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When You’ve Got Nothing…
I’m going to spare you the research data about depression.
We all know how prevalent it is, how debilitating, how much it’s escalated recently in all populations, even in children. I can quote statistics till the cows come home, but that’s not what this is about.
What I want to talk about is how depression itself can hold the key to our freedom from it. This article by Drew Hanson “Jim Carrey’s Right: Depression Can Wake Us Up, Science Now Confirms,” fleshed out something I’ve always wondered about. I highly recommend you read it.
We pathologize depression. We treat it like a disease, like something to cure, to overcome, or, at the very least, mute.
What if depression isn’t a disease? What if it’s an invitation to go deeper? What if, as Hanson posits, depression is there to stimulate our appetite for spirituality?
In keeping with this line of thinking, I’ve come to see depression it as spiritual exhaustion. Not exhaustion that’s spiritual in nature, but exhaustion that can lead to a spiritual awakening.
Anam Thubten, says, “Cultivate exhaustion.” As in, go ahead: be as exhausted as you actually are with this illusory…
