The Darkness of Depression

Q: "When I get depressed, I lose my sense of direction and nothing makes sense to me anymore. I can't make decisions, I can't express myself, and I can't concentrate on anything. I lose interest in my life to the degree that I don't care if I live or not. Thinking seems to take an impossible effort, so I try to do as little thinking as possible. The hard part is keeping my mind busy with stuff that doesn't require any effort. I watch a lot of television. Can meditation help me?"

A: Meditation can help because it brings real light and energy to your mind. By definition, meditation is a mental exercise designed to affect you physically, emotionally and spiritually, in which you become aware of more of reality than usual, and in that awareness "rehearse" the attitude and approach to life that you would like to have.

One aspect of reality of which we are little aware is that light and matter can exchange photons and electrons. Matter gives off light, and light gets absorbed into the structure of matter. This happens with all matter all the time, so when we think about this we are not fantasizing. Thinking about it happening in your mind recharges your mind with light.

The way to do this is to sit still in a relaxed position and close your eyes. Without stimulation from the outside, you seem to be inside your mind. Be aware of your thinking, the process of the mind that produces your thoughts. Even in a depressed state, your mind is generating ideas constantly. Now imagine that your thoughts are rays of light, your mind is a lamp, and your thinking is the process that creates rays of light from a source of light.

The mental process has been described as a circulation of electrical and chemical signals, but it is therapeutic to describe it as a circulation of messages of light. When you are depressed, your mind has less light to circulate. The remedy is to "lighten" your mind, making it "brighter." Awareness is creative -- being aware of that which is happening in reality increases that of which you are aware. Being aware of light increases the light.

Light is an especially good antidote for the bleak and gray landscape of the mind that occurs in depression, when your whole world is enveloped in a darkness that makes even the familiar seem incomprehensible. Turning up the light makes things visible and understandable again. A strong light makes the mind clear, quick and also discriminating.

A further meditation for the mind is to breathe slowly and gently in and out through your mouth, letting your exhalation disperse your body and mind like a wind scatters leaves. This opens up the interior space in your mind and overcomes the confinement of your thoughts. Then, without pausing after the exhalation, draw your inhalation into the center of your chest. This shifts your thinking to a deeper level, a feeling in your heart.

When your mind gets overcome by stress or paralyzed by a dilemma, your thinking goes "underground," dropping out of sight mentally and operating in your invisible depths. You want to honor the unconscious processing that happens even in the darkness of depression, and this breath practice does that by bringing the energy of your breath into the depth of your heart.

By Puran Bair, author of "Living from the Heart" (Random House, 1998)
© 1998 by The Institute for Applied Meditation, Inc.
Send your questions about meditation to: Email IAM.