I want to talk to you about depression.
Depression is a birth canal.
It's dark, it's isolating, you can't quite be yourself, it moves you from one place of being into another.
You don't know how long it will take.
You don't know what's at the end of it.
You may really lose your life in it, and you cannot tell when you enter it.
You just know you're there suddenly, sinking, or sunk in.
It's a device of Spirit, the capital S spirit, the higher self, the You who guides the way. It gets you in there, that dark little spot, so you can let go, gestate, reconfigure. You are flattened by the process, squeezed dry, a shell.
In the old days, the very very old days, this process was honored and recognized by community. People would be assigned to watch over you, to support you, to hold your responsibilities together for you while you went on this journey.
And it is a journey.
It can take you so very far away from yourself, and who you used to be.
And in the old days, you'd be scared. You'd allow yourself to be scared and be shown things about who we all really are. You'd tune in, sinking or sunk in, and watch your old you fight the process. You'd watch the stirrings of the new you emerge from nothingness, rooting in through you.
It was scary, and painful, and very present-y.
And you'd be numb. In the midst of this scariness and presentness, you'd be numb. You wouldn't feel like you. You'd feel nothing and yet still know you were feeling not like yourself. You'd feel the weight of the canal, asking you to pause, to stay still, to be moved by it rather than moving yourself.
In the old days, you could do this. You could lay on the ground and it would all move around you. Now, now you lay on couches or in beds, or lay in your soul as your body moves you around. But the laying down, the staying still, is part of the process. Everything reconfigures when Spirit uses depression. It still all moves around you.
This motion, this reconfiguring, is the contractions into the new world: you whirlpool down into it, like a baby being birthed, through the spiral of the canal into the other side.
The other side may be more life. Or it may be new life (we'd call it death but it's never death now is it).
Spirit takes this gamble because You, the You who guides the way, is here to learn something that cannot be learned anywhere else. And if you can't learn it as you are, then you can learn it as you will be, and depression is the device to get you from as you are to where you will be.
Spirit has been talking to you the whole time. If you weren't able to get yourself with dialogue to where you will be so the next part of your life can happen, Spirit uses this device to ensure you move from as you are to where you will be.
In the old days, we'd know Spirit talks to us.
Now,... now, I'm not sure we do.
And I'm not sure we know what depression can really do.
My hope is that the next time you start to recognize you are sinking, or are sunk, you start to inquire within, even as it is happening: Where am I? What am I doing? What is real for me? What do I want to change but feel I cannot at all? The Me who is higher me, the Guiding Me, show me what is my truth. Where are we going? What needs to change? What am I trying to live with that You don't need us to live anymore?
Embrace this journey. Birthing can be fast or slow. Your life support, your buoy, your life rope is this: everything changes, it cannot stay the same. This depression will end, it's a firm law of the universe, it cannot ever stay the same. Just hold that rope and be where you are. Find some support. Let some things go. Step into the awareness that this is sacred deep work, and you are on a journey. The getting there can be a challenge, and it can be also a joy. Both are very much true.
Depression is a birth canal.
It's dark, it's isolating, you can't quite be yourself, it moves you from one place of being into another.
You don't know how long it will take.
You don't know what's at the end of it.
You may really lose your life in it, and you cannot tell when you enter it.
You just know you're there suddenly, sinking, or sunk in.
It's a device of Spirit, the capital S spirit, the higher self, the You who guides the way. It gets you in there, that dark little spot, so you can let go, gestate, reconfigure. You are flattened by the process, squeezed dry, a shell.
In the old days, the very very old days, this process was honored and recognized by community. People would be assigned to watch over you, to support you, to hold your responsibilities together for you while you went on this journey.
And it is a journey.
It can take you so very far away from yourself, and who you used to be.
And in the old days, you'd be scared. You'd allow yourself to be scared and be shown things about who we all really are. You'd tune in, sinking or sunk in, and watch your old you fight the process. You'd watch the stirrings of the new you emerge from nothingness, rooting in through you.
It was scary, and painful, and very present-y.
And you'd be numb. In the midst of this scariness and presentness, you'd be numb. You wouldn't feel like you. You'd feel nothing and yet still know you were feeling not like yourself. You'd feel the weight of the canal, asking you to pause, to stay still, to be moved by it rather than moving yourself.
In the old days, you could do this. You could lay on the ground and it would all move around you. Now, now you lay on couches or in beds, or lay in your soul as your body moves you around. But the laying down, the staying still, is part of the process. Everything reconfigures when Spirit uses depression. It still all moves around you.
This motion, this reconfiguring, is the contractions into the new world: you whirlpool down into it, like a baby being birthed, through the spiral of the canal into the other side.
The other side may be more life. Or it may be new life (we'd call it death but it's never death now is it).
Spirit takes this gamble because You, the You who guides the way, is here to learn something that cannot be learned anywhere else. And if you can't learn it as you are, then you can learn it as you will be, and depression is the device to get you from as you are to where you will be.
Spirit has been talking to you the whole time. If you weren't able to get yourself with dialogue to where you will be so the next part of your life can happen, Spirit uses this device to ensure you move from as you are to where you will be.
In the old days, we'd know Spirit talks to us.
Now,... now, I'm not sure we do.
And I'm not sure we know what depression can really do.
My hope is that the next time you start to recognize you are sinking, or are sunk, you start to inquire within, even as it is happening: Where am I? What am I doing? What is real for me? What do I want to change but feel I cannot at all? The Me who is higher me, the Guiding Me, show me what is my truth. Where are we going? What needs to change? What am I trying to live with that You don't need us to live anymore?
Embrace this journey. Birthing can be fast or slow. Your life support, your buoy, your life rope is this: everything changes, it cannot stay the same. This depression will end, it's a firm law of the universe, it cannot ever stay the same. Just hold that rope and be where you are. Find some support. Let some things go. Step into the awareness that this is sacred deep work, and you are on a journey. The getting there can be a challenge, and it can be also a joy. Both are very much true.