Back to the Bare Bones...

Lately I’ve been feeling a need to get back to the basics in my “spiritual practice” – back to the bare bones. There is a sense of needing to clear the plate of old paradigms to make way for a clearer way of seeing and being. And - I’ve also been experiencing what I have been calling “depression” off and on for the last few weeks, or as the “Advaitin and contemporary non-dualists” say – depressing is happening… Probably as part of this clearing away…

“Depression” is a strange bedfellow, it can be many things. And I don’t treat this lightly. Sometimes I know her as melancholy, sometimes as heartache, and sometimes an overwhelming oppressive wave of molasses that pulls me under. I never know when she’s going to arrive, or in what costume, or when she’ll leave, nor specifically what it is about. Mostly it’s just kind of this nebulous feeling of deep sadness and longing in the heart. It shows up unexpectedly and stays a while, much like the other feelings that just show up – but I don’t notice them so much when it’s joy or happiness – only the “troubling” ones stand out and grab my attention. When I feel joy or happiness, or peace, I don’t think. Gee this is odd, I must do something about this! No, I am delighted that they came to call and think all must be right with the world or with myself *because* I *feel* “happy”… They reinforce the illusion that this personal “me” has done something “right” and is therefore happy – and therefore I feel the pressure to always be “happy“, to be optimistic – to get rid of “depression” so I can live up to my “happiness” , and start to believe I *deserve* to be “happy” all the time. When the Buddha said that the goal of life is to be “happy” I don’t believe he was talking about head over heels in love kind of happy, but internal “contentment” with life, which is a state of Being that never changes – that doesn’t come and go…

But – depression - well, it comes and goes – like all the other feelings do. It makes “me” (this little me) feel all wrong with the world and myself – unhappy, alone, sad. It’s quite dense actually – like a heavy hand gripping the heart with a pressing pressure – causing a heartache. But what is this heart aching *for*? You’d think with my husband’s new job there would be a sense of peace, optimism, even happiness. But no, a heaviness of heart pulls me deeply inward like a weight… I suspect it has something more to do with an internal orientation to life and being, than the externals of life circumstances – although that’s some of it too - clearing the underbrush of some heavy emotional burdens and beliefs that I’ve been unconsciously carrying for so many years around our life circumstances… And just maybe my husband’s recent return to work allowed all this to emerge…

“Non-dualisms” didn’t work - like: “There is no one here to be depressed.” Okay - so then why am “i” depressing, “i” asked my Self. Or - “i” do not exist – according to non-dualists - so how could “i” be depressed? So “*who* is depressed” then, who is depressing? Non-dual conundrums that keep me in my mind. Ahhh - maybe it is the mind, I thought… So I tried to convince the mind that it was only its thoughts, its beliefs, it stories that were causing this depressing feeling. The mind bought it for a while and then went back to its job – “depressing” – pulling me more deeply in… Even though I *know* intellectually that it is the *personality* of the mind that depresses, and that behind the little me-self personality that feels empty, full of insecurities, doubts, and depression is the Truth – the bare bones Truth of authentic Beingness that we are at the core… But the intellectual knowing didn’t help either… It has to be deeply *known* at the core…

So I sat, journal in hand, as is my style, and said – okay – here I am – show me who you are, show me where you want to go. I followed her inwardly, to see what she would reveal. I saw that she was a thread that ran all the way through my life that I hadn’t seen before– well more that I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge before. She was a golden river that ran through every phase and chapter of my life that held a familiar deep longing in the heart at every turn and bend – a longing for the Truth, somehow misconstrued as “depression”... Interesting that it was golden, not something dark and sinister…. There was no monster lurking under the surface. She took me down the rabbit hole, in a good way, allowing me to come face to face with my delusions… She helped me to see that my life has been a fantasy of distorted characters, stories and feelings that I have become attached to, and have gotten lost in, confused between what is Real and what is fantasy. I recognized that I had identified with the *feeling*, with the *personality* who *feels* depressed, empty, lost, wounded, separate from ones true identity.

Following the thread, I realized that “depression” was really my Heart calling. It was an invitation to follow the lifeline of the feeling all the way back to the Truth that lies beyond the feeling - all the way back to the bare bones Truth at the Heart of Being; which does not mean that by seeing this that “depression” left. Oh no. She’s still a companion, shadowing me on the road here. But it was seen that she’s not who I am. I had mis-identified myself *as* the shadow. In truth, she is a thread of love clearing an opening in my heart, calling me back to a direct encounter with the bare bones Truth…