The lowest level of existence? It's more like the first. Not chronologically, but first for consideration. I mean first, there is nothing but, you can’t consider it. Then there is a person who has not yet been assigned a purpose, you. Yes, we should get you a purpose so you’re not sitting there all depressed. To get it done we will call upon the forces of need and urgency. You have no time for depression. Your end is near enough and there may be pain along the way. Anxiety may be a proper state, but you have no time for depression.
If you are depressed you need to stop thinking like you should ignore it or that there may be something else more important happening. You should stop eating and sleeping until you have conquered it. Or perhaps you were looking for a pill, in which case this article will be for the people who have to take care of you. Bear with the sharp edge of my tongue because what follows is the cure. However, the cure is the punishment.
Consider accepting that you have no natural right to eat. The millions of creatures that starve to death every moment get no natural rights. You need not eat so much as understand your situation, but the punishment is the cure. So when you sit down to not eat until the punishment becomes the cure, you will wonder what to do. You will see your haphazard thoughts running to no avail and you should like to see that you are a thing that is different than those thoughts. You should be that thing. When you are carried off by the thought you are not that thing, you are somewhere else. Bring yourself back over and over. Position yourself behind your eyes. That is "state one", being right behind your eyes rather than anywhere else. State zero might be where you were before.
Not eating helps you enter state one and see from there. You know how you get light-headed when you’re starving? Well, you have to practice this to see how that lightheadedness affects your state transitions. It makes you more fluid whereas eating heavy meats makes it difficult to get out of your thoughts.
Categorical improvement is reached when you allow yourself to fail because we are only human. Give yourself what comfort you need to repeat the process right away because we are developing strength. Yes like a muscle but where a muscle is built over months consciousness is more dynamic and may be built in days. Maybe many days but perhaps not so many.
By strength, I mean the state of mind, the state of consciousness, the "state one" should persist. Now, from a persisting "state one", recognize the impacts that various foods will have: heavy meats will knock you right down, rice is neutral, but the last is the most luscious piece of fruit that you have ever put in your mouth and won’t it lift you up! There are more than just vitamins in there.
You see, the fruit especially can be used for leverage. It does not provide the satisfaction of protein and protein can block it. If your stomach is very empty, on the other hand, the fruit can race right through and clean away an extra layer leaving you even emptier. That is the perfect time to push. So try for this extension to your fast by failing onto an orange and then pushing.
When you have reached a level of strength that persists through eating meat, then you won’t be depressed. From that state, it is firsthand and obvious that you don’t emerge from the stream of ideas any more than from the physical body. But you are here and that is the truth that subordinates all else.
Imagine if a rock from your yard should disappear. It’s nothing. Oklahoma could disappear and you might not notice! Half the earth could explode and that would still be subordinated to your existence. Scarier would be to lose gravity. You’d be scared to death if there were no way to get to ground but you might assuage this fear with the knowledge that far worse it should be to lose your existence. And will you lose your existence? When you feel this question first hand then you will have no time for depression.
Operate from state one and appreciate that you have a gift you have no natural right to. You might lose it, you lose it every time you fall asleep. Somehow you get it back through no credit of your own. You cannot be depressed because you are on a quest to find where you came from.
If it helps you might look forward to something like bliss, but if you’d like to chicken out, remember that ignorance isn’t really bliss because you aren’t really ignorant.
Cheers and good luck.