Is depression, actually the bearer of the gifts of answers for this life?
I believe there are many people who have so much depth, and they’re sitting in depression. They have no idea what to do with it and they’re feeling really stuck because they’re not living the answers that they’re feeling in their head, and they see the world as a difficult place to create from.
I actually love depression, it’s not a problem for me and the reason why is because I’ve worked with so many people with it. Once you understand how to reach deep down into sadness, sorrow, depression, shame and all those emotions that everyone tries to take pills for, and try to remove themselves from, you realise how important those emotions are, to gain insights to hold gratitude, and to build a sustained amount of joy. Joy actually comes through sadness, sorrow and depression. Once you’re able to surrender to the depression, joy is born out of it and it’s one of the most amazing things to understand.
What I found with people who do personal development is that they usually do it because they’re not happy. They’ve had a breakdown, and quite often sadness and depression is part of that breakdown. When you start discussing what it is that’s behind that depression, you find this amazing quality in people. Usually people who have depression are quite humble, kind and caring and they’ve got a real beautiful nurturing nature to them.
It’s the complete opposite to the belief that we just go and be happy, go and do that yoga, go meditate or whatever makes you happy. What we do in the Academy is we get people to go and sit in the emotion so they can feel the expression of it with no judgement. The moment people do that, being there in peace, they’re in joy in an instant. That is a way I’ve gotten people off antidepressants, I’ve got people off the ledge of wanting to kill themselves, all because I honour and respect the pain that people are in rather than try and fix it and make it better.