixteen, thirty two, and so on.  

The gift of interaction with each other is imprinted on our DNA as a species.  We spend so much energy and time debating the reasoning for any Divine role in our history, yet fail to realize that we have still such a sophomoric understanding as a collective of what that could actually mean.  The Proof and quantifiable truth is us.  WE are the proof that Consciousness exists within our species, and as a construct of the cellular machinery of our planet, that means that all living organic collective material, on some level, is engineered for experiencing and enhancing consciousness.  

The interaction on a personal level are limited to the species upon which the experience is generated through, what "form" you are in (i.e, flora or fauna), however the impact of that interaction, or lack thereof, is not limited to your species.  This impacts the planets ecosystem, and has forever.  Every species has a "carbon footprint", but the way that we as humans interact with ourselves and our environment is in itself unique.  We still try to propagate a language adequate of expressing the awe and adoration for the cosmic gift of embodiment, and in the meantime, ache too the core at our lack of intelligence.  Until then, "God" responds with each other.  In the meantime, and in this form, this human form, one thing for certain is a fact and quantifiable proof of the unprovable.  Love exists, and as a species, we'll always have each other.  

As an ecosystem, it's our responsibility to use our gift of consciousness to nurture nature, and facilitate growth for other future generations.  For our Great planet is a great recourse, indeed.  To facilitate it's continuance is our jobs as the species upon it's flesh to maintain it, and help nurture it's living nature.  We are of it, and that is a part of our role in the cosmic alliance of planetary consciousness, for regardless of our knowledge, or proof of awareness playing any cosmic role whatsoever… The planet indeed produced us, and in having each other to experience the great joy of Union we are inherently blessed with the duty and ability to continue this process into the future, like a great fractal of behavioral influence. 

 We, with one another side by side, effect everything we touch.  In many ways, we are also the opposite.  We absorb so much.  The sensitive nature of this cosmic "self" is why it is so important to protect and facilitate a planetary harmony with our eco systems.  It is on this planet that we are able to nurture our cosmic gift of being aware.  To become in tune with our ecosystem is the ultimate act of humanness, In order to do that, we ourselves, need nourishment and nurturing.  Nourishment is given to us by our planet.  Nurturing is given to us by each other