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You are here: Home / Self-Help / Spiritual Paths to Healing – 1

Spiritual Paths to Healing – 1

by John Folk-Williams

Ever since reading about Bill Wilson’s struggle with alcohol and the role that religious experience played in his recovery, I’ve had hope that spirituality can also be decisive in undoing the impact of long-term depression. William James, whose Varieties of Religious Experience was so important to Wilson and other founders of AA, wrote in that study that the world is divided into two broad classes of people as far as religion is concerned, the once-born and the twice-born. The once-born take the world as it is, sum up their problems and successes and move along in life with a core acceptance of themselves and the religious practice they were raised with. The twice-born, as you might suspect, run into problems. They long for and work hard at finding a second birth into a new life of spiritual fulfillment. James describes them as the “sick souls who need to be twice-born in order to be happy.” Hmm, wonder where I fit.

Sick soul? Now I’m not saying that depression is a spiritual sickness, but my search for a way to get beyond that condition at least coincides with another lifelong search, the driving need to understand spiritual life.

OK, red flag right there – “driving need” – that sounds too wrapped up in this world, unbalanced, not at all detached, perhaps even indicating that I’m under the influence of the undesirables and rejects of the spiritual world. All the mystical traditions agree that you don’t reach enlightenment or communion with God by the sweat of your brow or by your willing it. True, that world may open to you after you’ve cultivated a certain discipline, and that includes not taking worldly things and your less ruly emotions too seriously. But when it really happens, well, it just happens, ready or not, you are tapped and zapped. It’s a gift, however your tradition might define it. In the Christian/Catholic one I was raised in, it’s grace, God’s free gift to you. And after it’s over (because it won’t last all that long), you have to wait for its return. You can’t command, will or work it back. You can only plug at your daily practice to keep you in shape for the main event – if it ever comes your way again.

You certainly can’t go chasing a spiritual encounter simply to get rid of depression or any disease. So what’s the connection? Why do I keep thinking that one path to help me out of depression is spiritual? Step one is finding my own connection to spirituality as part of deep belief. After that, perhaps I can figure out, with help, the way that belief can lead to healing.

There are experiences I’ve had that convince me there is a spiritual world and that part of my well-being has to do with that world. Now I realize that the guardians of the mystical traditions – and there are people in every tradition who can guide and let you know when you’re kidding yourself and when something “real” is happening – would probably say I was simply suffering from illusions (distortions of reality) or, worse, delusions (completely unreal stuff). But even if that were so, what incredible illusions they are!

I’m including dreams in this category – in fact, I might be on safer ground if I just refer to all of them as dreams. After all, I’m writing in a mental health context here, and I wouldn’t want to have another tag added to my diagnosis. Perhaps I thought I was awake when some of these things occurred, but, of course, I must have been day-dreaming.

Here’s an example of one day-dream. This was not the transcendence of instant conversion – the flash of light, the mountain-top view or the voice of God. It was only a glimpse of a different world, yet one that filled me with a sense that there was a lot more to “reality” than I had been imagining.

I was listening to music – the most powerful evocation of spiritual creative forces bringing a world into being that I’ve ever heard. It was the orchestral opening of an opera that entranced me into a meditative state in which the buzz of thoughts and words and feelings disappeared completely. The rhythms, chords, melodies blended into a unified flow that carried me into a different state of mind. Suddenly, there was no room, no music, no thinking or feeling, hardly a “me” at all. I was immersed in a different medium that felt like a separate world, and I seemed to exist as part of a flowing consciousness in which everything was a part of everything else. As a part of this consciousness, I simply apprehended everything encountered there. Things were not solid, separate entities but flowed right into me so that I was taking part in what they were – knowing them completely, instantaneously, as if they were simply part of me. There was no need to think, identify something, place it in a context, wonder about its meaning – I just became one with it. There were trees, rocks, animals, people contained in this medium and sharing their essences with my own. I had the deepest conviction that I was glimpsing a part of reality hidden away from awareness most of the time but which was the other side of normal life – unity instead of division, wholeness instead of separateness.

This experience came to an end as I started to think about how it could be connected to everyday life. I realized that this special world I was seeing was somehow under or prior to my existence as a person. Struggling to imagine how to capture it in words, I envisioned in a flash that essence I was trying to represent and saw it rise up from a cellular level through all the systems of nerves, blood, the clumsy physicality of the body and the mind and try to merge with syllables, words, sentences, which then managed with great difficulty to emerge from my hand through the structure of a pencil onto a piece of paper. But what emerged was only the dead shadow of the essence I had started to try to capture, an essence that had been a part of me in that fluid world. Now it was just words on paper that could not begin to incorporate that different reality. And so that day dream ended. I felt thrilled to have discovered a different world, one that I could only think of as spiritual, and yet dismayed that in this physical world I did not have the means to grasp or portray more than a tiny sense of what it was like.

For a long time afterward, I tried to recreate that experience, but such things happen without your willing them – in unexpected ways. I thought then that the key to this life could be found on a spiritual plane, quite removed from normal reality, that spiritual knowledge or clairvoyance would dissolve any problem with depression or other life crisis. So I looked for, and sometimes found, more glimpses of that world, moments when a very different awareness took hold of me and brought me again to that feeling of wholeness and oneness with a world underlying the one we see. But whatever that place might be, it’s not the place I’m really living in and experiencing everything I go through.

It became clear to me that it had to be in this life and this reality that I would find a way of deal with illness – there would be no shortcut to being born again.

What these experiences left me with, though, was a deep belief not only that there is a spiritual dimension to life but also that this dimension is a part of dealing with struggles like depression. I’m still trying to grasp what that means and find a way of pulling this awareness into my life as part of a healing process.

I’m looking deeply into the spiritual traditions I’m linked to through my own history to see if I can undo years of disbelief to find a core of practice that will guide me. Like many, I have a fractured faith – a belief in spiritual reality, and in God as a kind of ultimate presence, but great distance from the organized structures of belief in religious institutions.

The sharing of stories about this effort is my way of learning, and I’m grateful for any you can tell. Do you have a spiritual belief and practice that really helps in healing or adapting to long-term depression?

Some Rights Reserved by Mr.Physics at Flickr

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Filed Under: Self-Help, Spirituality Tagged With: depression, reality, religion, wholeness

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. John D says

    May 5, 2008 at 12:58 am

    You’re right about James’ comment. People are more diverse in their spiritual lives than his split into two classes suggests, and his book is far richer than that statement. It was a useful starting point for my own thinking, but I need to come back often to The Varieties of Religious Experience to do it justice. There are so many who struggle long and hard to understand the faith they were born into that the once-born, twice-born idea doesn’t really get it. During his era, though, a hundred years ago, the ties of organized religion were much more powerful than they are now and social classes more rigid.

    Thanks for this comment. I’m getting really interested in the great stories on your blog.

    John

  2. Brenda says

    May 3, 2008 at 9:04 pm

    I’m not sure I agree with James’ assessment or my understanding of it. He makes it seem like just accepting “religious practice they were raised with,” for example, is the preferred choice.

    Socrates said “The unexamined life is not worth living.” He approach was more philosophical than religious … if there really is a difference.

    Granted, I don’t suffer from chronic depression, but I got a whole lotta angst. And if the choice is to suffer the ‘growing pains’ that provoke my search for what’s true and right vs. being a sheep that can be led anywhere, I’ll chose the angst any day!

  3. John D says

    May 3, 2008 at 12:36 am

    Thanks, Zathyn – That’s also true for me, that the unexpected opening into a spiritual life has had far more impact than participating in organized religion. What I’m finding these days, though, is how many rich spiritual and mystical traditions are found as minority streams within the great faiths – like Sufism, the Catholic mystical and contemplative writers and Jewish mystical traditions.

    Thanks, again, MrSegedy – for letting me know about Lynch’s book. He is one of the amazing directors who inspires me over and over again. And your comment about the higher power reminds me of Paul Tillich’s formulation, that God and faith relate to the ultimate concerns we have about existence. There is always that unexplainable ultimate dimension, and that is the sphere we’re trying to deal with in talking about a higher power. But I agree that AA-type slogans don’t get you through. Meditation is a more effective way for me.

    All the best,

    John

  4. MrSegedy says

    May 2, 2008 at 11:13 pm

    John –

    Since I too suffer from the burden of depression I can relate to the search for answers and the even more difficult quest for some answers regarding the path to spiritual enlightenment. I also grew up with the whole miasma of catholic guilt and basically have rejected it entirely-my idea of salvation is not some tortured fellow hanging on a cross. No thanks. I would prefer a smiling laughing god, more like Buddha, and less like Christ on the cross. Anyway something I wanted to mention to you is my wife gave me a wonderful birthday present and that was a copy of David Lynch reading from his book Catching the Big Fish. Mr. Lynch is an outspoken proponent of transcendental meditation and on the audio version his enthusiasm and candor comes shinning through. I have downloaded this on my Ipod and so while I am driving in the car I will set it to shuffle. In between songs suddenly I will hear Mr. Lynch’s clear voice as he delivers a random public service message for my soul. I have found this to be a very useful tool in fighting depression and truly believe that there are many paths to healing. I do believe that the path that Mr. Lynch has chosen for himself has had some amazing consequences as evident in his overall productivity as an artist and film maker. I have not gone so far as to start practice TM but I must say that he has aroused my curiosity. I just wanted to pass this along for whatever its worth. I am also trying to work an al anon program via the internet and have found that even though some of the overtly spiritual messages have left me feeling somewhat reactive, that overall the definition of a higher power can be whatever you choose and not strictly god, a religious diety, etc. The program is interesting and does help one keep perspective but when that black hole opens up and envelopes me I am not sure that slogans and sayings can help curb the blood dimmed tide that sweeps over me.

    Keep up the good work. What you’re doing is important and helpful.

    Thanks.

    MrSegedy

  5. http://zathynpriest.com/blog says

    May 2, 2008 at 8:20 am

    Although I was never baptised I did attend a Catholic highschool and, obviously, was taught religion from that perspective. Part of me wanted to connect with what I was being taught, but I could never find that connection or belief from a Catholic/Christian viewpoint. It left me vacant and questioning.

    In the latter part of my teens I was admitted to hospital for a minor operation. In the recovery room I was given a drug I took a bad reaction to and was clinically dead for about three minutes. The experience I had during that time became my lead into spirituality as opposed to organised religion.

    Through all my dark depressions, and the PTSD, my spirituality has been a major aide to my survival. Yes, it took a whole lot of effort on my behalf as well, fighting this mental illness demon always does. Still, I’d hate to think where I’d be now if I didn’t have the faith I have.

    Best Wishes,
    Zathyn

  6. John D says

    May 2, 2008 at 12:48 am

    Evan –

    That’s an interesting idea – the false self dying. I’m not sure I know what that means. I’ve certainly pushed myself into roles that went against the grain and felt liberated in getting away from them. And depression itself can present a kind of false personality that disappears when healing occurs – if you’re lucky. Is that depression self what you’re friend meant?

    John

  7. Evan says

    May 1, 2008 at 8:07 am

    Hi John,

    I think the connection of healing and spirituality is that they are both about wholeness.

    Like you I have a fractured faith. I grew up a protestant and still regard myself as sort of christian (more than anything else anyway: the decisive issues for me are grace and the valuing of individuality). However, I don’t find the institution nurturing of my spirituality – if I ever did.

    My own spiritual practice is journalling.

    One woman I know who suffered badly with depression for a number of years found her connection to spirituality in it was that it was a part of her (false-)self dying. She saw it as kind of the dark night before the new birth. This doesn’t offer much by way of specific guidance though.

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