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The second affliction of the mind:
Thoughts About Dejection

Unlike anger that is to be quieted no matter its source or force or size,the causes of dejection desiginate the treatment:

* depression is usually sourced in anger that has gone underneath consciousness.

• unresolved anger due to harm done needs to be anointed with forgiveness
return to the daily forgiveness: “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger”

• desire for gain that has not been realized or the loss of hope in the future needs to be met by conversion to realistic expectations no apparent reason

• the depression comes out of nowhere is usually chemically based and needs chemical therapy under the care of a medical doctor

• Sometimes it is clearly caused by ourselves by the burden of personal sin. That needs honest contrition and confession of sin in the sacrament of Reconciliation

• Harm can harm again and again through memories in thoughts and feelings like resentment, regret and cynicism. These memories need to be shifted to prayer asking for mercy for all involved.

• Dejected thoughts and are depreciative towards ones own self is a form of pride because the person thinks higher of herself than is the reality in all humility (truth). These thoughts need to be replaced with honest self appraisal of in need of God’s mercy and realistic expectations.

• Dejection that leads to depression can also come from an existential dread. This cause is off-set but accepting the human condition as it is and realizing that the personal cause is not ones own, but it does matter what one makes of it.

• Dejection can also be an honest fear of death. Through the doors of mortality is eternal life.

Five practices plus recommendations for training:
a) stay in relationships
b) amend faults and correct our manners
c) refrain from thoughts that lead to self-destruction: suicide
d) refrain from and redirect any and all thoughts of putting oneself down
e) resist morbid suffering—‘not-to-care’ needs to be replaced with patience which is self-donation

Training:
• Notice a sad thought

• Say, ‘It just is’—I feel sad

• I count on God’s grace…

• Redirect it out of consciousness

• So check it early, dispatch it; dash it on the rock, which is Christ.

• Alternative to suicide is forgiveness (always a way out)

• Benefit of dejection: leads to compunction and fires up our desire for God. Sincere grief for wrongdoing softens our hardness of heart.

• Dejection replaces fruits of the Spirit do not co-exist.

• Criteria to discern the difference of compunction and dejection:

• Compunction is wholesome sorrow.

• Dejection cycles round and round about harm done to me.

• Since dejection resides in subconscious the dejected one needs compassion, as it’s difficult for him/her self to reach even after conversion of heart.

• Detachment, not indifference, is preferred thinking.

• One must change parts or the whole of a lifestyle that is sinful.

• Even if chemically depressed one can practice faith.

• Fruit of dejection: one is aware of moment-by-moment true nature of reality. Weans me from physical senses and awakens spiritual senses.

On the other side of depression we begin the third renunciation practice: seeing without images undifferentiated reality and experience of dark abyss of nothingness empties all that is illusion. When darkness lifts we see the beauty in the smallest trifle—even the dazzling darkness of emptiness.