Depression or Delight
Yesterday I wrote about the courage to see with our third eye. Later I was reading the following passage from a column by Ron Roleiser:
FROM DEPRESSION TO DELIGHT
AUGUST 14, 2005
It’s not easy to be grown-up and not live in a certain depression. Depression is the disease of the normal person.
But what afflicts most of us is not clinical depression, an illness requiring professional attention, but a certain chronic joylessness. There’s too little delight in our lives.
… How do we recover that?
Too often, as adults, we try to do it by working hard at creating pleasure, enjoyment, and delight in our own lives. We try to crank up joy and delight, meeting life with the attitude: “I’m going to have a good time, whatever the cost!” But what we produce is seldom joy. That’s why, so often, we go home from a party feeling more empty than before going. Many of our attempts at creating joy and delight are really only attempts at keeping depression at bay. Our socializing tends to be forced and compulsive rather than spontaneous and fulfilling. For most adults, excess is a functional substitute for delight.
But, here’s the secret: No matter how hard we try to find delight or joy, we can’t find them. They have to find us, catch us by surprise, blind-side us. Every spirituality or psychology worth its name tells us that joy and delight are always a by-product of something else. What?
They’re by-product of acting like God acts, strange though that sounds. Simply put, when we act like God, we get to feel like God; and when we act petty, we get to feel petty! When we do big-hearted things, we get to feel big-hearted; and when we do small-hearted things, we get to feel small. (ronrolheiser.com)
That certainly makes sense and sounds simple. Why would be humans avoid doing something as simple as that rather than working so hard to create temporary joy or pleasure in our lives? How is that we miss what is so simple?
I recall that in my mid thirties, following my divorce and not having custody of my son, I hired a counselor/therapist. I flunked out of counseling or psychotherapy on more than one occasion. The first time was in a group counseling session which met once a week for a number of weeks (16 I think). At the end of the course of group therapy the therapist said to me, “I am so disappointed in you. I thought you were ready to change and you have done nothing.” Not to be thwarted by this failure I later put myself in another group therapy situation. This was in the context of a training program for therapist/counselors. It was a residential training program which lasted 9 weeks. Part of the training consisted, quite rightly, in expecting the therapists to be in therapy and explore their own personal issues. Sadly, this was also the time when confrontation , tear down and then build back type of therapy was in vogue. Not surprising this did not work well for anyone long term and it certainly did not work well with me. Again, I was told that I was a disappointment; that I had basically flunked therapy.
The irony was that I was so determined to be this good person and do everything right that I did not allow myself to connect with the emotional part of me and, thus, was not present with my self, God or other people. The only emotion I allowed myself was anger – mostly at myself when some human part of me would surface. I thought trying to be like God was going to make me worthwhile in the eyes of God and in the eyes of other people.
I finally hired a movement therapist in Seattle, Washington who I would go see for a week at a time. We would work from early morning until late in the evening. During this time, he directed me to express my emotions through movement and sounds. I was not permitted to use language because I had too long hid behind words. I knew this and that is the reason I hired this sort of therapist. Later I would train to be a movement or dance therapist. Initially. when working with this man I would tell him that I was faking the emotion. He kept telling me that was fine. If I kept acting as if I would eventually connect with and express the emotion. It was only as I begin to accept my humanness, including my emotions, that I was able to act more God like.
I had this very distorted concept of God I thought that acting like God was pretending that I was God (a being without emotions – rather android like) and denying my emotions or any unkind thought, being right and never admitting to mistakes. I was trying to follow the advice of people such as Ron Rolheiser and failing miserably because I thought that acting God like was denying all my human characteristics. I was not trying to act God like. I was trying to be like the God I had grown up to believe. Thus the more I tried, the more I failed. The more I failed the more unhappy I became and the more disconnected I became from God, myself, other people and Mother Nature.
If one asks people who have a history of depression – clinical or situational – what it feels like, they will invariably tell you that it feels as if they are disconnected from themselves, others, God, and Mother Nature. It is a feeling of profound “nothingness”. There is also an inability to process incomnng stimuli which also causes one to withdraw by isolating, using some substance to numb oneself or finding something else such as money,power or sex to fill that void. Nothing works long term which itself is depressing.
For we humans to act like God we must be willing and able to connect with the ability to experience ourselves, each other, God, and Mother Nature as pure delight. Jesus says that “Unless you become as little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Book of Matthew, Chapter 18, verse 3 of the New Testament). I understand this to mean that we must recapture the delight that healthy children are able to experience in just experiencing themselves, each other and the world. Little children are delighted when they discover their body parts, i. e. toes, the feel of other people, fabrics and surfaces; the smell of flowers, their parents, the sea; the taste of ice cream, the table or other things. The have no hesitation in expressing that delight. It is not as if the little child does not react to hurt or danger. They will certainly get frightened, hungry, or uncomfortable in other ways, but they do not expect the world to provoke fear or discomfort continuously. They expect to be delighted and they are.
Many, including Ron Rolheiser, Fother Boyle, Mother Theresa and others expect to hang out with a delighted God. They expect to hang out with the part of them which can also be delighted with themselves, others, God and mother nature.
Being delighted does not mean the absence of pain. It does mean that when we have pain we also know the comfort of God delighting in wrapping His/Her arms around us. We know the comfort of allowing other people to be God like with us and wrap their arms around us just as we wrap our arms around others. In the midst of pain we can experience the delight of comfort and closeness. The opposite of that is getting so fearful of pain that we withdraw and shut ourselves off from comfort and delight. It is depression.
Yesterday I wrote about the courage to see with our third eye. Later I was reading the following passage from a column by Ron Roleiser:
FROM DEPRESSION TO DELIGHT
AUGUST 14, 2005
It’s not easy to be grown-up and not live in a certain depression. Depression is the disease of the normal person.
But what afflicts most of us is not clinical depression, an illness requiring professional attention, but a certain chronic joylessness. There’s too little delight in our lives.
… How do we recover that?
Too often, as adults, we try to do it by working hard at creating pleasure, enjoyment, and delight in our own lives. We try to crank up joy and delight, meeting life with the attitude: “I’m going to have a good time, whatever the cost!” But what we produce is seldom joy. That’s why, so often, we go home from a party feeling more empty than before going. Many of our attempts at creating joy and delight are really only attempts at keeping depression at bay. Our socializing tends to be forced and compulsive rather than spontaneous and fulfilling. For most adults, excess is a functional substitute for delight.
But, here’s the secret: No matter how hard we try to find delight or joy, we can’t find them. They have to find us, catch us by surprise, blind-side us. Every spirituality or psychology worth its name tells us that joy and delight are always a by-product of something else. What?
They’re by-product of acting like God acts, strange though that sounds. Simply put, when we act like God, we get to feel like God; and when we act petty, we get to feel petty! When we do big-hearted things, we get to feel big-hearted; and when we do small-hearted things, we get to feel small. (ronrolheiser.com)
That certainly makes sense and sounds simple. Why would be humans avoid doing something as simple as that rather than working so hard to create temporary joy or pleasure in our lives? How is that we miss what is so simple?
I recall that in my mid thirties, following my divorce and not having custody of my son, I hired a counselor/therapist. I flunked out of counseling or psychotherapy on more than one occasion. The first time was in a group counseling session which met once a week for a number of weeks (16 I think). At the end of the course of group therapy the therapist said to me, “I am so disappointed in you. I thought you were ready to change and you have done nothing.” Not to be thwarted by this failure I later put myself in another group therapy situation. This was in the context of a training program for therapist/counselors. It was a residential training program which lasted 9 weeks. Part of the training consisted, quite rightly, in expecting the therapists to be in therapy and explore their own personal issues. Sadly, this was also the time when confrontation , tear down and then build back type of therapy was in vogue. Not surprising this did not work well for anyone long term and it certainly did not work well with me. Again, I was told that I was a disappointment; that I had basically flunked therapy.
The irony was that I was so determined to be this good person and do everything right that I did not allow myself to connect with the emotional part of me and, thus, was not present with my self, God or other people. The only emotion I allowed myself was anger – mostly at myself when some human part of me would surface. I thought trying to be like God was going to make me worthwhile in the eyes of God and in the eyes of other people.
I finally hired a movement therapist in Seattle, Washington who I would go see for a week at a time. We would work from early morning until late in the evening. During this time, he directed me to express my emotions through movement and sounds. I was not permitted to use language because I had too long hid behind words. I knew this and that is the reason I hired this sort of therapist. Later I would train to be a movement or dance therapist. Initially. when working with this man I would tell him that I was faking the emotion. He kept telling me that was fine. If I kept acting as if I would eventually connect with and express the emotion. It was only as I begin to accept my humanness, including my emotions, that I was able to act more God like.
I had this very distorted concept of God I thought that acting like God was pretending that I was God (a being without emotions – rather android like) and denying my emotions or any unkind thought, being right and never admitting to mistakes. I was trying to follow the advice of people such as Ron Rolheiser and failing miserably because I thought that acting God like was denying all my human characteristics. I was not trying to act God like. I was trying to be like the God I had grown up to believe. Thus the more I tried, the more I failed. The more I failed the more unhappy I became and the more disconnected I became from God, myself, other people and Mother Nature.
If one asks people who have a history of depression – clinical or situational – what it feels like, they will invariably tell you that it feels as if they are disconnected from themselves, others, God, and Mother Nature. It is a feeling of profound “nothingness”. There is also an inability to process incomnng stimuli which also causes one to withdraw by isolating, using some substance to numb oneself or finding something else such as money,power or sex to fill that void. Nothing works long term which itself is depressing.
For we humans to act like God we must be willing and able to connect with the ability to experience ourselves, each other, God, and Mother Nature as pure delight. Jesus says that “Unless you become as little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Book of Matthew, Chapter 18, verse 3 of the New Testament). I understand this to mean that we must recapture the delight that healthy children are able to experience in just experiencing themselves, each other and the world. Little children are delighted when they discover their body parts, i. e. toes, the feel of other people, fabrics and surfaces; the smell of flowers, their parents, the sea; the taste of ice cream, the table or other things. The have no hesitation in expressing that delight. It is not as if the little child does not react to hurt or danger. They will certainly get frightened, hungry, or uncomfortable in other ways, but they do not expect the world to provoke fear or discomfort continuously. They expect to be delighted and they are.
Many, including Ron Rolheiser, Fother Boyle, Mother Theresa and others expect to hang out with a delighted God. They expect to hang out with the part of them which can also be delighted with themselves, others, God and mother nature.
Being delighted does not mean the absence of pain. It does mean that when we have pain we also know the comfort of God delighting in wrapping His/Her arms around us. We know the comfort of allowing other people to be God like with us and wrap their arms around us just as we wrap our arms around others. In the midst of pain we can experience the delight of comfort and closeness. The opposite of that is getting so fearful of pain that we withdraw and shut ourselves off from comfort and delight. It is depression.
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