Depression opens the door to beauty of some kind.
The word power has such a generally negative implication in our society. What are people talking about? Are they talking about muscles, or control?
I don't have answers. I have questions.
In the history of the treatment of depression, there was the dunking stool, purging of the bowels of black bile, hoses, attempts to shock the patient. All of these represent hatred or aggression towards what depression represents in the patient.
I'm the result of upbringing, class, race, gender, social prejudices, and economics. So I'm a victim again. A result.
I'm in favor of destruction, aggression, hating things. Not bearing things anymore. We think the breakdown comes because our life is in bad shape. But maybe the ideas cause the disorder. Something tries to break through and causes the disorder.
As Plotinus tells us, we elected the body, the parents, the place, and the circumstances that suited the soul and that, as the myth says, belongs to its necessity.
Psychotherapy theory turns it all on you: you are the one who is wrong. If a kid is having trouble or is discouraged, the problem is not just inside the kid; it's also in the system, the society.
Just stop for a minute and you'll realize you're happy just being. I think it's the pursuit that screws up happiness. If we drop the pursuit, it's right here.
I think we're miserable partly because we have only one god, and that's economics.
I'm cautious about a lot of words.
Instead of seeing depression as a dysfunction, it is a functioning phenomenon. It stops you cold, sets you down, makes you damn miserable.
I don't think anything changes until ideas change. The usual American viewpoint is to believe that something is wrong with the person.
When they talk about family values, it's in a repressive way, as if our American tradition were only the Puritan tradition or the 19th century oppressive tradition. The Christian tradition.
The moment the angel enters a life it enters an environment. We are ecological from day one.
When they talk about family values, it's in a repressive way, as if our American tradition were only the Puritan tradition or the 19th century oppressive tradition. The Christian tradition.
It's important to ask yourself, How am I useful to others? What do people want from me? That may very well reveal what you are here for.
The older people that one admires seem to be fearless. They go right out into the world. It's astounding. Maybe they can't see or they can't hear, but they walk out into the street and take life as it comes. They're models of courage, in a strange way.
The circumstances, including my body and my parents, whom I may curse, are my soul's own choice and I do not understand this because I have forgotten.
We can't change anything until we get some fresh ideas, until we begin to see things differently.