Depression is a sign of a deep calling.

What may sometimes seem like the very worst sadness we have ever gone through, is more likely to be our calling to a far greater purpose than we can imagine.

As much as we might all hate the feeling of sadness, what some people might regard as a clinical level of depression is almost always a sign of a deep need in us that our spirits are crying out to be met. Far from being something terribly wrong with us, prolonged depression is usually a sign that we are being summoned to some form of leadership and a level of greatness that might scare us. We are being called upon. However, it is not in becoming great that truly scares us – it is that we haven’t yet learnt to trust in the continuous process of change that will take us there. We don’t have to become some inspirational and transformed leader tomorrow – we only need to look up and take a step back so we can see what our spirits might be asking of us. The way forward will be revealed to us when we make those first jittery steps. It might scare us at first, but there is far less asked of us than we think as our minds go into overdrive thinking of 50 possible outcomes and everything that could go wrong. We don't have to do everything in the first week - the way will become known to us after we start walking. And we take those steps forward, not because we know what we're doing, but because the end we have in our mind excites us.

Depression is our spirit trying to alert us to our heart's deeper expectation for us. We have a social conscience, and there are things going on we don't like that we know we can do something about. We want to do something good that is not happening by the way we are currently thinking about our lives. It’s not happening by what we are currently doing and how we are spending our time. And for many this thing we are to do hasn’t even shown itself as any more than a blip on our radar. We just know that there is something there – we just know that there has to be more to our lives than this – we just know and trust that we have an ability that we haven’t yet tapped into. We haven’t expressed some type of ability we have that helps people in ways we might have never imagined that we could.

We can’t see that in ourselves, so our soul has to come to us via this inner doorway of suffering. Sometimes it is the only means it has of waking us up. And this skill we are to begin cultivating may take a very long time. That is why it has not yet been able to reveal itself to us. In this modern era, we have been sideswiped by some bizarre requirement for our every need to be met immediately. So much so that we can't fathom putting effort into anything that takes too much of our time and effort. Even if this thing will eventuate into something that holds an extraordinary level of significance for us. We have run from this calling for so long that it has had to bring us to our knees so that we might finally look up and pray. But we are running for all the wrong reasons.

Our calling probably looks and feels to us to be a lot like hard work that no one will ever even notice. Our calling seems like it will ask sacrifices of us that we just can’t believe will be worth the pay off. It might even be asking of us to do a different kind of work or leave some long-term relationships behind. Might mean that we have less spare time and money to spend - or even mean we have to curb some of our over-indulgent habits in the name of a more meaningful pursuit. It may even require us to look stupid for a time. And will more than likely require us to stand aside from the majority, and the lives everyone else is enjoying. But why would we pay this price? Because it means more to us than the alternative - it's that simple. It can be lonely in our own mind and standing aside from the crowd - and the pay-off for this is unknown. But the sadness we're going through doesn't seem to leave us with an option.

Doing what is different from the masses might seem like an ostracization - but such is the illusion created by our conditioning. The ego and our conditioned mind will always try to avoid change and the unknown of any kind. Will try to exaggerate any and all levels of risk and consequences. Wants to keep from our mind the community that we will become a part of who are also in pursuit of what matters to us more than anything. The bonds we will make with the like-minded souls who are also on a path of obtaining a deeper sense of purpose and meaning in their lives. What we experience when we saddle up for this kind of journey is the universes way of cutting a path that we had no idea could become real for us. We don't have to know how it is all going to come true - we just have to have the will to want to serve at a higher level than we have been in order to be able to stand before ourselves and smile back.

No one said it was all going to go smoothly or be easy – but when we are guided by that star on the distant horizon, all of the trivialities of what might seem to be happening, now fall by the wayside. What seems to be happening is the construct of mind - a perception based in how we feel in the moment we are passing through. We can never be savvy to the greater truth. Of how seemingly unwanted events are aligning us to greater horizons, and opening doorways we never knew existed. The more unwanted we think this circumstance is, the greater the trigger that we cannot yet see. How much effort does it take to release a catapult? But how much potential energy is expelled in that simple action. We think I am only doing this small thing – but it becomes something beyond what we can understand. The implications of our small actions can never be known from the limited perspective we hold in the conscious mind. We can never know for certain if what we are engaged in and putting all of our effort into is the right thing or the best way. But without that effort and that clear focus of where we want to be we could never be shown a better way. We could never have those miraculous wormholes portal us to greater dimensions of truth.

Bruce Lee said that ‘A great warrior is an ordinary man with Lazer like focus’. Do we have that thing in our life that is worthy of our focus? If not, then there is every possibility and even likelihood that we will meet with depression. A depression that is calling us to the duty we had agreed to. Sometimes that ‘duty’ maybe as humble as coaching a kid's sports team. Or as grand as competing on a world class stage – both contain within them a need of identical importance. Everything has a unique level of importance to us, which is paid to us by what we get out of it. As Ghandi suggested “What we do may make no difference at all, but we must do it like it is the most important thing in the world”. When we do it like it is the most important thing in the world to us, we connect with an energetic field that pour’s more love into it than we ourselves could ever imagine one person could hold.

Are you happy being depressed? Has it become such an integral part of your identity that it would scare you to let go of. No one is going to try and take your right to suffer away from you, but you could change what your life is and what it means to you. The good, the bad, and the ugly that has happened to you was all a part of what brought you to this beautiful place of opportunity. This wisdom that has been awakened in you. Our original sin came when we ate from the tree of knowledge. When we became so wise that we could tell so distinctly what events were good and what were bad. It is by those very judgments that we suffer. When we ate from that tree of knowledge, we became the ones who could tell when someone had inflicted so much pain on us that we could never let them out of the jail of our judgement. The unfunniest thing of all is that when we do let them out, we become the ones who are set free from having to reexperience that pain. Are we improving our ability to be able to cope with this pain by reliving it? Are we getting better at reliving the same pain? Because when we get the lesson, we know longer have to keep living through it. Reliving the pain is the minds strange way of making us better at dealing with what happened. But it's not what you'd call a life - it's not much fun for us - or what we would do by choice.

When we see what is ‘happening’ in the here and now from above – and are less disposed to our judgements of what is good and bad - when we take a step back and reserve our judgment until more information allows us to make a more informed assessment, we free ourselves from the punishment of being overly concerned about anything. We are less concerned about anything but that light in the sky that is our purpose and guiding principle. In mindfulness we remove ourselves from apparent situations and our perceptions of what's 'happening' that is probably completely skewed by the limited opinions of onlookers that we stand a chance of seeing what the real truth of it is.

Because what is truth is whatever we decide we want it to be – including who we are. We can only be depressed if we have lost faith in our own opinions – we think we look a certain way to other people – or we aren’t doing something about that thing that bothers us the most. Will it take to long? Is it way beyond our abilities? Could we do it if we regained some trust in ourselves and our behaviors and did everything we thought was within our ability at the time? Isn’t this the same as the magic of compound interest. Nothing happens for years – but then everything happens at the end. A huge foundational work ethic has positioned us to be exactly who we wanted to be all of our lives. If we could only see that from where we are now, then every effort would seem worth it. We’d never feel guilty or ostracized again. And we’d never waste a breath of effort on things that don’t serve us. What gets our attention would become solely by choice.

Is it worth having people in our lives who mainly want to prod us and make us feel like we haven’t done the right thing? Our choices – like our lives are sacred – never let anyone make you feel like they are anything less, or the punishment will be on you. Depression is not a choice we make – it is a call to our own greatness that must be either answered or medicated.

That is the choice we have.