And so did your self hatred cause more suffering and depression which in turn caused more selfish/feeding behaviors? How did you pull yourself out of it? I'm glad you didn't act on your thoughts, Dorothy. I'm happy to see you here trying to help others understand.
You describe the vicious cycle very aptly. Answering the second part of your question is harder so I'll approach it from a different angle to begin.
The entry "Centers, Playing Card Analogy" in the Cassiopedia says this: "Committing suicide is the ultimate in identification and subjective self-absorption." I think that's right. A budding psychopath tries to extend his domination and subjugate other consciousnesses, so his identity is necessarily in flux -- in other words, he knows it is limited and seeks to expand it. A suicide, on the other hand, carves out a discrete identity "me" and sees no possibility of meaningful intercourse with the outside world.
Like Davey described, I think empathy is the only thing that kept me from going through with it. And empathy, at base, is an extension of identity. It's a recognition of inter-being. So when I decided that I could never cause my Mom such suffering, I turned a corner by admitting some permeability in my sense of self.
As Data once said in another thread,(paraphrased)"jumping off a building is a very mechanical action", which made me realize that most suicides are just that. An awake, conscious person would be unlikely to do it. There is no judgement intended by this statement except an assessment of possible state of mind or acting from false personality. I hope this makes sense.
It does make sense, and I think you and Data are correct. The more conscious we become, the more we see the interconnectedness and dynamism of things, and the more we identify with all aspects of our experience without differentiating between inner and outer, me and you. Only mechanical thought processes can maintain a discrete sense of self (or self-loathing). That said, someone who is very depressed can get caught in mechanical thought processes that include very penetrating insights.
For example: Imagine a woman in her 50s who realizes in a short period that she's wasted her life in careerism and that the money never satisfied; that for decades she has furthered the agenda of a functionally psychopathic corporation; that her husband leeches her money and energy and only pretends to love her; that the "morals" and "culture" of society are a pack of lies; and that, finally, she was an awful mother to her children, now grown and estranged from her.
Those are real insights that many people never have. Such insights have the potential to change the entire course of a person's life, for the better! And it may even be necessary for that person to dwell on those insights for a period of weeks or months, simply so they don't brush them under the rug -- so that, seeing the darkness for what it is, they can awake to themselves. But in the interval between the dark and light unveilings, there is tremendous suffering. If that suffering feeds on itself mechanically, if the person can't break the cycle of depression and self-loathing, it can lead to suicide.
Here we might also consider the idea of psychic attack. Someone who awakes to the nastiness of everyday life is, of course, a potential danger to the people, institutions, and thought patterns that cultivate that nastiness. I imagine a fair number of people going through serious depressive episodes have "heard" certain thoughts or thought patterns repeating over and over in their minds, and said to themselves, "Where is this coming from?" or "I don't think like that!" I suspect that sometimes these mechanical thought loops come from "outside." At the same time, though, these sorts of attacks probably require the victim to be in a certain state of mind -- namely, depression -- to resonate.
So, winding up, if the person cobbles together enough consciousness to identify beyond themselves, to empathize, maybe even to begin the work, then they can raise their vibration level and pull themselves out. But, the more individual the effort, the more difficult. It's hard to identify beyond yourself when you don't see anything positive to identify with. I had my Mom. Everyone needs someone.
Dorothy
