Depression and Creativity

When the waves of depression hit, and you employ your skills to make it through

An article by Andrew Kaminski

Celestial Cascade, oil painting on canvas, by Andrew Kaminski

The good really was too good to last. You may have been floating. You may have thought: I finally did it. I finally reached enlightenment. No way I'm going to come down now.

You don't think it might've been because it was a sunny day. Or that commission check hit your bank account. No, no. It had nothing to do with external sources. You just naturally were given what you were owed. You finally reached enlightenment, and NOTHING is going to take you down now.

But you might be driving your car. Or you might be walking up the sidewalk. Or you might be just in your home, and wondering what you're going to do next, and it hits you...

It starts as a feeling in your stomach. Like a tightening of the nerves in your stomach. And no one is calling. No one calls when you wish someone would just reach out to you, and say, "hey I was thinking of you."

You realize you're on your own. You think, "maybe I can contact a therapist, and they can figure this out for me." Or maybe I can read something that can uplift me.

You start to draw upon your skills, and you have many. You go for a run, and that reminds you of who and what you are. You are a runner. You are a person that moves.

You eat a whole bunch of watermelon. You are a person that nourishes their body. You eat healthy. And that watermelon is so refreshing. It goes down your throat into your stomach. It brings you up. You eat a lot of watermelon.

You eat so much watermelon that you become tired. So, you lay down on your yoga mat, and you rest. You rest, but you want to program your mind while doing it. There is an incessant feeling - I must be productive. I must be making progress. So you place your laptop on a seat near where you are lying down, and you turn it to a talk by James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, and you rest.

Forty five minutes go by, and you dip into a transcendental state of rest. You feel good. You feel amazing actually. The depression goes away. You realize you need some more medicine though. So you grab an apple. Some time passes, and you grab another apple.

Your ultimate medicine is the fruit. The fruit is what you use to get through a dip. You return to your drawing, and you continue to make progress with your commission. It is beautiful. It gives you purpose.

You make a salad with chopped up onions, tahini, and a juiced orange. You feel at peace now.

You read a page of Baba Muktananda, and you allow yourself to meditate. You read through all your goals and the mechanisms that you plan to use to reach these goals.

Your curiosity of how life is going to unfold is what moves your forward.

The enlightenment dips into the cave. Into the void. And it lights up every space along the way. The light of awareness brings hope into every evil. Every demon is turned into an angel as it descends into hell. Heaven carves out more territory as it explores the depths of sadness, and it alchemizes every last place, until all is turned into honey.