my soul

my soul

meaning of depression

my story

my soul

quotes and notes

introductory articles

questions

articles by Peter Wilberg

links and bibliography

	- journal entry - "This is utter despair. I feel truly hopeless. I shake with the fear of knowing that this is my life and I am not doing anything with it. Why can’t I move?? There must be meaning in all this. Why do I keep getting up in the morning? Why don’t I just suicide like so many others? Why do I keep on going? I have no hope left. I can’t function in this big world. Voices from my past continually leave me ruined. They toss me around. Fucking up my life. Later: I can’t go on … I cannot go any lower … and yet that seems the only direction I can go. I FEEL desperate. I begin to FEEL how low I can go. I FEEL it. In every ounce of me. In every bit. How low can I go? How low? I keep going down. I have nowhere else left to go. It doesn’t matter if I die doing it … low … but I will keep going down. Fuck everyone … Later: And then suddenly I literally SEE the absolute connection of everything. I SEE it. There are no doubts. I am not imagining it. It is utterly real. I am utterly real. It is as though there is some sort of vital substance that connects everything and yet IS everything – the trees, me, my feelings, the clouds. Everything belongs. Everything is absolutely as it should be. On the one hand I am astounded but on another it just seems so completely obvious. It so much more ordinary, and yet extraordinary than anything I have ever experienced. I try to find the right words, but the coming of this experience is beyond that. It was just "with" me. How, when, why – I can’t seem to pin down. And it doesn’t seem to matter. It is timeless – there is just this eternal present filled with infinite hope and possibility. Later: From the point of utter despair, when I shook simply from the fear of being alive, I have arrived at this point. It seems miraculous. Perhaps I have been given a short glimpse of something that is attainable. Perhaps now I know what it is that I am working towards."

The above entry in my journal was my first experience of carrying through the depressive process. I was indeed given a glimpse of something that was attainable. It was a view of the world in which I could see and feel and partake of reality at its most fundamental. I actually saw the very stuff from which everything formed itself, whether that be a tree or a feeling. This reality was incredibly vital and absolutely filled to brimming with potential and possibility.

But the vision, and the accompanying strength, hope and insight did not last. I had no context for understanding what had happened and so had no way of re-experiencing the process in a conscious way. I did not know how to carry the profundity of it through into my life. The world around me had no place for such experiences and although I sensed that what had happened was "right" for me, I was all too ready to discount my own answers over those of others. I had learnt only too well that any answers I might come up with were invalid or inconsequential.

Over the years I had similar experiences, but I also spent many more years struggling and suffering. However, I did keep a small spot open within which to quietly carry the vision. Occasionally I would bring it out and ask myself, "Was that the truth? … was that my truth?"

FIRSTLY some questions ...

- Have you ever felt weighed down?
- Have you ever felt really low?
- Have you ever felt darkness all around even though you are standing in the light?
- Have you ever been in a crowded room and felt yourself inwardly contracting away from everyone?
- Have you ever felt there was no "space" in a relationship or the world to be yourself?
- Have you ever felt carried away or uplifted by a sunset or a beautiful piece of music?
- Have you ever felt really heavy or light?
- Have you ever felt the warmth or coldness of someone's gaze, voice or presence?

This list could go on and on ...

Do we experience an inner weight as less real than the weight of carrying a heavy shopping bag?

Is an inner contraction away from everyone less real than moving physically away from everyone?

Is the inner darkness any less real than the darkness of the night?

The INNER SPACE where we carry this weight or experience this darkness, is just as real as the space of the physical world (and can feel even more real!)

This inner space is the world of our soul.


	Ordinarily we think of soul as something 'sort of inside' our physical body, something that is vague and hard to define or describe. From time to time we might sense something to which we give the word "soul", but then we have few ways of applying or using this in our everyday lives or relationships. There is little to help us get in touch with the reality we might have sensed within and around us.	When looking at reality we have grown accustomed to thinking of matter or our physical body as the starting point. In our scientific and technological world, if we were to think of our soul, we assume that it is somehow a magic bi-product of our physical body. But it is our subjective soul body that comes first.



Rather than see the above questions as modern psychology would, that is merely as metaphors, this website sees them as literal descriptions of our soul body. Sensual qualities are SOUL QUALITIES.

how does this apply to depression?

Depression is a spiritual process - one that suggests, a movement. It is a highly specific and crucial movement back INTO the felt inner space of our bodies. It's function is to restore a sense of who we really are - to restore a sense of our soul.

When we feel depressed we use words that convey a movement downwards or a pressure on us. We talk of feeling down, we talk of weight, of feeling low, of darkness. We fight these "feelings" at all costs because in our everyday world there is little or no conception that there is an infinite space within that might actually allow us to follow them and also move in. Rather, we may experience that inner space as an abyss, a pit, the unknown ... and so we take pills, go to therapy, fight the feelings, believe we are ill ...

But that pit, that darkness, that emptiness, is only empty, because we haven't yet moved down into it.

When we are depressed and feel that we want to die, it is a particular sense of self that wants to die - a self confronted by the limitations of our everyday lives and world. But the paradox is that we are only confronted by these limitations, when we can sense, even vaguely, our larger potentials or our larger sense of self ie. we may feel that we are "more than just THIS", or that "there must be more to life than ALL THIS CRAP!".

We can follow depression down ... we can go into the darkness, follow the contraction. We can give ourselves permission to go down into the depths of our inner body. We can go down and down and in the process, discover that eventually we will "bottom out". We can surrender and "let die" the self that wants to fight this movement. We can die WITHIN this body and this life, without ending the life of our body. And we can discover that eventually we are reborn - sometimes in a day (as above), sometimes in a week, sometimes after a long, long time - with a new and deeper sense of who we are. A new "I" is born, one that has crossed a threshold of identity and has truly lived the reality that one is indeed "more than just THIS". In that darkness we find we are infinite potential ... we find answers ... we find that there is something a whole lot more wonderful going on than we could ever have imagined.

personal reflections ... living in the darkness ... going into depths

The first thing is to get a real feeling for the fact that within our bodies there is an infinite space in which to move. When one feels "down", there is actually a space in which one can go down. I find that at different times I feel this "down" in different ways, and so I go down in different ways. In an infinite space, there are infinite variations on a theme.

Sometimes I just need to cry and cry, and slowly I can feel myself moving further and further into myself. Other times I can feel that movement down as a movement away from the world of my head thinking or my heart feeling, into the space of my inner womb or belly, called "hara". From this hara I can also go more deeply within, as though into a darkness that connects me with a part of myself I am yet unable to fully live. I can also feel myself descending, almost as if it were, beneath the ground, into transcendental or other-worldly spaces. Sometimes I follow this process very consciously, other times not so much. Sometimes when I begin to feel depressed I can move consciously into these spaces, and I can readily feel that I had lost touch with my depths. Sometimes it is enough to simply know that depression isn't an aberration. Then I just follow the misery. "I am a shit." I cry. I think everything is utterly hopeless and everyone hates me. BUT ALL THE WHILE, I keep alive a vague awareness that there is SOMETHING going on. SOMETHING is happening ...

However, I must be prepared to let go of "holding on" (again, not a mere metaphor!) - let go of seeing depression as a threat or an illness, let go of thinking I must put on a happy face or happy voice, let go of keeping all the exterior appearances close to something I think "looks normal" ... I must allow myself to be carried along.

And then at some stage I will always BOTTOM OUT. I never know when that will happen, but when I do, the world is inevitably changed, and on a level I can in no way intellectually find my way to, I will have answers to the questions I was looking for or feeling. If I felt that there was no use to life, I might come away with an understanding of my purpose. If I felt that there was no way to move forward, I might come away with a new bearing from which to move forward - and not necessarily one I could have rationally pre-empted.

languages of darkness ...
languages of soul ...

How do you express the world of darkness and depth? I can't write about it with the precise and meaning-empty language of psychology or science. I must find other languages. The darkness is not 'clinical depression', it is not 'oversensitivity' or 'stress' ... it is a place of richness and gestation. It is no surprise that many people who 'suffer from depression' are also immensely creative ... for that space within is immensely fertile. It suggests to us that we must find an art or poem with which to 'speak'. And in the language we find, is a far greater truth than the modern-day, jargon-driven languages could ever express.

Sensuous. Power. Beauty. Essence. Fertility. Absence. Emptiness.
Depth. Tides. Movement. Raw. Edges. Silence. Encompassing.

I found a language in art ... some of which is displayed through this site. When I painted broken glass I felt within the sharp edges and fragility. When I drew an unborn child I intimated within the parts of myself that were yet to be born. When I painted repetitive patterns I felt the places where over and over I would find myself caught. I felt the circles and lines. I felt the black and the grey. I felt points and pressures. I felt myself flowing and floating. I felt the reds and greens. I felt 'stuff' that was as yet unformed. I felt my everyday self shattered and broken and then born anew.

I also found a language in nature. In the darkness of the night sky. A barren landscape. Dead leaves. Empty branches. A splash of colour amidst the grey. A flowing river. A powerful tree. Slime. The death of a rose. A violent storm. Shadows. A discarded feather. Handfuls of deep rich earth.

All divine and all perfect.