Deflating Depression
Friday, October 16, 2009 at 7:12AM Because of where I work, there's the fairly regular experience of someone saying to me, "Before I came here, I was thinking about killing myself." Yesterday that happened to me three times. In one particular situation I asked the person, "How come the hospital didn't keep you, so that could work with your depression?" They responded, "They didn't ask me, so I didn't tell. You asked and seemed sincere, so I told You."
Before we parted I told them, "Though we may feel broken and defective at times, there's something about our fundamental nature that's not. There's something in us that's connected, whole and unbroken... Because of that, there is always hope. That's why I like to say, don't give up 5 minutes before the miracle happens." They responded, "I wish I really felt that way." My response was, "You can if you apply yourself and share honestly with the people who are here to help you. It's up to You."
The truth is I could easily relate. When I was a teenager, I felt an incredible despair that I couldn't seem to shake. Though people called it depression, I would refer to it as "The black hole." It was something that I carried within my mind that removed light, love, compassion, trust, friendship, self-esteem and self-trust. But what changed for me is someone connecting to the fundamental okay-ness that resided within. This person who later became my friend said, in very sincerely, "I will love you, until you can learn to love yourself." I said, "Oh yeah, and after that, what happens?" He smiled and said, "You'll learn to pass it on." My friend Keith was right.
In zazen this morning, I remembered that it's so easy for us to see and believe the worse within ourselves, yet so very difficult to see and feel what is best about us. Our ego can distort or block the view to This truth, forcing us to doubt our inherent worthiness to have happiness, freedom and a sense of purpose. As I've heard said, ego, the self-centeredness and self-obsession that goes with it can be cunning, baffeling and powerful. Despite this it can be dissolved, through an Awakening of Mind.
Though the word Zen has been kind of abused and diminished within our culture, almost turned in to a characterature of itself. If "I" learn how to move three inches to the left or right, "I" can see past the fog and directly into the "Heart of Being." It takes time and effort, but It's all right here. It's not far away, distant or remote. That fundamental correctness to being is 100% available and open for business.
Because of hope and finding my footing that fundamental correctness that we all have within, I'll be sharing time with my daughter this evening. I'm taking her to the movies to see, "Where the Wild Things Are." Will we laugh? Will we cry? Who know's. What I am sure of is that I have the intention to keep my "appointment with life," as my teacher and Thich Nhat Hanh always encourage. Smile, We are alive!
May Your Life Go Well,
Jaye Seiho Morris, Curator
digitalZENDO
Reader Comments (4)
Thanks Seiho - I, too, like you, have had my encounters with the 'black hole', both personally, and also with people whom I was honored to help during my years as a psychiatric social worker and art therapist. How does one get out of the black hole? That is still a mystery to me. There are no rules, no set ways. Everyone goes through it differently. Some of us are fortunate in that we have the necessary internal and external resources. Others are not so lucky, and are plagued with a deep-seated depression that resists all treatments. For them and their utmost suffering, I feel great compassion.
How does one get out of the black hole?.... For me the answer has been treating like a chronic illness... One day at a time, just for today. The specific medicine... sitting with a directed mind... dissolving... laughing... crying... befriending myself... melting... so that I can unify my heart, with You and all sentient being.
~Seiho
To see suffering as the beginning of the end of suffering . . . an invitation to turn inward, and get in touch with all of reality. I feel very blessed to have that disposition. My big question is, what makes it that some have it, and others don't? I am thinking of my own mother who suffered from melancholy her whole life. And I realize she was not in a place, where there was not much light. No meditation center, no psychotherapists, nobody around her who understood, only a Catholic priest with a rigid, punitive, guilt-ridden view of the world.
I'm not kidding when I say, "If not in this lifetime, perhaps the next." There's a Japanese words, "Sho-Gyo-Mu-Jo," which means, endless transformation or put another way, being is a process and not an event.
You could say the same of Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha. "No meditation center, no psychotherapists, nobody around him who understood, only a Brahmin priest with a rigid, punitive, guilt-ridden view of the world." And yet still over time Buddha prevailed.
The key is simply, never giving up... the key is practicing not just for ourself, but all beings that one day, they may see and experience the "Heart of Being."
The fact that You are practicing so diligently makes this possible. Though others may not currently have a recognition of this fact, doesn't mean they won't get it later. It's a process. I have great confidence in this.
Yours In Dharma,
~Seiho