When All Is Not Well: Depression and Sadness -- A Yogic Perspective by Om Swami

Author:Om Swami [Swami, Om]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Lotus
Published: 2015-08-06T04:30:00+00:00

As there are many perspectives,

There can be many answers.

Yet, in the end,

The best answer to ‘Why?’ is

Why not?

We are afloat in

The Great River.

All are carried along.

Some swim against the flow.

They, too, are carried along.

The departure from what is natural is

The birthplace of personality.

The world of persons is

A solitary place,

Each separate and alone.

To achieve peace,

One must retrace the way one came.

Wu Hsin12

7

Footprints of Time

Psychic Imprints and Your Mood

Once upon a time, there lived an angry man. He had been married for two decades, yet he didn’t get along with his wife. He habitually fought with her for no real reason. He accused her of not being understanding. Deep somewhere though, he knew he wasn’t being just; but he would get worked up over trivial matters and when he was angry, he would say and do things he would later regret. He hated himself for this. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t overcome his anger.

One day he approached his guru and said, ‘I’m sick and tired of being angry all the time. Tiny matters set me off, and the fiend in me comes out without any warning. Why am I eternally angry and upset?’

‘Because you are hurt,’ the guru said.

‘But I have a caring family and I love my wife. She doesn’t hurt me back when I’m upset. So I don’t think I’m hurt.’

‘You are still experiencing the pain of old wounds. These are the after-effects of what you may have experienced in your childhood or during your youth.’

‘Have I not been healed all these years?’

‘Not only have you not healed yet, but the hurt and the pain has made you weak. As a result, regardless of how pleasant or unpleasant the situation may be, any undesirable thought or emotion triggers the anger in you,’ the master said calmly. ‘A fit of rage is a sign of being hurt and weak.’

‘I find it strange,’ the man replied in disbelief. ‘No one has duped me, I am a successful man. I don’t remember anything major; maybe only small incidents have caused me pain. How can such experiences of the distant past still leave me weak, hurt and angry?’

The guru handed him his water pot and instructed him to keep his arm stretched while holding it.

‘Is it heavy?’ he asked.

‘Not really.’

A minute passed and he asked the same question.

‘It feels a little heavier now,’ the disciple said.

‘Stay put till I say otherwise.’

‘My arm’s aching,’ he said after five minutes. ‘I can’t hold it any longer.’

The guru took the water pot from him and said, ‘You see, it’s not how much the water pot weighed but how long you carried it. The longer you hold it, the heavier it feels. Gradually, you feel weaker and weaker before you find it unbearable.’

While the gravity of a hurt matters, what matters much more is how long you’ve been carrying it. I frequently meet people who are in their fifties, sixties or even seventies, who have been married for decades, yet they complain about incidents that occurred thirty years ago as if they happened yesterday.

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