One morning in late 2000, I awoke in the most hellish consciousness I had ever experienced in all my years of pain. It was pure absolute darkness; a horrible bottomless void of nothingness. There was no tomorrow, no hope of any kind. I knew it was useless to try and pull the covers over my head. My horror was so great, that I spontaneously emoted a brief intense scream while catapulting from the bed. I almost broke my neck as my socked feet landed on the hardwood floors at a 45-degree angle. After scrambling to gain my balance, I ran into the living room. My mind was shouting "You need to call your counselor. You need to …" do this or that. I told it to "shut the 'f***' up, I don't have to do a damn thing." I then laid face down in the carpet. I passed out completely. As I came to, I distinctly felt something tangible lifting up and off of my back! Several weeks later, I noticed that I had not felt clinical depression since that day.
An enlightened interpretation came to me a few years later, after I happened upon some specific spiritual material that I had been meaning to look at. This spiritual founder claimed that in order to be able to exist in heaven, a person first had to develop some degree of the virtues while on earth. Several days later, a light suddenly came on inside me. I realized the flip-side or opposite condition of this teaching, as follows: if there is some minimum amount of virtue necessary to exist in heaven, then it makes sense that there may be some minimal level of negative spiritual energy required to keep one in hell. In other words, in order to maintain a state of depression, perhaps some kernel of negativity must first be in place. Therefore, once a sufficient amount of spiritual recovery work has been accomplished, then whatever negative condition that allows the evil spirit to remain within me is removed, and this depressive spirit must then leave my house --- the house of my consciousness. As a result of this intuitive awareness, I am now convinced that depression is ultimately a spiritual phenomenon and can best be healed by spiritual means. Said differently, I now believe in 'spirits of depression.' This interpretation even fits the New Testament accounts of Jesus calling out evil spirits from the possessed, which may even indicate that depression is in reality a form of possession by evil spirits. This may even indicate that we need some form of true spiritual practice, in order to overcome various unhealthy spirits that we may 'catch' in the world.
Western medicine's practice of using psychoactive drugs to regulate neurotransmitters would then be seen as a possibly necessary manipulation at the physical level of depression or the level of the effect rather than at the spiritual level of the cause of the phenomenon. Drug therapy for depression, would then ideally be seen as necessary for temporary management of symptoms, during an interim phase, prior to the completion of an adequate amount of spiritual recovery work, designed to locate and remove the actual (spiritual) cause of the (physical and psychological) symptoms.