In
the West there have been many attempts to shed light on the
phenomenon of depression, although in general, this question remains
insoluble, despite ancient teachers knew and taught its profound
reason of being.
Romantic
thinkers like Jean Paul Richter used the expression "pain of the
world" (Weltschmerz)
in reference to the sorrow and disappointment with life in general.
For them physical reality doesn't satisfy the demands of the heart
and is darkened by the presence of evil. Surprisingly, many romantic
poets considered sorrow as a form of poetic inspiration; although
most of them omitted the negative effects it can have in the psyche
when its causes are not discovered. To give an illustrative example.
The depressive melancholy and anxious precipitation that moved Søren
Kierkegaard to write brought his engagement with Regina Olsen to an
end. And he confessed that he didn't want to burden her with those
depressive states he couldn't control.
Kierkegaard
referred to “existential anguish” as Angst, his favourite
subject, to which he dedicated a book, The concept of Anxiety.
Hence he is regarded as the first existentialist thinker, although
“existentialism” as a stream of thought would not emerge with
impetus until the period between the two World Wars. The harshness
and atrocities of war agitated the dark bottom of the human psyche
much more than any of the previous historical wars and
existentialists focused on the idea that humans have no
nature –unlike the animals– what makes us inherently
disoriented and anguished.
Some existential views adopted a
terribly pessimistic view that made many lives more depressing. It is
the case of Sartre's novel Nausea,
in which the uncertainty and cruelty humans experience in life
can never be understood, only faced, feeling nausea.
Much
more inspired was the view of Martin Heidegger, for whom
the existential anguish arises in man because he feels
"thrown into existence", forced to face death and the
challenging responsibility of having to use his will in order to
forge a nature of his own. As he said, every adult is responsible for
choosing his actions, attitudes and life style, and the very act of
choosing with courage a path, without being driven by external
models, is living an "authentic life". Right at the end of
his life, Heidegger started hinting that the "authentic life"
and a new way of thinking can lead human beings to the “understanding
of Being (Sein),
the Divine nature of all things, which reveals itself in a state of
“detachment” and “serenity” he called Gelassenheit.
Certainly,
there is truth in his ideas, but something more than thinking is
required to reconcile inner conflicts and fill the void. Only Love
of Wisdom
and inner-development
can give a much richer understanding of ourselves, including
depression.
The
"language of Reality" indicates that anguish and depression
play an important role, a function linked to particular stages in the
path of spiritual evolution. Contrarily, society focuses on selfish
comfort, happiness, light, success, pleasure and heavenly heights
forgetting the role of darkness. A clear omission of what Wisdom has
always taught through myths, legends and teachings: the
Light can only be found at the bottom of the Cave, the Darkness of
the Sacred Underworld.
All the
great mythological heros, from Gilgamesh to Orpheus and Odysseus
traveled to the underworld in their quest for immortality and divine
perfection. And later the Alchemists considered that the first step
in the process of inner transformation is a state of putrefaction
called nigredo.
This
truth is also expressed in the Christian Gospels, where it is said
that Jesus suffered temptation from evil in a desert –a psychological
desert– and despair in Getsemani, that he reconciled evil by forgiving his
enemies, accepting a terrible physical death at the cross, and that
he finally descended into Hell before returning to the Father. A
complete vision of spiritual development, integration
of the animal nature and the spiritual nature, meant to be performed by each one of us: I
am the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14, 6).
These
traditions teach that transformation can only take place when we consciously embrace what we don't like, seeing it as part
of ourselves, the side that closes the circle of completeness.
All
our difficult moments can be a direct way to inner growth if we face
them with patience and mindfulness. They are an opportunity to become
“authentic individuals”,
instead of shadows.
The poet John Keats seemed
well aware of
that when he wrote in a letter: some
say the world is a vale of tears, I say it is a vale of soul-making.
The
moments of distress and apparent
impasse are
signs demanding our attention and openness. And every time we ignore
the message of longing and the necessity of inner work, certain
creative energies –Chthonic
powers
of the Earth– communicate by means of distress and
sickness that something must be done, that a conscious contact with our soul, the feminine side of reality, must take place. In Greece this was
expressed with the myth of the abduction of Persephone.
Depression
is the fingers of Hades and Persephone reaching us –Peter
Kingsley–.
Our heedlessness makes the divine in us very sad, and its laments are indeed our sorrow, void and anxiety. Yet,
our unconscious procrastination compels hidden forces to drag us down
into a hell of terrible sufferings. Moment in which humans think:
"life is rubbish", "why am I so miserable?", "why
is this happening to me?", "I don't want to live like
this?", "I prefer to die". All an indication that
something must die inside us.
Although, without discernment, this impulse may be interpreted
"literally", leading to suicidal thoughts. Hence we
must understand the ancient maxim: die
before you die.
In
this psychological death, one sees that we are more than the thoughts
and emotions of our superficial personality. A realisation that puts
us into conscious contact with our true infinite nature.
By
knowing ourselves we can be open enough to use our predicaments as
catapults that push us towards the Plenitude of the All Embracing Father-Mother.
As
soon as we dedicate more time to rest in the silent awareness of
space and call into question the literalness of our thoughts and
emotions, wonderful things start to happen. There is a Spanish
saying: nothing
is false, nothing is true, everything depends on the colour of the
crystal you are looking through.
Things
are not what they seem to be. Appearances can be that disgusting mythological being, Medusa-Gorgona –a beautiful
woman under a spell of ugliness–, whose glance turned into stone everyone who dared to look at her eyes directly. So
we need to be like Perseus, and use a shield as a mirror to avoid
looking at her face directly. All we see, light or
darkness, is truly a reflection of our nature, and it does not
have more eyes than ours.
Conflict only arises when what we
see appears as “other”. And only by identifying the reflection
could Perseus behead Medusa with the sword of will, obtaining
Pegasus, the flying horse, the wings of our soul.
Perseus
also had winged shoes received from Hermes, metaphor of the elevation
of wise reflections, and the helmet of invisibility, given by Hades,
to be Nobody, for egoism makes throws us outside of ourselves.
As
we see, myths can be a really helpful to know ourselves and keep the
mind focused on something better than negative thoughts.
Each
one of us has a full range of potentialities waiting to be displayed
without delay. And we can only discover them by listening to the logic of life and working day after day on the soil of our imperfections. Sometimes it is necessary to be like Knights, taming the dragon
of our egoism, with patience, strength, discernment, determination
and equanimity, to endure pain and avoid mechanical habits.
But there
are also times in which we can do just one thing: surrender ourselves
under the transformative power of Silence and Darkness. Peter
Kingsley reminds us in his books Reality
and In
The Dark Places of Wisdom
that in Ancient Greece this was even a practice, known as
"incubation", lying down in sacred caves, temples or rooms
(theme of another post).
All
in all, our attitude must be that of service and gratitude. We are
called to be "organs of perception" for the Endless Unmanifest so that
darkness can be illumined, reconciled. This is how we become active
participants in a Cosmic Drama where the Divine forgets and remembers
itself forever, in Eternity. Only when we
miss our mission we fall into depression.
