Depression is such a powerful state of emptiness and darkness that most people instinctively want nothing to do with it. Even just researching images for this blog post, I felt a gut tendency in myself to want to steer clear of this energy, to take a distance. This is true even when we are the ones who are depressed: we want to be rid of it, get away from it, or fix it somehow. In addition to the depression itself, there often arise shame about being depressed, self-blame about not being able to extricate ourselves from it, and fear about it continuing and/or coming back in the future. No wonder, then, that the use of anti-depressants is ever on the rise, as they promise a medical fix to the problem, so we don't have to deal with it any longer.

This blog is an invitation to breathe and really look. If you don't follow the impulse to turn away, can you simply be with the energy that is expressed in the above photo? Can you notice what arises and stay with the image anyway: the fear of being pulled down or somehow being 'contaminated' by it, the repulsion, the blame? Can you simply look, neutrally, without any concept of what this is, why it's happening, and what needs to be done about it? Can you simply be with it? Can you open your heart to what you see? Can you see with your heart? What happens as you take your time, breathing, looking, being with this energy of depression, being with the man who is suffering with it?

There are certain themes that just seem to be part of our lives. And even if they move into the background for a while and we think we're done with them, they'll show up again and again. They're like red threads, guiding threads: asking, and sometimes even compelling, us to pay attention.

Meditation, love, and healing are three such themes for me. And they came up to announce as themes for the meditation evenings that I'll be offering every other week in Montreal starting in September. I always trust what comes intuitively like that, and often I'll find out as I go along exactly what that means and how it will play out. 

So how do these three fit together?