The Quicksand Conundrum: How to Find Spiritual Motivation When Depressed

Let’s address a serious conundrum that most people journeying through the spiritual path inevitably run into: How do you find the time, energy, or motivation to do the heavy inner work when you have very little time, energy, or motivation to begin with?

When your existential Pain Jewel shows up as deep depression, everything feels impossible. You are stuck in the mud. In other words, when you’re stuck in quicksand, how do you get out of it?

If you're stuck in the quicksand, you can't just forcefully yank yourself out. You have to coax yourself out. To escape my own existential depression, I relied on bribery, routine, and a healthy dose of self-trickery.

Here is how you can build a ladder right out of the quicksand.

1. Trick Your Ego with a Reward System

When you are deeply depressed, your brain is starved for dopamine. You have to manufacture it.

I did this with a reward system. I wasn't above treating mys...

What is the Pain Jewel? Understanding Existential Depression

Deep down in the recesses of your being there is an existential pain that most are minimally, consciously aware of. I call this the Pain Jewel.

Read any cheap, mass-market self-help book on the shelf today and you’ll discover that human beings are motived by just two forces: pain and pleasure. We seek joy and peace, and we aggressively avoid stress and hurt. But Western culture has a very difficult time coming to terms with the existential fact that life is indeed suffering.

Whether we lie about it, deny it, stoically stifle it or distract ourselves to death from it, we are constantly trying to numb the Pain Jewel. But if you want to actually wake up and climb the seven spiritual mountains, you have to do the exact opposite. You have to listen to it.

The SOS Signal of the Soul

The first quality of the pain jewel is that it continually broadcasts an SOS signal. That signal emanates from the darkest, hidden-most, central c...