Of course some depressions are entirely chemical in nature and need to be treated with medication. But many are simply existential crises which if treated with introspection, will inspire growth and spiritual development. Our avoidance of the tough topics has lead to an immature society. Look at the great debates of our times and you will see few if any mature voices above the fray. We have become a society of screamers, name callers and megalomaniacs. How else can one explain Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck leading political discourse in this country? A mature person must pass through "the dark night of the soul', and often more than once. It is unpleasant, eerie, foreboding and at times hopeless; but how can one be human without crossing that bridge? By trying to escape it we are running from our higher destines both individually and collectively.
Doctors need symptoms before they can cure, and people need symptoms to grow. Take romantic love for example. While it is surely one of the most wonderful feelings humans can have, only when it is lost do we actually learn and grow from it. People happily in love are like carefree drunks on a park bench. Only when their love ends can they hope to develop. Our society so longs to label and package things that it wants to take the great questions of the day and turn them into music videos. Hollywood, television, malls, pop-music, bestsellers and cheap gurus are tuning our minds into mush and our souls to silicone.
The most important transitional crisis is undoubtedly middle age. It is the point where people either return to their youth, escaping the inevitable onslaught of time, or they take the courageous turn toward death and jettison the ego and material world for something much more profound and transcendent. Jung called it the process of individuation and was not interested in patients younger than forty, finding them lacking enough existential leverage to reach deep spiritual understanding.
So how did The Secret get it wrong? First, how did it get it right. The Secret is one of the most brilliant direct marketing pieces ever created. Like all good direct response work, it strikes at deep chords in the human psyche, greed and love (sex). The classical direct response piece, like its close relative the con scheme, always has its hook in easy money. The Secret puts most direct response work, and con games, to shame with its simplicity. Simply think you have a million dollars and you will have it. As you read this "divine revelation' over and over again, you are introduced to a series of gurus and inspirational speakers with websites galore ready to sell you all you need to be happy.
Basically, The Secret is a hundred pages saying "fake it till you make it" disguised as spiritual revelation, expertly packaged in a direct response piece promoting the products of a bunch of quacks. To top it all off, free distribution through social media on the Internet and you have a game changing piece of marketing. But apart from a very professional sales pitch, the sad thing about The Secret is that it promotes desire as a religious attribute. Don't look beyond desire for something more profound, embrace it and become one with it. Zen Capitalism.
By allowing desire to become the person all is be lost in the labyrinth of the ego, which blocks out all universal consciousness, leaving one in the dry barren place of anti-depressants, malls, cable television, McDonalds, golf clubs and of course The Secret.
The ego is a necessary element of human development. In order for us to separate from our mothers, our families, leave childhood and navigate the horrible adolescent years, we need an ego. We must make an exceptional effort to create a healthy stable ego that will feed our ambition, drive, self esteem, and allow us to make something of ourselves, find a partner and protect our loved ones. But once that process is complete, the second half of life should follow the reverse path, trading away ego for universal consciousness. The two are incompatible. The ego drags us out of infancy and childhood and finally, when we realize we are not the ego, that we are a reflection of something incomparably bigger, we must slowly allow the ego to crumble in the face of "the truth'.
In India, some men in their 50's, once their children are grown become Sadhus, ascetic wandering monks, leaving their work, status, family, in short, their egos, for the contemplative life. Some are even obligated to attend their own funerals, to reinforce the idea of becoming dead onto oneself. Many men in the west do the opposite, they find a younger wife, start a new business, and do it all over again, preferring too live two lives instead of one real one. This is the key choice in life, retold countless times in spiritual and mythological stories. The hero often has a choice between two paths, security (ego) and death (universal consciousness). Death is change; it's the formless void from which form emerges, the knife that cuts, the bullet that wounds. Only from the perspective of middle age can one see the folly of the ego while accepting it as the "game of life'.
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