I once read "fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth." I would venture to say so is depression. Maybe not all forms, but there is a type of depression which occurs as we peel away layers of vrttis and ourselves. To myself, I call this 'soft depression' As we move closer to the truth, it can often seem like a letdown.

I found myself "let-down" yesterday. Nothing would make me happy. Not happy thoughts about my life, happy prospects about the future, not peanut butter hot cocoa, not the Metropolitan Museum, not a movie, not my boyfriend offering to do whatever I wanted. I looked for God- or beauty that could move me- everywhere, but couldn't seem to find it. Listless, gray, misplacing God, I wanted to quit.

After I exhausted all I could think of to lift my spirits, there was nothing left but to just hang with the darkness. You know that place? Some people call it rock bottom. "I remember, I remember when I lost my mind" sings Gnarls Barclay. One gives in to the mysterious forces at work, helpless otherwise, one becomes still.

I was silent for a long time. Just waiting...for something to come along and help me understand.

60 minutes after I hit the bottom, feeling still and raw, I shared a close moment with another being. Immediately, my spirit woke up a little.

The key words there are stillness and rawness. They set the stage for me to wake up. Openness. From a state of being open beauty will touch us. We will feel love. But when we are not in a place of openness, beauty will not touch us and we will not feel love- not really. Then, we will search for satisfaction in the mind, the future, in sensual pleasures, in activity or distraction, or in somebody else. This disease of searching for satisfaction where it cannot be found manifests a symptom like emptiness or depression.

You might wonder, what's wrong with thinking happy thoughts about life, about the future, drinking PB hot cocoa, etc?! And the answer is: nothing (Three Tarts on 23rd and 9th has the PB cocoa, btw) The problem comes when we think this is all we need in order to run. I'm learning that nothing that arises from my mind or senses is really enough to keep me running.

So what am I actually looking for, what WILL I run on? I think human beings are fueled by some pretty deep, high caliber gasoline. Two things.1. GIVING love. LOVE-ing the verb. And,

2. OPENNESS. Rawness, exposure. Here, I feel able to be moved by life, and able to actually receive the love that comes my way.

So, we practice. Practice loving and opening.

Of the two, today the latter is more difficult. How do I break open without breaking down? After I was depressed I felt so fresh, real, and plaque-free....can I feel like that all the time?

About opening, I was reminded of the beginning of a poem by Mark Nepo. My teacher, Dana Flynn, read it in class:

Having loved enough and lost enough, I am no longer searching, just opening.

No Longer trying to make sense of pain, but trying to be a soft and sturdy home in which real things can land.

Life is about opening, more and more. I don't know exactly how a being opens but I know the more I want to, the more I do. A huge part of opening, evolving, is investigating. Why am I depressed? Or angry? Sitting with it, I found my depression to be the symptom of a greater issue; me putting regular into a tank that only takes premium.

The place on the Path in between where we've been and where we're going is soft depression. Just beyond believing that maya (illusion) will satisfy us and just before really knowing how to LIVE in love and openness. It's tempting to run away from this in-between space, but hanging out here is the only way to learn how to live differently. The weirdness, whackness or depression...instead of the Universe punishing us is actually the Universe loving us, raising the incentive for us to figure out the difference between sort of happy and damn happy.