Dissolving spiritual depression [Part 1]

The divine undoing that comes with your expansion

There is a unique flavor of depression that every devoted spiritual seeker is bound to face at some point of their journey of expansion, integration or awakening. I think of it as spiritual depression.

Spiritual depression is not to be confused with most of our common uses of the word depression. Most psychiatrists would tell you that depression is often caused by imbalanced neurotransmitters. It is also becoming more and more mainstream that issues such as stressful life events, past traumas, poor lifestyle, medication and even some societal factors like isolation can lead to depression. My acknowledgement of all these other forms of depression is just as pure courtesy. Because they are not what I will be talking about in this essay. I do not intend to debate the conventional forms of depression. So as you continue reading, please keep in mind that this is in no way medical advice, and please practice the art of discernment.

With this out of the way, I would like to take you on a tiny journey of exploring spiritual depression and how you can begin to emerge from that space.

Understanding spiritual depression

Your spiritual metamorphosis often comes with a period of spiritual depression. It is a natural occurrence on the journey of transformation. It manifests itself as energy slowing down to allow deep changes at the core of your energetic blueprint, so that you may experience more alignment with your own soul.

You may think of it as if you are driving a car in a specific direction at great speed. At some point you realize that you have to make a U-turn because you have been going in the wrong direction. In order to make that turn without crashing the car, odds are you will have to slow down. That period of slowing down is what we could call spiritual depression.

We are often under the impression that the slowing down is not serving us, whereas it is actually happening by benevolent design.

Spiritual depression is a soul intervention. It is an invitation to a deep recalibration. It may look like energy is stagnating. But it’s only because you are invited to create change at deep levels of your being.

It is your soul’s invitation to embrace surrender. It is what happens when you enter what I like to call a dark night of the ego (In my understanding, the soul knows no dark nights). It is your higher self holding the sacred space so that you can address your resistance.

Spiritual depression is not a hindrance on your path. In my experience, it is not something to be medicated. It is something that needs to be met with allowing, so that you can embrace the highest invitations that your soul has for you.

How spiritual depression often manifests itself

A spiritual depression can show up in many different ways. One of the first signs that you might be going through spiritual depression, is that your creative expression is disrupted. You experience a harder time connecting to creative endeavors you used to enjoy. You have a harder time creating anything whatsoever.

Another sign you might be approaching a period of spiritual depression is when you experience a generalized sense of misalignment with your own life. You experience a relentless thirst for meaning that you aren’t able to satisfy with the things you’ve been doing before. It’s as if you live someone else’s life. You can feel like your soul is steering you toward a different direction, yet there is an undoing that is necessary to make the shift. That undoing is usually painful and will require of us to meet ancient pain that we were still carrying in the body.

It is important to keep in mind that spiritual depression doesn’t just happen because you dislike some superficialities in your life. It is something that happens at the core of your being. It is something that happens to devoted spiritual seekers because they are in quest of more meaning.

How to emerge from spiritual depression?

One of the worst things you can assume when you are going through a spiritual depression is to make that process wrong. The process of spiritual depression is benevolent. It comes with divine invitations for surrender. It invites you to trust the intelligence of your soul.

A year where I experienced a big transit of spiritual depression was 2018. I was shutting down a business that was failing. I was pretty much broke financially with a great deal of debt. On top of that, I found out in April 2018 that I was going to be a dad in 9 months. It was basically source telling me that deep change was needed. It’s almost as if my mind couldn’t compute the amplitude of change that was required of me that year. It was the ultimate invitation to catch my breath spiritually, to slow down and reassess. That’s pretty much all I did that year. I removed all unnecessary pressure I was putting on myself to bounce back too quick.

Back then I was already involved in the type of work I am doing now, but I was tiptoeing around it. The resistance was great. My life felt like an absolute mess. 2018 was the year where I learned how to dance with chaos. I learned that chaos wanted to help me lose the rigidity that my mind was attached to, so that I could find my heart again.

In all the areas of my life back then, the invitation was to surrender. Surrender and honor the speed of your spirit. That meant making peace with walking slow for a while. That I didn’t need to fight the feeling of depression so hard. Yes I know this may sound counterintuitive… I needed to discover what was in the depression. By the way, I think the attitude of bringing compassionate curiosity to any depressive state would help any form of depression.

I discovered that I was leading my life with way too much urgency. I realized that the only demons that were chasing me were the ones I had made up in my mind, and that many of them were my own light in disguise. They were chasing me so that I could collect the gift.

When we are unwilling to embrace the highest invitations that spiritual depression is bringing forth, then we stay stuck in liminal space. The discomfort of that in-between space, then becomes a pain we tolerate, to avoid the undoing that comes with deep surrender.

When I surrendered to the spiritual depression with compassionate curiosity, I started becoming aware of the parts of me that needed to be met with my own love and compassion so that my life force could be reignited again.

Here are a few prompts that can help you move through spiritual depression with more grace…

• What I am tired of running from in my life is…

• The unfinished business I know I must deal with in my life now is…

• What my intuition has been consistently inviting me to address is…

• What I need to meet with love within myself to be free is…

• If I was given full creative license to design the life I want, what I would create first is…

A very important aspect of emerging from spiritual depression is to romanticize your creative expression. Your creative expression is an act of channeling. Being in touch with it helps your soul to anchor the energetic adjustments you need to actualize a new way of being. Creativity is a sacred antidote.

It’s important to remember that spiritual depression is not a hindrance, it is a sacred rite of passage that can be made more graceful by the quality of the choices you make, by your ability to allow and surrender and by your willingness to resolve any resistance that stands in the way. Resistance makes spiritual depression even harder.

I’ll be offering a free live workshop soon: the alchemy of resistance. This is a free community event that I offer once a year. It will help you resolve the resistance that is preventing you from embracing your next level of expansion. Keep an eye on your inbox for further details.

Have you dealt with any form of spiritual depression? Please share your reflections below.

Thank you for being here.

In gratitude and reverence,

— Xavier