Some decades ago, I was speaking to a friend of mine about my difficult life. Notice that I said speaking “to,” not “with.” Whenever I am complaining about how terrible “life” is treating me, it is generally a monologue. Others’ input is generally not needed to move my tirades along. Mine, that day, was filled with angst. I was holding forth about the torment that life dealt me at work, at home, everywhere. “I’m so depressed!”

My friend immediately became my mentor when he asked me, “When is the last gdamn time you thought about anybody besides yourself?” I began to stammer something about how I think about other people all the time… “I don’t mean,” he said, “thinking about people in comparison to you, Marty. I mean, the last time you thought about anyone else…period!" He went on to tell me that depression is a selfish, self-serving mental condition, because it is all about me. It is only about me.

Depression is a condition wherein we are unable to accept the reality of Now being just as it is. That is at least a silly thought, because we are denying what may be one of the few undeniable facts in our life situations. What is…is! It is our ego-driven mind (I call mine Toby) that tells us, “This ain’t right.” Well, it may not seem to be going the way that we planned, but it is what it is. Once we are able to accept that, we free our wonderful mind from the bondage of our whining, complaining ego, allowing our brain to participate with the universal mind (Creator) in manifesting reality.

I am by no means making light of some very serious mental conditions that are diagnosed as dangerous, life-sapping depression. What I refer to here is the condition that we all know about and often share. We think that just because we feel bad a lot of the time and that life just doesn’t seem to be going our way (Ever!), that we are depressed. When we feel good, we say that we’re manic (!!). So lots of us walk around as self-diagnosed bi-polar victims of life. Some of us pay a great deal of money to have people confirm that for us.  

I am not qualified to diagnose anybody’s mental condition, nor am I interested in doing so. My experience is that when I have found my life situation sliding into “depression,” it was caused by the energy of unresolved emotional pain. I found my own ongoing solution for that condition in The Freedom Step. Toby’s need to force me into prolonged negative states is ineffective against the power of my awareness.