The Down: Depression, Integration or Purification?
“This ceremony won’t make your life easier,
but it will help to make it more authentic.”
by Scott Eberle
(This passage is an excerpt from an early draft of Scott's new book, The Soul's Red Thread: Emerging, Transforming, Dissolving. Publication is anticipated in 2024.)
I don’t recall where I first heard this line, or from whom, but over the years I’ve repeated it to countless groups. After a visit to the High Country, returning to the of the lowlands of everyday life is seldom easy.
But as Ram Dass has said: “The down is part of the high.”
I’ve heard Meredith Little, co-founder of the School of Lost Borders, often refer to this post-fast challenge as “the predictable depression:” the down that often hits weeks to months after a program has ended. A rush of feelings may come and, with that, a torrent of self-doubt: Was that all just a dream? Have I really changed? What do I do now? Meredith’s advice: “Commit to moving through the next year as if what happened were real, especially when you doubt it most.”
For many, the root of this time of feeling down, this predictable depression, is a clash between a true self and a false self. Having dropped down into a much deeper telling of a soul story—a finding and naming of that life thread—each person must return home to family, friends and acquaintances who weren’t part of the desert ceremony. These others may want that person, post-fast, to keep giving the same old answers, to keep behaving in the same old ways. But what if a deeper, more authentic self would have it be otherwise—even if the emerging self is just the first intimation of a true self? What if, instead of giving the expected answer, this person speaks truthfully? What if, instead of acting in the usual way, this person behaves authentically?
Do I disappoint myself? Or do I disappoint someone else? There’s no easy resolution to find here, whether that other person is a spouse, a lover, a friend, or a boss.
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