I want to keep this online journal honest. There are times when I have doubts. Not just doubts on a specific spiritual path, but doubts of God (Sugmad) from any path. Recent events in the world has gotten me down. Perhaps the information overload of abusers, and wars has turned my head from hope. Perhaps it is personal events where I feel isolated, and friendless. Or perhaps it is a biological problem that has existed with me as a shadow, always wanting to steal my light with its negative force.

From the Eckankar faith I turned to the Holy book of the Shariyat Ki Sugmad. The concordance of the leather bound edition has only one entry for depression. That entry refers to depression under the topic of self-harm or suicide. In that topic it defines suicide as a way of harming others. Of trying to strike back in threat to get what someone wants. It refers to depression as a tool of the crafty to beguile another into meeting their needs of attention.

I felt like weeping. Even here I am not finding support. In my case, I do not use my sadness to control others. I keep it deeply bound under my skin. I wear the false smile of someone happy, when I feel so utterly worthless.

There was a moment, when I was around 7 or 8 years old. My father took me with him as he ministered unto those at a hospice. There was a room there, mustard yellow, where a woman lay in a hospital bed. She looked in her 90’s. My father approached and she clasped his hand in utter fear. She couldn’t speak. He began reading the Bible to her. I turned away to review her room. There were no cards. No family messages. No balloons. She had outlived all those who loved her. I walked to the big windows in her room and looked out across the city below. We were perhaps 6 floors up and from here I could see this urban scrawl. Through the grey mylar, the world “out there” looked pitiful. Churns of smoke billowed from factory chimneys. Grey lifeless buildings sprouted up here and there. In that space of moment a thought, a seed, was planted: “Is this all there is?”

Is this all there is. That simple statement. That poison. I hesitate to even write it, over the concern of how it might affect another, yet at the same time I need to tell someone if but the letters on a page are my only listeners. Those words changed me. I fell into a depression at that age. There were times I would shake it off, becoming distracted with a toy, a game, just something. But once I settled, those thoughts were there, waiting.

My depression was hidden and locked away. I didn’t use it as a weapon. I didn’t use it as a tool to beguile my parents or twist another to do my will. This was a real pain.

Many years later in life, my friend Rachel kills herself. I knew Rachel for maybe 10 years. I worked with her. She and her husband invited me over to their parties. She never used depression as a weapon. She never threatened suicide with us. As the story goes, she asked her husband to get something at the store, on Christmas day, and while he was out, she took her life.

While there are people who will use their grief for personal gain, there are many more who simply suffer. We are not normal. We sit in the shadows and don’t regale others with our problems or pain. Often we help others sail into the sky, while we sink in an emotional quicksand. We rarely ask for help.

I turned to the Kindle version of the same book and did a key word search. The word depression appeared two more times in the Shariyat Ki Sugmad. One of those times it was stated:

Therefore, instead of relying on his own forces, he expects the help of the MAHANTA or some supernatural agency. While speculating about the goal and the direction, he forgets the effects which result from his efforts in the Spiritual Exercises of ECK. He forgets that there is really a way out of his personal misery of every kind; out of the meaninglessness of life; out of boredom, discouragement, failure, obsessive anxiety, or depression; and out of fear. He learns that there is a way out of these Kal effects into the freedom of life. That way is the ECK way.

The Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad, Books One&Two, 3rd Edition (p. 337). ECKANKAR. Kindle Edition.

That is the closest statement of solution towards depression. The answer to depression, according to this passage, is in the Spiritual Exercises. Perhaps that is the answer. The ownership of the sadness being my own failure to do enough, or to be focused on the situation in and around me.

The same advice was once given me by a Psychologist. She suggested I fall back on the spiritual exercises of my journey at that time (Buddhism). The thing about depression… when it’s real… it saps away motivation and energy, even a prayer or a meditation is a challenge too far to grasp.