Depression in the Autumn

Questioner:  my friend gets depressed, and it appears to be the same time each year. It’s a general question, does this time of year affect people’s minds?  How can someone prepare themselves?

M: We understand this is a generic question because of the person not asking permission. If you look at the season, it is the fall and then winter which is the bareness of life. Human beings are becoming a little bit more bare to themselves. This nakedness is linked to rest and future renewal which becomes spring.

Dipping Down to Feel Less

Nowadays you are following less and less the rhythm of nature. You have to be active and working, so the strains that are placed on the mind are intense indeed. People of a sensitive nature, or those that feel wounded, loss, suffering, it’s like the falling of a leaf from the tree of their existence. It makes them feel rather bare and rather exposed. The way to protect that exposure is via what you call ‘depression’ so that they are dipping down in order to feel a little bit less.

Depression Creates a Partial Protection but also a Trap

Depression can come because people are not able to take time to stay with what they are truly feeling. They cannot offer it to the higher self, to the highest, to whatever they believe in and say “please take it”. This results in these feelings staying there,  they continuously fester and increase. With the depression, the person feels they are slightly more protected and they hide partially from others what they feel. In fact this partial protection becomes a real enemy, like a hard shell that is difficult to break, they become  trapped. So it is truly about relinquishing the feeling, offering the emotion, offering the difficulty, and talking about it. Gradually comes a sense of renewal, and letting go.

Accept Your Own Winter

Autumn and winter seasons are part of a wider context. There is the emptying, the nakedness, the tree is bare, the leaves have fallen, the beauty of the reddening and the yellowing of the colour has passed and human beings in their own high wisdom could and should accept their different modalities. As we said, you have lost that natural rhythm to accept your own winter. So we come to assist you to give you possibilites, of how to work in this very demanding condition.

The winter of life comes for all, and the skill is to recognise and to work with it. Now, what is also happening is that this nakedness has a great beauty so that it is a way of friendship. It is a way that when for example, your dear friend says I’m really depressed then you have to invite him to talk, and to express what he is feeling and so the friendship is cemented. If you are not the right person for this, suggest someone to whom they can talk and open their heart. All this is connected to this coming to be bare, but this bareness is done on purpose because it allows the relinquishing of what is not required to be there.

Now if there have been great losses, those losses will be there again and again  because the lower mind is engaged in a lot of repetitive patterns and sadness sets in. There are different ways of approaching this situation: the most skilled individual will be looking at the thought and make it like a passing cloud, not being identified with it and knowing that behind that thought there is something substantially extremely peaceful. The less skillful individual will have to talk about it and they need to find someone who can truly listen without becoming involved.

Remember to Ask for Help from the Highest

There are some chemical problems that people have difficulty with. Factors influencing this are: lack of light, fresh air and the lack of movement and all these inflict more resistance to break the pattern of sadness. Once you see the problem you can at least look for ways of coping using exercise and also special lights. Again we cannot emphasise this enough, offer the problem to the Highest and ask for help. Also those of you who are helping friends can also ask to the Highest for assistance.

If people are depressed because they have just received a recent bereavement then this is quite natural. This is part again of an evolutionary process which will gradually link them to open up more and more to the invisible world. So you see there are different possibilities and courses. Does that answer somehow your question but it is a beautiful season indeed if they can approach it with love and with compassion.

Q: Yes it does. I did speak at length today on the phone and we did discuss the fact that it appears to be a habitual seasonal thing. He knows that his chemical balance is low because he wanted to stay off medication. He will try and change things and I’ve supported him in that.

M: No patient likes to take medicine, nobody likes it. What happens is people experiment to get the correct understanding of the chemical balance and what is required. This is gradually obtained, but there is a risk along the way. Your friend may reduce the medication because he feels that it is too much, but when he touches a kind of low which is truly low then you have to assist him to increase the dosage. Otherwise it can become a vicious circle saying “I want to have less medication but then I wanted to overcome the problem by myself”. There is a chemistry that does not allow that and the problem cannot be resolved and then it is actually emphasised by refusing to take the medication.

Mobilisation is Important

So this vicious circle should be avoided where the person moves more towards depression. Refusing to do anything is the manifestation of depression. Even if it’s so simple like having to have a bit of water with these pills the tendency will be “I do not want it” So this is where you need the assistance of the medication, because the person needs to be mobilised. Now of course in the ancient times there were trainings, people would sit and be trained to use their minds, but you see we cannot begin here to use potent means of mind skills unless you have acquired that certain balance.

Q: I think with the information you have given me, I am in a position to support him and encourage him and  he has recognised it himself so that is good.

M: Very good, it is indeed difficult for the human being because this season is not the season for intense hard work. In the past this would have been the season of much more reflection and support of one another in care and the gathering of human beings in small groups. The light of those groups would help, also it would be a time of rest like the animal and vegetable nature too.