Lessons
From Light Shining Through Depression
by
Dr. Darryl Pokea
|
We
are living in a civilization where it has become commonplace to
pass pain around.
Anyone
can be vulnerable as they struggle to live.
We all have witnessed the bullying and disrespect that
generate helpless feelings in our workplace, our schools, with our
neighbors, and within our families.
While terrorism may be the overt manifestation of the
insanity of passing pain onto others, hidden terrorism continues
in each of us whenever we use one another as containers for our
pain and carelessly discard them. Everyone’s
light is dimmed and lessons are lost when we use our pain as the
new weapon of mass destruction.
When we don’t deal with our
own pain within, we more than likely pass it onto others.
This, “passing of pain” creates a dampening of consciousness
where waves of disempowerment and helplessness are learned.
It is not surprising that the consequences of using others
as a container for our pain can be witnessed in the frequency of
“depression” throughout our population.
While there are both biological tendencies and effects in
depression, it is misleading to attribute the real origins of
depression to these factors alone.
Any of us as human beings can easily slip into depression
as we begin to feel helpless and trapped.
Often, unbeknownst to us, we can become vessels for massive
clouds of disharmonious pain and despair that float unresolved and
unprocessed that have been passed into the ethers. |
Words from the Artist, Jan Jennings: This sketch illustrates depression, a quiet
fear. The fear is an unspoken, unconscious fear of Self. It is a time of paralysis where
there is no emotion or any real movement or growth. It is a time of mind-numbing
sameness, routine, and the stubborn refusal to face one's Self. Depression is a refusal to
turn around, face the light and begin the slow ascent up the stairs.
www.janjenningsart.com |
None
of us in our species can escape our lessons by passing what we do not wish
to deal with in ourselves, onto others. Every
one of us has been both the perpetrator and receiver of pain.
We are all interconnected. Our
entire species needlessly suffers whether we are the perpetrator passing
pain on to everyone else, or whether we are a receptacle for that same
pain. Both participants enter
darkened states of being in which the life lessons we came here to learn
are squelched and postponed. It has
become commonplace for many to remain unconscious and automatic as they
seek an externally defined prosperity that can exclude their own intrinsic
sense of well-being. This is a
prelude to depression. As we seek
our sense of self in these ways, we can be earning a living, without
living; we sacrifice our own peace of mind and disconnect from body and
Spirit.
Depression
is a defense that attempts to maintain control when things are perceived
as going out of control, and these days, there is much to perceive around
us as going out of control. As pain
can overload any of us, perception is altered and the ego misleads the
left-brain to veto the right brain and limbic (emotional) brain processes.
Some of the right brain processes that are suppressed are:
our sense of living in a body, our internal sense of self, and the
intrinsic understandings of life that come from processing all of our
feelings moment to moment.
Depression
is not “a feeling.” Depression
is: “not feeling.” As feelings
of helplessness, despair, rage, and sadness are blocked from surfacing,
they congest into a confused volatile mass that the left-brain, under the
ego’s influence, concludes is hopelessly unmanageable.
Then the left-brain, in chattering thoughts, dwells upon past
negative experiences and predicts the same about the future, as it views
pain in the world. This stops any
healing thoughts or sense of well-being and eventually immobilizes any
healthy activity in both the body and the mind. The numbing of feelings
dampens the immune system, the body’s healthy natural defense.
The negative thoughts cloud consciousness.
Much energy is expended as feelings are “pushed down” into our
emotional brain and a narrow left-brain consciousness focuses on “put
downs” from the past and anticipates them coming in the future.
The
feelings that are bubbling to the surface, in spite of depression’s
attempt to squash them, are sacred impasse moments.
They may be judged by our left-brain as quite ugly as they are
often unprocessed rage, despair, helplessness, fear, grievous sorrow, etc.
If we don’t pause in moments of embracing and healing each of
them, the opportunity to have the full range of the complements of these
feelings: confidence, hope,
courage, self-worth, empowerment, joy, etc. is also lost.
Only in embracing the deepest sorrow can we also know the deepest
joy. Without the light of
understanding these painful emotions, we return to an endless cycle of
depression. Here we continue the
habit of hurting ourselves inside and those outside us, as they may suffer
in seeing us suffer. All this
promotes passing the pain again, as those around us may also suffer by
learning to ignore our suffering and their own.
We are all interactively connected to one an “other”
collectively, and cannot ignore this.
For
those of us who follow our Spirit’s lead in true evolution and want to
understand all that we are, another path is taken.
This path breaks the depression and leads to an understanding that
there are no negative feelings because every feeling has its
transformational lessons as well as its rich complementary emotion.
When we experience and understand fear, we can experience and
understand courage. As we process
our rage and feelings of helplessness, our confidence and strength also
emerges. When we embrace and
understand grievous sadness, we can embrace and understand the fullness of
joy. In connection to our Spirit,
we can understand that the feelings, which have been postponed the
longest, may express themselves first. We
can trust the cellular wisdom of our limbic emotional brain as it
orchestrates the sequence for the release of feelings.
We can compassionately observe the unfolding process, rather than
control it.
We
may accept the courage that our Creator offers as our Spirit supports our
minds and bodies in the healthy release of emotions.
When we embrace each of the so-called “negative feelings” with
the Light of Understanding long enough, they do transform and dissolve
into deep understanding of ourselves. Since
not all of us are trapped by negative thoughts and feelings at once, those
who are free from the habit can encourage us in making the needed changes.
We can dissolve terrorism from within, when we process our own pain and
cease passing it around to others. As
we recognize and observe that we can shift out of the clouds and darkness
of such depressed states, we learn so much about light, compassion and
healing in ourselves that we may then extend the same to others.
As
we climb the stairs in our evolution of both individual and collective
consciousness, we must do so with balance.
We all have times when we are caught in negative thought processes.
Others can remind us in their moments of being free from such
thoughts that we too may be liberated from what are old habits in our
species. We each are responsible
for balancing our own steps in our evolution as best as we can.
We also have hands that can reach out to each other as we mutually
balance one another in our collective journey.
We can remember that every one of us is in the stairwell, taking
steps in the evolutionary climb of our species.
The
invitation to return to the Light from the deepest darkness is always
there. Even if we have been
imprisoned by the numbing states of depressed consciousness for a while,
we also know that we have become sensitized in those dark states to see
the pinpoints of Light in the distance. As
we accept the invitation within, we may participate in wellness of mind
that may be shared by everyone. In
these wordless understandings, we are all to be instruments bringing
Divine illumination throughout the entire stair well.
©2004
All Rights Reserved
___________________
Dr.
Darryl Pokea (pronounced “Po-Kay”) is a professional speaker and
author on Mind, Body and Spirit Interconnectedness and Complementary
Medicine. Dr. Pokea invites you to
his website to view synopses of his presentations and listen to samples of
his healing music and soothing voice in his Meditation and Relaxation
CD’s at www.drpokea.com
