Dearest Aimee
Oh there is so much beauty and profound truth in what you say !!
Yes, it's so easy to get lost in thinking and talking about, listening to and writing about spirituality and yet not fully practice and live it. Fixated with the finger, and forgetting to look at (and be) the exquisite moon. All that spiritual content out there, existing only to point to what is already here, and yet so often obscuring it due to the mind's fixation on it.
Your depression has brought you such profound insights and opened you to such deep love. How beautiful.
Depression is a regular part of the experience of being this form, and a while ago, I wrote for myself a list of the gifts it brings me (to read in my low periods). I share it here in case it resonates.
- A practice in accepting, loving, being thankful for what feels unacceptable on the surface - and the deepening of Presence that this brings.
- An opening to love. Often the flow of love intensifies during these periods, huge outpourings of it, from a heart that breaks open.
- A deepening of compassion for all those who suffer.
- Spiritual insight and revelation and a lifting of illusion that constant peace could never provide on its own.
- A chance to let go of and release old grief and repressed pain.
- Humility and complete surrender to what is and to life's unfolding.
- A realisation that who I Am is vast enough to contain every depression, every sorrow, every joy, every delight.
For me, the most important practice in these times is to be the space for my depression. To bring deep awareness (and loving acceptance) to the physical sensations of it in the body and in so doing, withdraw attention from any accompanying thoughts. I've learned NEVER to believe painful thoughts in a low state, as they are almost always distortions. I've learned never to try to think my way out of a low mood.
Awareness doesn't get depressed, but it has its role to play in this play of existence and I get a strong sense that it is something that Awareness wants to experience through the human form along with everything else. After all, how meaningful would a state of constant bliss be without the experience of its opposite ?
Anyway, those are just some thoughts in case any of it resonates :)
I send you such love and light.
G xxx
