I recently featured in this blog an article encouraging the use of spiritual resources to improve one’s mental health. It turned out to be a hot button topic. Shortly afterwards, there was a discussion in one of our Facebook friend groups that fascinated me because more people were drawn to talk about their struggles with depression than most topics I’d seen initiated on this social media site before. There is such an urgency to the issue it demands further consideration. Many people are suffering; direct and immediate responses are needed.
The host of the Facebook discussion wrote, “I am moved by the stories of people who know all is not right with their emotional/mental states and pursue full health. When my therapist asked ‘how much time a day I was willing to spend on my mental health?’ it really stopped me. But,” she protested, “that would take time away from my many projects, my work schedule, my housework, etc." The need for a daily application of effort is a consistent recommendation from those who offer therapy, care or guidance.
Many participants in the discussion were concerned to find a medication that was more effective and also safe, along with a good cognitive therapist. However it is meditation as therapy, not medication that I want to focus on here. The group came up with five pillars of mental wellness: “sleep, nutrition, exercise,” another one which was termed “stress reduction.” This category is the one under which breathing and yoga, “being present,” Tai Chi, and meditation techniques are usually listed and recommended by health professionals. The fifth and last pillar mentioned by the group was social support, something these Facebook friends were clearly providing for each other.
Though the causal factor, loss of faith, was not raised in our discussion group (a mostly secular group of poets and writers), it is a major cause of depression. I don’t necessarily just mean faith in God or Jesus or some other spiritual entity (though I would include it). It often involves the loss of a dependable path that once inspired a reaction of desire, passion, or the will to accomplish a goal. We may already even know that what is needed is a re-examination of our faith perspective, looking for ways to regain it. We may also realize this redirection to a goal we’ve believed in before needs to be either recovered, refreshed, or revised and renewed. But depression takes over sometimes, those times when we encounter weakness, helplessness, and even laziness as we contemplate the work required to accomplish a renewal/revival.
Jesus in The UB is a strong advocate for meditation, his “stress reduction technique,” worshipful communion as he describes it. “Believers must increasingly learn how to step aside from the rush of life — escape the harassments of material existence — while they refresh the soul, inspire the mind, and renew the spirit by worshipful communion. God-knowing individuals are not discouraged by misfortune or downcast by disappointment. Believers are immune to the depression consequent upon purely material upheavals; spirit livers are not perturbed by the episodes of the material world.” (156:5.12-13, pg. 1739)
We could all benefit by reading the case histories of depression recorded in The UB: Fortune (130:6, pg. 1437), the woman with the spirit of infirmity (167:3.2, pg. 1835), and the apostle Thomas (139:8.10-11, pg. 1562). Jesus was very understanding of Thomas’s struggles. He never questioned the strength of Thomas’s belief or faith. His support of Thomas and his teachings reassure us that the more we progress in our faith, the more we will “increasingly” be immune to depression.
One of the meditative techniques taught at conferences and in many churches, is the Centering Prayer, a practice promoted by Fr. Thomas Keating (www.contemplativeoutreach.org). We can in our contemplation or worship time move the perspective away from ego-based mind to spirit mind. We allow spirit mind to come in and consult with us on our faith path, our life journey. “The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inner depths of his heart.” (Proverbs 20:27) Whether we call this process meditation, worship, communion, prayer, or visualization, the technique can have the same results we desire—renewal and revival.
Completion of the grief process, or unfinished emotional business, was a topic that came up in the Facebook discussion. One of the group said, “It is true that true mental stability requires a lot of attention, attention that I am often reluctant to give, partly because I resent having to deal with past traumas.” I have sometimes wondered if there is a final point where we have completed the grief process. My own experience in completing my experience with my father seems to require occasional revisiting.
http://www.griefrecoverymethod.com/1993/02/unresolved-grief-difficult-person/
The apostle Thomas suffered from depression and it seemed to stem at least partly from an unresolved grief from his childhood. “Thomas had some very bad days; he was blue and downcast at times. The loss of his twin sister when he was nine years old had occasioned him much youthful sorrow and had added to his temperamental problems of later life.” (139:8.10)
The solution to his depression was choosing to take advantage of the “pillar” of his support group, his fellowship with the other apostles. “He was inclined toward melancholic brooding when he joined the apostles, but contact with Jesus and the apostles largely cured him of this morbid introspection.” (139:8.5)
