{"id":811,"date":"2010-10-21T08:22:11","date_gmt":"2010-10-21T12:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=811"},"modified":"2010-10-21T08:22:11","modified_gmt":"2010-10-21T12:22:11","slug":"what-depression-does-for-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=811","title":{"rendered":"What Depression Does for Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Written in October 2003)
\n\tWoke at 5:41 terrified. Tried to bring compassion to my fear. No softening, all is meaningless. No sense of contact with the spirit realm.
\n\tLast night at NVC check-in I talked about my despair. I said I need to know that what I do makes a difference \u2014 and then something about fear for the world \u2014 how things are getting worse \u2014 needing to know that there\u2019s a spiritual realm. I see now that what I need is to know that the spirit realm is much bigger than the earth and holds it gently and lovingly. I said at the end that I thought we needed to practice empathy and recommended that we do Chapter 12: Liberating Ourselves and Counseling Others. I see now that I was dimly perceiving the importance of supporting each other in the place we are now<\/em>, rather than trying to push ourselves to get where we want to be. (O my, what an easing in my heart. This is the answer to my own problem \u2014 I\u2019m so desperately trying to be somewhere else than I am \u2014 wanting to \u201chave my life again\u201d and not be stuck in this place of despair and meaninglessness.)
\n\tDespair\/depression takes away everything but the core \u2014 and the core is truth, or true self. So there\u2019s integrity in the willingness to face the darkness and not brush it aside with medication.
\n\tSo what has despair\/depression done for me? By making everything meaningless, it forces me to renew my commitment to the dances: as expressions of human pain and joy, of connection with community, nature and the divine, as expressions of diversity. When even Neskaya becomes meaningless, then the place I come back to is that my work on the transformation of myself \u2014 in particular bringing compassion to my pain \u2014 is also work on the human energy field \u2014 and it\u2019s really the only work that has any possibility of making a real difference because all manifestation\/change in the physical realm is subject to death and disintegration. So if Neskaya really does function as a \u201chealing sanctuary\u201d it\u2019s not because of the building (tho it\u2019s important that it exists as a container) or because I keep the building clean, but because of my work on myself, my continued efforts to become more conscious of what is going on in me, and to bring compassion to all of it.
\n\tI\u2019m so surprised. Waking in fear, I thought I was in for another bad day, but this writing has helped a lot. Still, I don\u2019t think \u201cI\u2019m fine now\u201d, I still feel pretty precarious and unable to make decisions, function in the world. I hope I\u2019ll at least be able to shower and wash my hair. And if I can\u2019t, then compassion for this poor woman who\u2019s having such a hard time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Written in October 2003) Woke at 5:41 terrified. Tried to bring compassion to my fear. No softening, all is meaningless. No sense of contact with the spirit realm. Last night at NVC check-in I talked about my despair. I said … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depression","category-healing","category-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}