Around 6 million people in the UK knowingly experience periods of
depression. Many [many!] more are believed to be "in denial".

In "The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into
Depressive Disorder"
http://www.Amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195313046/sunflowerheal-21
Professor Jerome Wakefield says that medicating depression as if it
were a disease blocks us from embracing our "miserable" side and
changing our lives for the better.

In today's Daily Mail, six writers who have lived with depression
give their [very mixed] opinions on Wakefield's belief that "DEPRESSION IS GOOD
FOR YOU!"...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1123083

The Soul in Depression
------------------------
In similar vein, is "The Soul in Depression" - an audio book by
Andrew Solomon that you can download FREE (you will need free iTunes
software to do it):
http://www.learnoutloud.com/Free-Audio-Video/Education-and-Professional/Medical/\
The-Soul-in-Depression/25982#

In this series of live interviews with people who have lived through,
or are still living with, depression the point is made that
depression can provide an opportunity to contact a very deep place
within ourself, that was previously unknown.

One of the speakers is Andrew Solomon, author of "Noonday Demon, The: An Atlas
of Depression"
http://www.Amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0684854678/sunflowerheal-21
He explains that the word " depression" was "first used in English to describe
low spirits in 1660". Before that the termed "melancholia" was used. Bravely
cataloguing his own series of depressive episodes, Solomon attempts to go to the
roots of the illness and says that out of his depression emerged qualities of
self he never knew existed and a desire to "find and cling to the reasons for
living".

Some key phrases in the "The Soul in Depression" free audiobook give
a flavour of the content:

"Dark night of the soul"
"Depression is the flaw in love"
"Depression is exhausting!"
"...disconnection from the life force"

Depression as a Place of Transformation / Rebirth
---------------------------------------------------------
A common theme of the contributors is not only that they
have "learned and grown" from depression, but that it is not just a
place of pure suffering - that there are aspects of wonder, mystery,
magic and beauty in the depths of that awful, fearful place of black
despair.

I know this from my own journey there [when I was in my 40s]
Just as in the deepest depths of sadness, there is a very
beautiful "turning point" (how can one experience great beauty and
remain sad?) that poets often speak of, so it is in depression, that
there is a place where pure aloneness/separateness ceases to become
hell and starts to become a peaceful, cosmic place of self-
affirmation. However in both cases you have to have the skills and
support to be able to confront and transform the terrifying inner
demons that guard those wondrous places (crucible) of transformation
that lie at the heart of our most-dreaded emotional/spiritual
experiences.

A spiritual connection extending beyond a personal "soul" is
mentioned by some of the contributors, but not the old Judeo-
Christian concept of a superbeing "up in heaven", but a concept
of "God" being the pervasive "Ground of our Being".

Anita Barrows recites her poem "Questo muro" about the journey into
and through the "wall" or "prison" of depression...

********

"You will come at a turning of the trail to a wall of flame...

"After the hard climb & the exhausted dreaming you will come to a
place where he with whom you have walked this far will stop, will
stand beside you on the treacherous steep path and stare as you
shiver at the moving wall, the flame that blocks your vision of what
comes after.

"And that one who you thought would accompany you always, who held
your face tenderly a little while in his hands - who pressed the
palms of his hands into drenched grass & washed from your cheeks the
soot, the tear-tracks - he is telling you now that all that stands
between you & everything you have known since the beginning is this:
this wall.

"Between yourself & the beloved, between yourself & your joy, the
riverbank swaying with wildflowers, the shaft of sunlight on the
rock, the song.

"Will you pass through it now, will you let it consume whatever
solidness this is you call your life, & send you out, a tremor of
heat, a radiance, a changed flickering thing?"

********

The Holistic Approach to Depression
-------------------------------------
Those of us who have travelled this road know well the journey of
which she speaks. But let us not imagine that the experience of
depression can be mastered by spiritual work alone! The 5 pillars
(feeding on each other) of the prison/temple of depression are:

* Negative thinking, defeatism;
* Low self-esteem (including false self-esteem i.e.
[neurotic] "pride" around an illusory self-image);
* Isolation [especially isolation from our "soul" and "shadow"
selves];
* Anger/frustration/aggression turned inwards against self [or
projected outwardly as "blaming" & "victimhood"];
* Trying to make life work via immature patterns e.g. dependency
or "control dramas".



Mike
http://www.sunflower-health.com