Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

The Allergic Pagan

Home
Pagan
Happiness and Depression, Sacrality and Spirituality

Happiness and Depression, Sacrality and Spirituality

Last updated on: September 27, 2012 at 6:01 pm by John Halstead

Happiness and Depression, Sacrality and Spirituality 2012-09-27T18:01:01-05:00 John Halstead

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I’ve come across several good posts on other blogs recently that tie in with subjects that I have tackled here.

Happiness and Mormons

First, AskMormonGirl, Joanna Brooks, tackles the myth of Mormon happiness:

“… there are lots of sad, anxious, and depressed Mormons too — though you might never tell from the outside. There are even Mormons who shut down vast regions of their inner lives so as not to risk harboring a feeling that doesn’t measure up. For the shadow of Mormon happiness is the tremendous feeling of loneliness and failure we Mormons shoulder when we believe we fail to measure up to our culture’s high happiness standards.”

Happiness and depression are subjects I’ve written about here (“Depression as a friend”) and h ere (“I’m down with rainy days”).

Depression

Another blogger to write recently about how depression serves us was Kathleen O’Keefe-Kanavos at Patheos. Check out her post “Depression!: A Message from Self?”:

“… deciding to see what lessons I could learn from my depression was the first step toward a cure.

“Looking back on those difficult times I can now answer questions I avoided such as, “Why was I depressed? How did depression serve me and what did it teach me?” Our mind is incredibly powerful and will create (manifest) situations to serve and save us. I came to the conclusion that depression and illness was a way of forcing me to slow down and “look within” at memories (old baggage), events (past and present cycles), people (relationships), and life styles (habits) that are not to my benefit.”

The comments are worth reading as well, as are LaurenF’s comments to my post “Depression as a friend”, which take up the issue of the difference between clinical chronic depression and common situational or cyclical (i.e., seasonal) depression.

Sacrality

Over at No Unsacred Place, Ian Corrigan takes (etymological) issue with the premise of that blog:

“… the essential point of ‘sacredness’ is its separation from the common. To use ‘sacred’ as a reference to unity is rather a contradiction in terms. To say that there is ‘No Unsacred Place’ – that everything is equally dedicated to the special work of religion, is essentially to say that nothing is, in fact, special. If nothing is unsacred, then nothing is sacred.”

I struggled to work out this idea in my post, “When everything is sacred, nothing is”, and came to a tentative conclusion that questions of what is sacred have more to do with us (our existential state) than they do with the natural world.

Spirituality

Finally, Peregrin Wildoak at Magic of the Ordinary has posted a great essay on Legitimate Spirituality and the New Age: an esoteric perspective. It is precisely Peregrin’s insight into this subject that drew me to his blog in the first place. These posts by Peregrinon this subject are worth reading too: “Reclaiming the Reclamation : thoughts on the modern ‘Goddess Movement’” and “Spirituality: are we doing it right?”. Peregrin takes the position that true spirituality is not about healing the ego, but about breaking it down.

“… we need to align our everyday ‘lower-self’ with the spiritual impetus from our Sacred One(s) that seeks to manifest through us. The same reality is referred to in both sentences, the crucial matter being surrender to the divine. Spirituality without this surrender is polluted and corrupted by our own petty ego concerns; in New Age language – our spirituality can become a vehicle for the expression of our patterns, addictions and ‘issues’.”

Peregrin’s post is definitely worth reading. I found it to be a welcome challenge.

The different levels of spirituality is something I have written about before here: “Exoteric and esoteric ritual”. Personally, I am reticent to disregard those ego-healing experience as not “real spirituality”. There is definitely a difference, in my mind, between spirituality which is integrating (what I call “spiritual” in my post) and and spirituality which is dis-integating (what I call “mystical” in my post). I think the two have to be used in conjunction, or at least in succession. It is meaningless and even dangerous to try to break down a person’s ego which is deeply damaged by abuse or trauma. I suggest that the integrating “spirituality” and a dis-integrating “mysticism” are two movements in a the same dialectical cycle (something I hope to write more about soon).

Previous Post

September 19, 2012

Defining Paganism and Neopaganism

Next Post

September 28, 2012 Mysteria Misc. Maxima @ Invocatio: a blog *mostly* about Western esotericism

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Ritual Scripts Theology Uncategorized

Select a Month January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Where did the Pentecostal movement begin in the early 1900s?

Select your answer to see how you score.

London Berlin Rome Azusa Street, Los Angeles