Reflection 193

Welcome!


Trust

What, precisely, are you to do about the depression that’s getting you down at this very moment?

The answer comes in two parts. The first is: See, and see what happens. It is the basic proposition of this book [Head Off Stress], its working hypothesis for testing all day and every day, that the solution of your problem, no matter what it is, is to see whose it is. Not to understand or feel or think who has the problem, but actually to gaze on that WHO and await what comes of the gazing. This seeing and this waiting you can always do, whatever your need. The rest is out of your hands.

Which brings us to the second half of our answer. See, see what happens, and trust it. If, owing to your depressive temperament (say), or your acquired habits of mind, or the specially difficult circumstances you find yourself in, your depression insists on hanging around in spite of its ever-renewed dismissal – why then your business is to submit to it, willingly. The willingness doesn’t leave it unchanged. It makes the world of difference. More than depression accepted, more even than depression intended, depression trusted as what’s needed at this time, as hiddenly beneficent – this isn’t depression at all in the old sense. It is precisely what the sage in the Tao Te Ching is referring to when he says that he alone is depressed. It is milk from the Mother’s breast, containing what are for you essential vitamins. (Douglas Harding. Head Off Stress.)


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