Depression comes, depression goes, and I often have no idea why. Sometimes, I suddenly break out of it through mysterious dreams that wake my whole spirit up. Those are the unexpected blessings, no more to be explained than the sudden recurrence of this illness. There are frightening dreams as well when I may be wandering […]
Spirituality
The Healing Silence When Time Stops
My mental clock is always running, and most of each day I tensely evaluate what I’m doing by its measurement. Am I using this time productively, am I wasting it? Most people adapt to schedules fairly well, but for a depressive mind, time is another weapon. It becomes the relentless reminder that I am not […]
The Crowded Emptiness of a Depressed Man
Long before I began to recover from depression, I stumbled my way into moments when time seemed to disappear. My mind cleared itself out completely, and I found myself in a kind of stillness that I can only call spiritual. Those were hopeful experiences, the closest I’ve come to the sense of oneness that Jill […]
Meditation and a Prayer for Healing
This is an edited and shortened version of a post on meditation I did some time ago. The prayer at the end remains important to me, so I thought I’d put it up again. I hope it makes some sense to you. Here are a few journal excerpts from many years ago about early experience […]
Facing My Double Again
catatonickid recently published a post about facing your double, reaching a place where nothing can be explained, a place where no choice could possibly be right. She calls that the “ideal argument for healing,” or, in the quoted words of Marie-Louise von Franz: “the beginning of the process of individuation” – the joining of the […]
The Gift of Belief
A strange thing happened recently in the midst of confusion over multiple recovery strategies. I suddenly realized that something had changed deep down – at the level of basic belief about myself. But before I can explain, I need to back up for a moment. I’ve been searching for some time to find the right […]
Healing Waters in the Grand Canyon
Some Rights Reserved by efleming on Flickr This is another of the first posts on this blog that I’ve revised. It describes an incident from many years ago, but the experience gave me an image of healing that has never left. I come back to it again and again whenever I need to push off […]
A Clear Voice Amid Depression
Some Rights Reserved by Stygiangloom at Flickr. Thinking about recovery from depression often makes me dizzy. I’m trying to follow at once all the brief streaks of light from this roman candle mind. Each one’s gone before I can see where it’s headed, and I wind up chasing nothing. I have even asked myself, why […]
