Transcending Depression
I was a child riding on the back of a bicycle, barefoot, with my feet resting precariously on the outside axle pegs of the rear tire. We hit a bump and my foot slipped into the spokes of the wheel, jamming the tire which caused a rapid, skidding stop. The pain was excruciating.
Even recalling the experience now, so many years later, still evokes the awful feeling of the moment.
But like everything with our body and mind, we made them for the express purpose of experiencing pain, fear, guilt, and depression. If I can suffer, it proves that I am here, this is real, and that it’s not my fault. Such a belief can only lead to despondency.
But only if we identify our sense of “me” with this individual self. As we read in A Course in Miracles, “When you equate yourself with a body you will always experience depression.” We’ve forgotten our true nature as spirit – united in oneness – and have adopted an insane belief that we could be separate from everything.
Only in that mistaken belief – what the Course refers to as the ego mind – could we experience any misery. When we choose against the ego and return our awareness to the oneness we never left, then all sense of “self” disappears. Pain, fear, guilt, and depression melt away – instantly dissolving into nothingness.
And we’re left with a “tremendous release and deep peace” that truly surpasses all understanding.
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