Virtually all forms of sadness and depression begin with an unconscious act of identifying with certain images about ourselves. These images or ideas usually have to do with pictures we hold in our own mind about how things should be. The problem with this set of ideas is that they don’t belong to us — they are an effect of the world we live in, whose nature it is to measure ourselves by values passed along by others. When we compare ourselves unconsciously to these ideas and fail to measure up, it just drives the circle of self. First this nature looks for itself and, failing to find what it’s looking for, it simply returns to its own content for another answer, which is always part of the problem and never the solution. Since this negative state enters us and takes possession of us in unawareness, new awareness is the solution. In order to see what we must about this false sense of self, it is necessary to investigate it instead of giving ourselves over to it. Don’t fight with it. Add as much light (awareness) to it as you can, and it will begin to lose its hold on you. And, as you lose interest in any negative state, i.e., in the sense of self it surreptitiously provides you, the state dwindles away into its native darkness — no longer a problem for you because you are no longer a place in which it can dwell.