Spirituality: Depression and Sadness

Let's distinguish good and necessary sadness from some forms of depression.

Many depressed people are people who have never taken any risks, never moved outside their comfort zone, never faced necessary suffering, and so their unconscious knows that they have never lived - or loved! It is not the same as necessary sadness, although it can serve that function. I am afraid that a large percentage of people in their later years are merely depressed or angry. What an unfortunate way to live one's final years.

One of the great surprises is that humans come to full consciousness precisely by facing their own contradictions and making friends with their own mistakes and failings. People who have had no inner struggles are invariably both superficial and uninteresting. We tend to endure them more than communicate with them because they have little to communicate. Shadow work is almost another name for falling upward.  Lady Julian put it best of all: "First there is the fall, and them we recover from the fall. Both are the mercy of God."

Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life