On Depression and the Sufi Way (from 2018)

Depression can seem overwhelming and is difficult to face, embrace, and lift away as a whole, but taking small grateful sips mixed with a drop of the alchemical (but organic! ) elixir of alhamdulillah la ilaha ill Allah can sometimes give one tastes of the ecstatically and mercifully loving infinite ocean that lies beneath what may seem like a horriblly polluted surface.

While doing so, it is helpful to remember, with a sip of gratitude (or a sip of the intention to be grateful) for such an alchemical remembrance, remembering that the “seemingly horribly polluted (and depression inducing) surface” is “ilaha”, and that you are remembering that “la ilaha” (your depressed state is NOT=la, a GOD=ilaha (i.e., not the whole of reality, rather just a glimpse of part of a surface), but rather there is no true god, no true reality EXCEPT=illa, ALLAH, who is the all-inclusive ecstastically and mercifully loving infinite OCEAN of REALITY, in which even the vastness of your depression (and you!) is but a drop. This is the grateful all-inclusive remembrance of God. Al-hamdulillah rabb il-‘alamin!

This does not mean that your depression is utterly unreal. Rather, it is not the whole picture. Beneath its surface there remains much that can be discovered, which when tasted, in the very least, can take the bludgeon-like edge off the overwhelmingly devastating and disenheartening bleakness of depression.

Sometimes and for some people, it may take only a moment for a crack in the cloud of depression to lift and a moment of ecstatic and merciful love to wash over one. Other times and for other people, it may take a lifetime, if ever. What is around tne next bend in the road, we never know.

Two principal tricks of one’s ego (and/or shaytan/satan) –which loves only conditionally, and habitually and unconsciously holds onto conditions that it refuses to accept can be sustained or included by God– tricks that keep one stuck in one’s depression (or any other state, such as resentment, anger, fear, grief, or feeling like one is a failure, to name a few) are the following thoughts:

1) this spiritual practice is not working, you’re still depressed (or resentful, angry, anxious, sad, feeling ungrateful, bored, or a failure, etc), so stop doing such a practice.

2) you, in your depression (or state, whatever it is) are not included, sustained, and pervaded by (or you are not worthy of being included, sustained, and pervaded by) God’s all-inclusive oceanic merciful and loving Reality. So there is no point in doing the practice of the grateful remembrance of God.

A more complicated and subtle trick of some people’s egos (and/or shaytan) is to reason mistakenly–when one is in an abusive, intolerable, or unjust situation– that being grateful means that one should just be passive and remain in such situations without doing or saying anything about them. And hence, since being passive in such a situation is wrong, it is wrong to respond to such situations with gratitude.

The fact, however, is that responding with inclusive gratitude to God while one is in whatever state one is in does not necessarily mean anything about how one should act or not act vis a vis the circumstances in which one finds oneself. Sometimes responding with such gratitude will move one (and give one energy) to act concertedly to change one’s situation and sometimes it will move one to simply wait and or do nothing.

What responding with even drops of UNCONDITIONAL gratitude does, however, is increase the likelihood that one’s own response will not come from one’s own CONDITIONED ego–since a response on our part infused with even the tiniest hint of the fragrance of the intention to sip unconditional gratitude for God’s unconditional sustenance pulls the rug out from under the ego’s threats and false news that if you do not meet its conditions that it deeply beliefs are absolute, you will be adrift, condemned to be alienated from the Merciful Ocean of Well-Being.

Moreover, a tiny sip of such gratitude increases the likelihood that one will be able to see “out of the box” solutions, wiser solutions than those that one’s conditioned and instinctive ego can come up with. Such solutions are more likely to be wiser than those of one’s ego because they are less veiled by one’s conditioning (which we developed largely when we were very young children) and such solutions are likely to be less veiled by one’s early humanoid fight/flight instincts developed thousands of years ago, developed not in response to the complex and changing realities in which we are living today.

Another somewhat complicated and subtle trick of some people’s ego (and or shaytan) is to tell oneself –after having tried gratitude for some period of time without any opening occuring– that one must be a spiritual failure or be insincere or that one is simply ungrateful or unable to be grateful. Hence one should give up trying to be grateful.

Such responses, however are simply states toward which one can intend to respond with gratitude.

Both of these two more complicated tricks are variations of tricks #1 and #2.

The solution to these tricks is just to continue to respond with the practice of sipping the grateful inclusive remembrance (as described above) begining now, one moment, one sip at a time (which is the greater jihad, the greater form of effort).

This will increase the likelihood (though not guarantee) that two things will happen:

1) a grateful, loving, or ecstatic opening in your depression (or other state) may appear for just a moment or even longer; and

2) you may become more open to things you can do in your life that will enhance the quality of your life and that of others (activities such as getting enough sleep, exercise, eating in a healthy manner, following the sunnah, associating with non-abusive people, getting some form of psychotherapy or legal medication, finding a job that is appropriate for you, helping people who are poor or disadvantaged, striving to assist victims of injustice, etc, which activities constitute the lesser jihad, the lesser form of effort).

Alhamdulillahi r-Rabb il-‘alamin.