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Depression is like a virus that suddenly lands on us, chills us, paralyzes us, and lays us down. It strips away the joy of life, the strength to move, function, listen, and open our eyes.
If we are depressed, we want to shut ourselves off and lose interest in hearing or absorbing anything. Everything becomes irritating and we even lose the energy to react to annoyances in our surroundings.
Most depressed people cannot explain why they are so. They only feel that everything is meaningless. Life’s rat race seems that it does not belong to them, that it is pointless, and the best option seems to just take a pill and fall asleep.
In the past, depression was an emotional phenomenon more common to nobles and aristocrats. Today, however, everyone has inherited it. The root of depression is the saturation of the egoistic desire that drives human development. After eons of feeling that we have somewhere else to progress, today there accumulates a feeling that there is nowhere left to go, no great goals on the horizon, that nothing shines ahead.
Today’s epidemic of depression goes hand-in-hand with the awakening of life’s most fundamental existential questions, such as what is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Where are we from? Where are we really now? Where are we headed? What is reality? And why is there so much suffering in the world?
The basis of emptiness, frustration, and depression in our lives is when our increasing existential questioning meets with no substantial answers.
In earlier generations, people were more content with religious promises. Today, humanity’s inner desires have developed, and we no longer believe anyone or anything. In addition, we have no strength to endure others. Accordingly, the family unit disintegrates, relationships collapse, and we are left alone, living within ourselves, shutting ourselves off more and more into our screens, which also become ever more available and personalized. Even from a young age, children increasingly experience depression, tired of life before they even begin it. More and more children feel that nothing will ever fulfill their desires, that an emptiness will always reside within.
According to the integral approach to education, which views the human being, society, and nature as a single whole, the cure for depression can be summarized in a single word: love. It is not love as we commonly understand it in our egoistic lives, where we love who or what gives us pleasure, but love for others. Such love requires developing the ability to step outside of ourselves, to feel others, what they lack, what they desire, and to wish for their fulfillment. Such is love on a higher level.
When we advance to a state where others’ desires become more important to us than our own, we will solve the problem of depression at its root. We will enter a new and higher world, one full of joy, connection, and wholeness. Everyone will want to fulfill others, to bring them goodness, and then we will feel an immense elevation of spirit. Depression will disappear and a newfound vigor, energy, and vitality will replace it.
It is similar to a loving mother who places her baby’s desire above her own, and finds both the strength to care for her baby and a unique kind of pleasure in doing so. This is nature’s way of exemplifying optimal relationships that we should develop throughout human society.
The depression that sweeps today’s world is actually an invitation to the next stage of humanity’s evolution. Problems that persistently press us on all scales—personal, social, economic, and ecological—point to the fact that we live in an era of a throbbing ego together with us finding ourselves living on the same small boat. If we fail to learn how to get along in this situation, we will all sink.
Just as nature is an integral, interconnected, and interdependent system with mutual complementarity among its parts, so too we humans must also exist accordingly, but with conscious awareness. Unlike other creatures who are entirely operated by the force of nature, we have awareness and the possibility of choice.
If we set for ourselves an overarching educational and cultural goal, the creation of a new human being who is capable of rising above the inborn individualistic-egoistic desire, and connecting to the desire of others with an attitude of love, then we will break through the boundaries of our narrow egocentric perception. Together, we will rise to a dimension beyond time, space, and motion, and equalize with the source force of nature, a force of love and bestowal.
The integral approach to education teaches precisely how to do this within a small group framework. One step at a time, we learn how to exit ourselves and live in the desires and thoughts of others. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” which is a seemingly familiar slogan, actually contains infinite depth, and if we learn how to implement this tenet in our relationships, then we open a gateway to a whole new perception of reality.
The bottom line is that by developing love for others, we can eradicate depression from the world once and for all, and in its place bring a much more heightened sense of goodness, health, and happiness into everyone’s lives.
Based on “New Life 90 – Depression, Part 1” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman, Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.