#25: Depression

Hi Everyone,

Dancing in the dark?

Many of you are struggling with depression or know someone who does. I know I do. But like so many other situations, the more we resist it, the stronger it becomes. Instead of resisting the emotions we do not like, we could look at the darkness in another away.

One of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver, wrote in her book Thirst: “Someone I loved once gave me/ a box full of darkness/ It took me years to understand/that this, too, was a gift.”

What is the “gift” that comes from the darkness of depression? Bruce Springsteen wrote a song called Dancing in the Dark that sounds happy. But then I heard a woman singing the song in a slower, different way. I paid attention to the words for the first time and realized that it was about Springsteen’s own lifelong struggle with depression.

How do you dance in the dark?

One way is through the power of acceptance. I understand I do not feel as would like to, but I stop resisting it. Instead feeling lousy about feeling lousy, which becomes an infinite regress, I look for what I can learn.

As I shared once before, Rumi wrote: “The wound is the place where the light enters you.”

We all carry these physical and emotional wounds. How do we open to them to find the gift, to let the light enter? For me, I try to just sit quietly with it. I let myself feel it. In this present moment, I am OK with it. No resistance.

What is the light? I suppose religious people would call it God, but that is a language I struggle with. For me, as a philosopher, the light is what the Greeks called the True, the Good and the Beautiful.

The truth of any illness is that we can learn from it. The goodness of any illness is how our pain, once accepted, can lead to compassion for myself and all others who suffer. The beautiful is the dancing in the dark.

One benefit I noticed is that I have a good bullshit detector. It saves me time and energy to avoid toxic people and situations.

How do you dance in the dark? How does the “box of darkness” become a “gift?” What is the light? These are the questions that we can sit with — quietly — and see what comes up.

Pema Chodron teaches “Feel the feelings and drop the story.”

To Dropping the Story!

Apophat

#24: Beauty

Hi Folks,

Confucius said: “Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”

Why do you think that is? Have you ever thought much about standards of beauty? Where do they come from? Who makes them up? And why?

These standards cause so much pain and misery. While we have paid more attention to the negative impact of unreasonable standards for women, men are also feeling it in greater numbers. For example, eating disorders are rising for men.

If everything has beauty, then why can’t we see it? For me, it seems the answer lies in the conditioning we received when we are young, usually too young to think for ourselves. If philosophy has any real offering to the modern world, it may be in encouraging us to examine our lives.

When we examine ourselves, we can question the values we were taught when we were young. That has more to do with ethics, but in this note I wanted to talk about beauty. We need to examine why we think things are beautiful and then ask ourselves if we want to buy into that or not.

I have been working with this question for years now. I am convinced that what I find beautiful is almost entirely socially constructed rather than any innate sense of beauty of not. A man came to speak at our school when I was a kid who had been badly burned and disfigured. But when he spoke to us he was “lit up” by the light in his eyes and the energy he gave to his talk.

It would be a good exercise to practice looking for the beauty in people you might normally judge as not beautiful. What are you judging? What standards are you using?

For example, our culture puts the emphasis on youth and thus people go to great lengths to avoid and/or get rid of wrinkles. But I find wrinkles beautiful. It shows a face that has lived and experienced life. It tells a unique story. I first noticed this when I saw pictures of old Native Americans. Their faces were carved in wrinkles and I found myself enthralled. What did someone go through to have that specific face?

A philosophical practice then could be to look for the beauty in everyone. Look for the inner light, the light in their eyes. Practice noticing the judgments that come up, not how automatic they are, and with that awareness choose to look for the beauty.

Perfectionism is painful. It is time to let it go. I remember talking with my mentor once about feeling “broken.” He picked up a stick and asked me if it was broken and I said “no.” Then he broke it in half and said, “Now it is perfectly broken.” When brokenness leads to bitterness, it is tragic. When brokenness leads to wisdom, it is beautiful.

William Blake wrote: “This is a picture of a quote from William Blake, If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” And beautiful!

To Beauty!

Apophat

#23: Are you in love?

Hi Folks,

Are you in love?

I don’t mean romantically, good as that is. I mean it in the deep inner sense — the foundation of our lives. Do you — do I — live from a place of distraction and despair? I don’t want to live that way.

Love is the answer for me. It is the antidote to everything that seems to make me (and you?) anxious and depressed.

For example, it seems to me that we judge ourselves and other people too harshly. It is difficult to remember that everyone is trying to do their best. I want to share a few quotes that mean a lot to me and hopefully you will find some solace in them too.

The Buddha taught: “Judge nothing, you will be happy. Forgive everything, you will be happier. Love everything, you will be happiest.”

What would it be like to judge no one? What would it be like to forgive everything and everyone? Just to let all of the pain and resentment and guilt go? And aren’t those qualities the qualities of love?

In the Bible (1 John 4:7-8) it is written: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

These verses have helped me to remember that all wise people have taught us that to learn to love is one of the main points of having this human experience. I don’t even know if this is true, but I feel like when I exist in a state of love, the problems drop away and solutions appear.

It just does not happen as quickly as we wish. I know that being impatient is one of my main hurdles in life. Then I try to remember this quote. Lao Tzu writes in the Tao Te Ching: “Do you have the patience to wait until the mud settles and the water is clear?”

For me, letting the water clear is essential. If all I see is mud, then mud is what I will be serving up to other people. This mud is impatience, a lack of forgiveness and judging.

The answer is love. In fact, the answer is always love, in one way or another. I wonder how much personal and collective misery could be avoided if we had love as the foundation of our lives? A simple question to ask: Are my thoughts, words, and actions aligned with love?

Zoroastrianism, the ancient religion of Persia, stresses three things: “Good thoughts, good words, good deeds.” This is a beautiful and easy way to check the love in our lives.

Are you in love?

To Love!

Apophat