Depression and Spiritual Growth

D. The Role of Mystical Experience (cont.)

2. Support From Afar

There is more. One of the goals in psychotherapy of depressed people is to reduce their personal isolation, to help them feel "normal," to help them understand that people really do care. Similar effects can be achieved very effectively through spiritual experience. If one has an existing belief system, that route should be explored as another avenue for approaching a state of well-being. Our individual problems, and the things we individually respond to emotionally and spiritually, are so different from one person to another that it is impossible for me to give useful generalities. So I would like to offer, as examples, only three short quotes that had a profound effect on me during the period I was struggling hardest, and most successfully, to get well. They are all from the little book The Prayers I Love.

The first is an anonymous prayer which reveals with uncanny accuracy what the state of mind of a very depressed person is.

I have no other helper than You,
no other father,
no other support.
I pray to You.
Only You can help me.
My present misery is too great.
Despair grips me
and I am at my wit's end.
I am sunk in the depths
and I cannot pull myself up or out.
If it is Your will,
help me out of this misery.
Let me know that You are stronger
than all misery and all enemies.
O Lord, if I come through this,
please let the experience contribute to my,
and my brothers' blessing.
You will not forsake me,
this I know.

I don't know how many dozen times I must have read this in 1986; it said perfectly what I wanted to say, and it was a comfort to know that someone else had been there before me, with me. The three lines that made the deepest impression on me at the time were the ones "O Lord, if I can come through this, please let the experience contribute to my and my brothers' blessing." I took them to be a plea and a promise. Please consider this pamphlet as a partial fulfillment of that promise.

The other two quotes are from John Donne. This one is of special value to me because it was a prophetic description, in metaphor, of what actually happened in my life in 1986, where summer emerged directly from the winter of my soul, and Light emerged directly from darkness.

He brought light out of darkness,
not out of lesser light.
He can bring thy summer
out of winter
though thou have no spring ...

John Donne (1573-1631)

And finally, one that helped me remember what was available to me at any time:

God never says
you should have come yesterday.
He never says
you must come again tomorrow.
But today,
if you will hear His voice,
today He will hear you.

John Donne (1573-1631)

What this is saying is that one can it always move towards the Light if one chooses. It is it always there, it is it always available. Depression or no! And then there is the wonderful pledge given in Isaiah 43, mentioned above. Read it!

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