Dispatches from the Borough 6: The Sun is Back in Town!

With a new video at the bottom!

(The video’s at the bottom of the post)

Hello, my fellow travelers, it’s Scott. Welcome to the workspace!

Watson and I just had a wonderful walk on a beautiful day.

Man, did we need the sun after several days in a row of just rain and gloom and blah…

It got me thinking about how I talk about how clouds are always coming and going, but the sun is always shining – we just might not always see it when we’re right in the middle of it all.

Depression is like a dark cloud. But dark clouds come and go.

You, on the other hand – YOU never come and go.

This week, I heard a teaching from the great Zen master and Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, who passed away at the age of 95 last month.

I’d been struggling with the idea of pushing bad feelings aside – sweeping them under the rug if you will.

I didn’t ever want to give the impression that because depression and other difficult experiences come and go that they shouldn’t be dealt with. That they’re not real.

I have found that anytime I push something away, I’m still in relationship to it and with it.

But Thich Nhat Hanh suggested something so radical to me that I wanted to share it with you.

He said, We all have a seed of depression in us, and we also have a seed of love in us.

When depression comes, acknowledge it and embrace it with love, like a mother whose baby is screaming and crying.

You pick it up and hold it close and examine it and look deeply into it

And you say to your depression,

“Oh my darling, I see you and I will hold you and love you and help you transform.”

And you really stay with it and acknowledge it.

Your depression doesn’t leave you.

It is transformed into peace like a dark cloud is transformed into the rain that waters the earth to produce the flowers.

You are not your thoughts, feelings, perceptions, emotions.

You have them, but they are not you. They come and go.

Hard times also come and go, and they always will – that’s part of what it means to be human.

At the same time, you are the only version of you there will ever be.

You are the experience God is having and no one else can have that experience.

You are so, so valuable!

You are needed and you are loved.

Stay with us.

I’ll talk to you later.

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