The Real Purpose of Depression

A client of mine is having a tough time right now. Actually, she's been having a tough year for years now. Some form of depression has haunted her for a good portion of her adult life. Recently she had a car accident during a time when she's been struggling with challenges in choice of career and honoring her passions in life. How to do both and meet the material needs of this world are something all of us are contemplating right now.

She's been unemployed for a few months now and the money is running out. The material world is making it difficult to be in a higher frame of mind. As things have seemingly become more dire every day, she's allowed the car accident to bring up a thought process that 's been with her for a long while. Does she check out, meaning commit suicide, or does she stay? While she was not physically hurt enough to require hospitalization in the recent car accident, she still suffered some physical impact to her body that has her in some pain right now. Lying in bed has brought up the deep depression issues that she has refused to deal with in her life.

Many spiritual teachers have addressed the issue of depression and its role in our emotional and spiritual evolution process. I believe the best explanation I've been able to synthesize from various sources is that depression is the Universe's way of putting It's Cosmic Thumb on you, like the giant out of some fairy tale. Imagine the Giant from Jack and The Bean Stock coming down and pinning you to the ground with his thumb, daring you to squirm outta that. You ain't goin' nowhere, are you? Until you surrender to the Thumb, that Giant isn't letting you up. Depression is exactly like that.

It's the Universe's way of telling you that you have created an opportunity to reach down into the bottom of the well, pull up all the old crap that's buried there, dump it, and start over. It used to be that we felt we had to be consciously aware of what that crap is or was. Psychology tells us that unless we consciously know what's going on, it won't go away. From my personal experience and that of witnessing the healing of my clients over the last 15 years, I don't think that is so true anymore.

I think our job in our healing process is to simply be willing to surrender to the process. A lot of healing takes place at the subconscious level, the place where we may never have any consciousness. How do we know healing has taken place? Because all of a sudden things change. Maybe it's as simple as we begin to think more clearly. Or the things we need in our lives manifest more easily and rapidly. Or we simply feel better, brighter, more optimistic for "no reason." We don't have to know what the healing process healed. We just have to become aware of the gifts it brings us and be grateful.

In order for this to happen, we must invoke the affirmation of "I will to Thy Will." Or maybe the better scenario is meditating on waving the white flag of surrender. Maybe then the Giant will relax the Cosmic Thumb. Now, if you keep waving the flag, thinking that you are going to fool the Giant into letting you go, you don't know Him/Her very well, do you? Giants are not fooled so easily. They've been there, done that, seen it all. They have all the time in world, which is interesting, since time doesn't exist, but that's another conversation for later. That's not such good news for the person under The Thumb, is it? Eventually the squishee has to truly give up and wave the white flag for real. When that happens, miracles occur. No exception. Every time.

When you surrender into the conscious and subconscious healing that is taking place during depression, you let go of all that no longer serves you. This creates the space that allows the new you to emerge. So, depression can be viewed as the energy or apparent chaos that's taking place while you, the catepillar, are morphing into the butterfly. I love that image. The Giant's Thumb could actually be utilized as an anchor for the cocoon needed for you to go through the growth and metamorphisis of emotional and spiritual evolution. I personally find that comforting. The catepillar has no idea how it becomes a butterfly. It doesn't need to know, does it? It simply surrenders into the process.

So, if you find yourself in depression, don't buy into the hype and media that it is a bad thing. It could be the best thing that ever happened to you, if you let it. Be willing to surrender, even if it's just a little bit at at time, to the process. Keep digging through the crap. There's a pony in there somewhere who's chasing butterflies.