If you desire healing

…let yourself fall ill, let yourself fall ill.” [i]

Whether by choice or fate, I fell into depression.

I have gone through a time of great challenge for the most of the last almost 3 years.  I am now getting better at handling the madness as Jung would say.

I am in the middle of a life change.  I just moved and am ready to embark on a challenging educational experience.  What is wonder full about it, and we are talking for today only, is that I am not afraid of it.  I was deathly afraid of law school.  Afraid of failing.  When I got the results that I had passed the bar, I cried for about 15 minutes solid.

Now I am looking to get a Phd.  Yes I am older, but this is a calling for me, not a career choice.  I am doing it because I have to do it.   What is interesting is that psychology was one of my 3 career choices 23 years ago, but I chose not to do it.

I want to change the last sentence of the poem “Healing” by D.H. Lawrence which was the first post on this blog almost 4 months ago.  I am posting the poem here, because this expresses to me what mental illness truly is.

“I am not a mechanism; an assembly of various sections.
And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill.
I am ill because of wounds deep to the soul, to the deep emotional self
and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help
And patience, and a certain difficult repentance,
Long difficult repentance, realization of life’s mistake, and the freeing oneself from the endless repetition of the mistake
Which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.”

[i]Rumi.

It is better to seek forgiveness than it is to seek permission

I apologize for not posting the last few days.