Overcoming Depression (Facing Depression)

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We all know what depression is and need no further discussion about it. What we should seek is how to handle depression. Like in medicine, one can adopt either of the two measures in overcoming depression—preventive and curative. Preventive measures are aimed at making us depression-proof—just as we can make watches and pens waterproof, fireproof, and rustproof.

Preventive Measures
1. Cultivating a Healthy World View: We may not be fully aware of how our attitudes affect our responses. But sooner we discover this simple truth, the better for us. Attitudes are the glasses through which we look at the world. If we wear black glasses, everything looks black, and if we wear blue glasses, everything looks blue.

So does the colour of our attitude determine the colour of our responses.To evolve a healthy world view is not a day's work. One develops it through right interpretation of life experiences. This means, outgrowing our immature and self-centred outlook.

We must learn early in life that we are not the focal point of the world. If things do not go our way, in the way we want them to happen, we need not throw up our arms and send a cry in the air, 'Oh! This selfish world! These unjust, crazy, difficult times!' The world has been like this, always. We need not cry hoarse about it. Why? The Upanishads say, as long as we remain identified with our body—its cravings and experiences—and mind (and all its changing states), selfishness is the only rightful thing that we can expect. There is nothing to be surprised about it.

The task before us is not to make others unselfish but to practise unselfishness ourselves first. Any sermons about changing the world without changing oneself are meaningless and ineffective. Whatever we expect others to do, we should ourselves try to do first.

2. Understanding the Nature of Mind: Mind : As we all know, mind is a bundle of changing states. In the morning, we may be happy, but by afternoon, unhappiness would have set in. In the forenoon, there may be some gloom in our mind, but by evening, all gloom is gone. Or, this week, we are happy; next week, we become unhappy, and so on.

We are swimming in the ocean of temporary happiness and unhappiness. Just as water in a river keeps changing, so does our mind keep changing. But if we trap some water, a little rough water, in a can and refuse to let it flow, it begins to stink. So are the experiences of life: we need not become attached to them. Why go on repeating, 'I am hurt,' whereas the situation that caused the hurt is gone forever? We collect and carefully nurture sad moments and depression.

Behind this changing nature of mind, let us remember, there is something that does not change, and the more we cling to that, the lesser will be the influence of these changes. What is that something? Our true, actual nature—the Divine within. We should not forget the underlying ground of existence, the inherent divinity, unaffected and unaffectable by anything in this world, good or bad, and think deeply about it.

3. Regular Practice of Introspection: This means keeping a watch over ourselves. We should be on guard about whatever we think, speak or do. All actions leave an impression on our minds. Nothing goes away from the mind without leaving behind a tendency to repeat it. We should hence take care of what impressions we gather, and keep a check on our mind. This requires introspection. One can begin by setting apart a little time for planning or revising whatever we do. This act of introspection is as important as the very act of doing something.

Says Holy Mother Sri Sarada Devi: 'You must at least sit down once in the morning and again in the evening. That acts as a rudder to a boat. When one sits in meditation in the evening, one gets a chance to think of what one has done—good or bad—during the whole day. Next one should compare the states of one's mind in the preceding day and the present. Unless you meditate in the mornings and evenings along with work, how can you know what you are actually doing?'

4.Practice of Prayer, Japa, and Meditation: How could these spiritual practices help us in preventing depression? The simple answer is that practice of spiritual life itself means focussing on the divine side of life. Spiritual practices are not same as religious observations. For most people, religious observations are more or less their cultural conditionings.

Spiritual practices, on the other hand, aim at awakening our divine nature and how to manifest it in our daily life. As much as religious observations help us spiritually, they are beneficial.Otherwise, they become mere mechanical habits. Prayer, japa (repetition of God's name) and concentration on a holy form check the influence of worldly affairs on our mind. They also purify the mind, and keep us focussed. They provide a higher centre for a sustained and healthy focus of mind.