Sadness Versus Depression -- Relationship

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. I welcome you and I bless you.

In this new working year, that promises to be as productive as each former year, you may surely expect further growth and liberation. This applies to all who truly desire to face themselves. There has been great progress among my friends, even among those who do not feel happy at the moment. For many of you the intermission during the summer was a time of fruition.

But among you there are also a few who feel discouraged, whose question is: "Where does this path get me when I am as unhappy and confused now as before?" I want to remind them of two things. One is that those who feel their liberation and growth have also gone through phases on this path when they felt just as you feel now. Yet, they persevered and they now begin to feel very definite results. The second point is that when one feels stagnation, this is always due to an inner, perhaps hidden, unwillingness to face some area of one's being. This resistance always applies to the area that would be most important to tackle at that very moment. That is why you feel stagnation. Therefore, I say to those friends who feel discouraged and stagnating, to ask themselves very, very truthfully: "Is there not a wall in me that prevents insight?" Are you not, in some manner, to some extent, guarding against something, perhaps through justification, self-pity, hopelessness, or a superficial rationalization of outer circumstances? Test yourself very carefully and you will have to see that this is the reason for such stagnation. Once you recognize it, you are so much farther towards liberation and growth.

It is very easy to focus on the superficial actions and forget that one needs the complete inner will to face everything within. To stress the outer actions may so easily lead to self-deception. Evasion can take on many forms. I repeat, wherever there is stagnation, discouragement, depression about the validity of your work, in some corner of your being you do evade yourself. All those who, step by step, overcome this resistance that is universal do feel their own growing; do feel their liberation from shackles.

Tonight I should like to discuss, first of all, the difference between sadness and depression. It is important, at this time, to get a fuller comprehension about the decided difference between these two emotions. It is not only important for our new friends here, but also for all my old friends.

If the case is crass, the difference between sadness and depression is very distinct, and I believe you can all remember instances when you experienced the one or the other, knowing how different these two emotions are. However, there are many instances when the differentiation cannot be easily made because both exist simultaneously: they intermingle and overlap. Your experience of sadness may make you believe that depression is absent. You may believe that your feelings of sadness and pain are purely normal, healthy, and do not contain any negative, destructive elements. You need more insight and comprehension in order to find in yourself the unproductive depression, with its underlying cause, in spite of the rational sadness.

Let us first define the difference. In sadness you accept, without self-pity, a painful facet of life as being outside your power of changing it. When you are truly sad, without depression, you not only feel the pain as a healthy, growing pain, knowing it is going to pass, free of hopelessness, but you are sad due to the outer circumstance. There is no superimposition, no hiding, no shifting of emotions. In depression the outer circumstance may be the same, but your feelings of pain, to quite an extent, are due to other reasons than the outer occurrence. Although you cannot change the outer circumstance, you can change something within yourself, if you but saw the real reasons for your suffering, certain emotions that you do not wish to face -- be they hurts, resentments, envies, wrongs committed by you or someone else.

You are powerless to make yourself feel differently, but only as long as you do not fully comprehend what is going on in you. That is why depression is always linked with frustration and helplessness. For, strangely enough, one does not feel helpless towards an outer event that one cannot change if one has a healthy attitude toward it. One feels depressed only when unable to change it now, immediately. But he could change something in his life, in his own attitude, if he but took the trouble to look inside himself. When one cannot really accept something in sadness, it is because the outer circumstance is not the real or entire reason that underlies one's pain. This is very important, my friends, and I wish you would think about it.

Let us take the example of the loss of a beloved person through death. If you are really sad, and nothing else, such feeling is due entirely to this loss. Here is something you cannot change. You know it, and, in spite of the sorrow, you accept it eventually. You even know that you will, even while you are still in the worst stage of your pain. You know and believe, deep inside, that your life will go on; that it does not even have to be the poorer for the bereavement, no matter how genuine your love and affection is for the departed. This pain will not leave a scar; because any healthy, genuine, unshifted, direct emotion is an enriching experience for your whole being.

When you are depressed (whether or not in addition to sadness) due to the loss of a beloved person, there are within you a number of confused, ambiguous, as well as ambivalent emotions that you are unaware of. They vaguely disturb you, and this disturbance is attributed to the legitimate pain of loss. Thus you have shifted emotions and used an actual, valid occurrence in order to cover up something that you are unwilling to face and come to terms with. Whether that something is directly connected with the departed one -- guilt, resentments, or what have you -- or whether this loss has merely triggered off some unresolved, festering inner conflict in you, does not matter. It may be both. It may be your identification with that person. You may experience your own fear of death and your fear of the passing of life, which you do not permit yourself to become aware of. Since you are not aware, you cannot cope with it. This, then, causes depression, and depression, as opposed to sadness, is a very stifling, frustrating, unhealthy feeling.

Let us clearly see exactly what is unhealthy. Let us take self-pity, which is always a byproduct of depression. It is unhealthy because it is unfounded. There always is a way out if you are willing to see it. In self-pity, you are unwilling to see the way out, but prefer the world around you to change, to sympathize with you, and make allowances for you. Moreover, in depression, as just explained, you deceive yourself about the real reason for your unhappiness, and talk yourself into the "legitimate" one. You use the latter as a shield to continue to run away from yourself and also to strengthen your self-pity, and thus to subtly exert a forcing current upon the world. Still further, it is unhealthy because you passively remain in the status quo, thereby falsely accepting what need not be accepted because you could change if you faced yourself. At the same time, you battle against that which truly cannot be changed. All that together causes the unhealthy character of depression.

The example of loss through death is purposely a crass one. Of course, there are so many incidents when man is depressed with less valid outer reason, and sometimes with none. He simply does not know why. He may try to find legitimate excuses and "reasons," but in his heart of hearts he knows very well that the explanation for his feelings is other than those he arduously tries to convince himself of.

It is of great importance, my friends, to meet yourself with this understanding whenever you feel depressed. When you as to the emotion in the sense in which I have discussed it. Is it really just sadness? Do you not also feel hopeless and believe you are sad due to a "good" outer reason, test yourself frustrated? Are you free of self-pity? Do you feel strong and secure enough to know that your life cannot be harmed by circumstances outside yourself, no matter how painful a situation might be? If you cannot answer these questions in the affirmative, then you need healthy introspection so as to find the gnawing undercurrents that cause the depression. Only then can you free yourself forever of the cause that will, again and again, come up in your life until you bring about its dissolution; not by forcing away what you feel, but by first calmly looking at it with the aim to understand.

The dissolution of the cause of depression not only serves the purpose of freeing you of very unpleasant feelings, but, above all, it liberates faculties which will work for you, rather than against you. In depression, life cannot be the dynamic experience it would otherwise be. Depression makes you feel as though life slid by without your fully utilizing it. Thus depression is self-generating. Since depression is the effect, its cause prevents you from really living and fulfilling yourself. That is why you feel depressed, and because you are depressed, you do not fully live. It is so easily forgotten that depression needs to be considered a problem, rather than something that happens and will eventually go away. This particular depression may indeed do just that after a while, but you have not protected yourself against the outer reoccurrence when life provokes you again. Nor have you protected yourself against the destructive effects of the inner cause. Hence, please take up depression as a problem in your work.

Every affliction of the psyche hinders living. It does so because it prevents you from relating. We began discussing, working on, and understanding the importance of relationships. You have learned that fruitful relationships can exist only to the degree your soul is healthy and free. But we have to understand more profoundly what relationship and relating are.

Life is relationship, my friends. "What is life?" is a question asked by many. Many answers can be given, and they may be all truthful. But, above all else, life is relationship! If you do not relate at all, you do not live. Life, or relationship, is relative: relative to your attitude. You may relate positively or negatively. But the moment you relate, you live. That is why a person who relates negatively lives more than the person who relates little (I cannot say "not at all," for then he would not live). Destructive relationships lead to a climax that is ultimately bound to dissolve the destructiveness, while non-relating, even under the guise of false serenity, is further down the scale.

You are so used to associating the word "relationship" to human beings around you. But, in truth, this word applies to everything, even to inanimate objects, to concepts and ideas; to the circumstances of living; to the world; to yourself; to your thoughts and attitudes. To the degree that you relate, to that degree you will be unfrustrated and have a sense of fulfillment.

The scale of the possibilities of relationship is enormous. Let us begin with the lowest form on earth, which is mineral. Since a mineral is without consciousness, you may believe that it does not relate. That is untrue. Since it lives, it relates, but its degree of relating is limited to its degree of life -- or, more correctly put, because it is incapable of relating more, it is a mineral. The mineral relates by the fact that it lets itself be perceived and used. Thus it relates in a completely passive way. The relating capacity of an animal is already more dynamic. It actively responds to other animals, to nature, to human beings. The scale or difference of relating capacity among human beings is much wider than you remotely realize at the moment. Let us begin with the lowest scale among human beings. That would be the completely insane person, the one who has to be put into solitary confinement, or the criminal -- and one is not so different from the other. They both are completely withdrawn, live in outer and inner isolation. They can hardly relate to other human beings. But since they are still alive, they must continue to relate somehow. They relate to other aspects of life: to things: to their needed environment, be it in the most negative way; to food; to certain bodily functions; perhaps even to some ideas; or art; or nature. It will be very useful, my friends, to begin to think about life and people from this point of view. If you meditate on this subject, it will help you greatly and increase your understanding about many things, and not the least about your own life.

Now, by contrast, let me immediately go to the highest form of human beings. These are people who relate beautifully; who are deeply involved with others; who are unafraid of involvement; who have no protective covering against experience and feeling. Therefore they love. They permit themselves to. In the last analysis, the ability to love is always the inner willingness and readiness to do so. People belonging in this category do not only love abstractly and generally, but they do so personally and concretely, regardless of personal risk. Such people are not necessarily saints, or holy, or anywhere near perfect. They may have their faults. They may be wrong at times and have negative emotions too. But, on the whole, they love, they relate, and do not fear involvement. They have freed themselves from the defenses. Such people, in spite of occasional disappointments or setbacks, have a life full of fruitful, meaningful relationships.

What is this life for the so-called average person? Here it is a combination of the two extremes, the highest and lowest on this scale. The possibilities are manifold. A person may be relatively free and relate well in certain areas of life, and be very much obstructed in others. Only deep personal insight will enable you to find the truth in this respect about yourself. Most deceptive, however, are the cases where apparently good relationships exist on the surface, but they are devoid of depth and inner meaning. Then it is so easy to deceive oneself and say, "look how many good friends I have, there is nothing wrong with my relationships, and yet I am unhappy, lonely, unfulfilled." If this is the case, my friends, it cannot be true that your relationships are good or that your willingness to truly relate exists. For you cannot be lonely and unhappy if your relationships are meaningful. The way you relate may fulfill a superficial function, be pleasant and distracting, but somehow shallow. Your true self is never revealed, and therefore you are unfulfilled. Thus you also prevent others from relating and do not give them what they search for, whether or not they know it. This is due to your unconscious fear of exposure, to your various inner conflicts. As long as you are not willing to resolve them, you cannot have meaningful relationships -- and you therefore must be unfulfilled.

The average person has some capacity and willingness for involvement and relating, but not deeply enough. The drama of mutual exchange and communication takes place on a superficial level. Hence unconscious tendencies and currents affect the involved parties and, sooner or later, cause a disturbance if the shallow relationship is a close one. If the shallow relationship never becomes close, then nothing will happen, but neither can one deceive oneself in that case that it is a real tie. Unconscious destructive tendencies can only be dissolved if one faces and understand them. Then they will not harm the relationship, because automatically the mutual exchange and communication occurs on a more profound level.

It is often not clear what constitutes a profound and meaningful relationship. At times it is thought that the mutual exchange of ideas is the criterion, at other times the mutual exchange of sexual pleasures. All this may, indeed, be present, yet the communication is still not very deep. The only criterion is how genuine you are, how uncovered and undefensive; how willing you are to feel and involve and expose yourself, and all that which really matters to you. How many people do you know to whom you can express your real sorrows, needs, worries, longings, wishes? Very few, if any. Again, to the degree you permit yourself to become aware of these feelings, to that degree will you find a few others with whom you can share and whose life you are capable of truly understanding. If you shy away from yourself, how can you be willing to relate to others that which you do not dare to acknowledge to yourself? Thus you live in isolation and unfulfillment. Thus you fear death because you let life pass by in the pseudo-safety of solitary confinement.

This is why we are so very much concerned in this work with your admitting the truth to yourself, for only then can you begin to have real, instead of pseudo, relationship -- and thereby lead a meaningful life. Even your relationship to other aspects of life, such as the arts, nature, ideas, will take on a new form that is so very much alive, instead of perhaps merely being a substitute. Art, nature, ideas, too, will become more real.

Often real relating and communication is confused with the childish compulsion to tell everyone everything. Thus, you may share your feelings indiscriminately and jeopardize yourself, in the misunderstood idea that foolish candor, or unwise exposure, or cruel "honesty," are proof of your openness and willingness to relate. In reality this merely covers up your withdrawal that exists on a much more hidden level and in a more subtle manifestation. Thus you provoke the "proof" that it it does not pay to involve yourself.

With real self-understanding and the subsequent liberation from your self-inflicted prison, there will be nothing strained in your self-revelation and your relationships. You will intuitively choose the right people and the right opportunities and the right manner. Occasional misjudgments will never crush you or put put you back into hiding. But this freedom, this organic growing process, happens only gradually, and only after you pursue this path of self-knowledge.

Psychiatrists often diagnose people according to the ability to relate, the depth of the relationship, and thus their meaningfulness. It is often said, and it is so true, that some of the more severely disturbed people can receive help easier than those whose disturbance is less obvious. This is due to the fact that the latter can easier deceive themselves and pretend that things are not so bad, and thus continue to hide from the truth within. This subterfuge is unavailable to the former. He therefore comes to a point where he has to make a choice: he can look at his inner life squarely, without self-deception. Or he may come to a severe breakdown, which will postpone self-confrontation. In any case, he is nearer that point of decision, perhaps only in the following life, than the milder neurotic person who evades and evades.

As long as you cannot admit that you are human and that you need help by exposing your vulnerabilities, you cannot be helped in your problems, nor can you form real relationships. Thus your life will always remain empty, at least in some important parts.

For the moment most of you, my friends, do not even have a clear concept of what it is to really relate or love. Your concern is still mainly centered around yourselves, and if you are outgoing to others, it is not a natural, spontaneous process, but an artificial, compulsive one. But it will come, this natural concern and warmth for others, if you persevere on this road we are taking.

In the past we have discussed the wall that you keep around your heart. But we will investigate it further, so as to gain more comprehension about it. This is very important and necessary. Without comprehension and awareness of this wall in you, you cannot understand your loneliness; you cannot understand how you affect others; and so often you do not even understand how others affect you, because you do not permit yourself to feel the real effect due to a number of reasons we have discussed in the past. Thus you color your real impressions and experiences, and you are no longer in truth. Therefore, you have to become much more acutely aware of what you experience and how others affect you in truth. Your continuous work along this path in private sessions in addition to group work is most important. This will help you greatly toward self-awareness in understanding your relationships.

And now to your questions.

QUESTION: What about a relationship that changes? Also, what about seeking variety and flow? Is it a manifestation of healthy relating if a relationship changes and if a person wishes many relationships?

ANSWER: This is again one of those questions that cannot be answered with a "yes" or "no." Both a changing relationship and the desire for variety may indicate healthy or unhealthy motives. Often it is a combination of both, though one side may be predominant. However, one must beware of oversimplification. The fact that a relationship changes for the worse does not necessarily indicate relapse or stagnation. It may be a necessary temporary reaction from an unhealthy submissiveness, from the craving for affection, or from any other one-sided neurotic bondage. Before a healthy relationship can come into being between two people who have been tied together by a variety of mutual distortions, such a temporary outer or inner storm may fulfill the same balancing function as an electric storm or earthquake fulfills in nature. Whether or not this relationship can become predominantly free and healthy depends on both parties involved. By the same token, a smooth outer relationship, apparently devoid of friction, is not necessarily an indication of its health and meaningfulness. Close examination of the ties and their significance is the only answer. One can never generalize. If two people grow together in any kind of relationship -- be it partnership, love, friendship, whatever -- they have to go through various phases. If they muster sufficient insight about themselves, not only about the other, such relationship will become more securely rooted and ever more fruitful.

As far as seeking variety is concerned, that too depends on the real motivation. If variety is sought hastily, compulsively, due to predominant reasons of fear, greed, grasping; due to being unable to really relate to any one person, and therefore supplementing this lack with a lot of superficial ties; if others are constantly sought as a safeguard against not being dependent on and deserted by the few, then, needless to say, it indicates unhealthy trends. But if variety is sought because of the richness of different human beings and one's relationship to them, but in a free spirit, not in order to use one against the other, then it is healthy. Often, both motivations exist. But even in the former case, this may indicate a temporary necessity: a counter-reaction to previous withdrawal, and, as such, may be a step towards health. It is often true that a negative manifestation is a transitory positive indication.

QUESTION: How does that tie in with a person manipulating his reactions to other people?

ANSWER: Actually, this question is already answered. Manipulation happens out of defensiveness and pseudo needs. The one that is manipulated, whether or not he is aware of it, will either react by giving in due to his fears, needs, dependency, thus losing his integrity; or he will rebel because he wants affection without being a slave, but does not yet know that he does not need to rebel if he can relinquish. If a person is free enough not to need another in a spirit of life or death, he does not have to resent the unconscious conditions of dominion of the other. He will let go quietly and preserve his integrity. Only by fighting as to who is the stronger one -- and this fight usually happens in a hidden way -- does the relationship fluctuate between dominion, rebellion, submission, appeasement, resentment, etc. Both want something from each other that neither is willing to give. Both claims are distorted and unrealistic. Thus a battle evolves that overshadows the potential for a real relationship, that is always free.

QUESTION: Between two human beings who want to relate, but both, for various reasons, manipulate, or one manipulates, where does the element of real love come in? Does this not dissolve or alleviate the manipulation?

ANSWER: To the degree a person feels the need for manipulation -- an unconscious protective measure -- to that degree real love cannot exist. These two elements are mutually exclusive. The pseudo need for manipulation, if you examine it, stems from egocentric fear and an over-cautiousness towards letting go, to feel, and to be. Therefore it prohibits love, even though some measure of real love may also exist, but is hindered by the aspect in question. If real love is greater than the distortion, it will not dissolve the distortion, but the weight will be greater -- and thus the relationship less problematic. Dissolution of problematic areas can only happen through understanding. Then love can blossom. But where darkness, confusion, non-facing of what is exists, love cannot come into being. It is not so easy that the fact that you do love simply dissolves all the negative currents and distortions, conflicts and fears, unconscious defensive measures, and manipulations.

It is usually so simple to measure -- your outer life furnishes you with so many clues if you but understand them. To the degree that a relationship has problems, to that degree unconscious distortions exist in both parties. Man is alternatively tempted to be exclusive in the direction either of only blaming the other, or of only assuming self-blame. It takes some time and understanding, some experience on this path, to recognize that one wrong does not eliminate another; that in all problems of relationship all who are involved are responsible. Such insight always has a very liberating effect, simply because it is the truth. This truth will free you of guilt and of the necessity to accuse, to blame, to judge.

QUESTION: Isn't it sometimes easier to relate to somebody one is not too close to? One is less critical...

ANSWER: Why, of course. This is just the proof that it is not a real relationship, but a superficial one. A real relationship means involvement. That does not merely mean the negative aspects and currents. Involvement means the staking of one's whole being. That is why such a relationship is bound to suffer friction because there are so many unresolved and unrecognized problem areas within both parties. That is why each friction can become such a stepping stone if it is approached with a constructive attitude. Now with all that, I do not mean that you should have only such deep relationships. This would be impossible and unrealistic. But there must be quite a few, all different, if the person is to feel his life as a dynamic, fruitful experience.

To be more specific, I may add that unconscious expectations, claims, and demands cause such havoc in relationships. Not because all expectations are necessarily "wrong," but because they smolder underground and cause a mutual strain as they clash with the demands of the other person. Apart from the fact that some demands are really unjustified and unreasonable, and can only be recognized as such if they come to your surface awareness, even justified expectations will turn against you because, in your unawareness of them, you are unconsciously unsure of their rightful existence.

QUESTION: In the same connection, when a person thinks that he relates instantaneously to other people is that a projection of a kind of "black magic," to the childish belief in one's omnipotence?

ANSWER: Yes, of course. In every human being the child exists who wants to be infallible. It may often be true that a person may have an intuitive understanding of others. The danger then is that he develops the tendency to believe he is always right. It takes a bit of growing, maturity, and wisdom to realize that one may be right at times, but certainly not always. Once this is recognized and one's limitations accepted, it is no longer a crushing shame to be wrong.

Growing, in this respect, often proceeds in stages. At first a person may be so completely unsure of himself, may not put any value on himself and his perceptions, may be so inferior-feeling that he does not trust his intuition at all -- nor even his reason. He always believes that only others are right, whether or not this be true; whether or not he be aware of this hidden conviction against which he may erroneously battle by an over-assertiveness -- which, of course, is the wrongest way to remedy the situation, because no ill can disappear before its existence is acknowledged. Then he goes through a certain process of growing and he experiences that his perceptions are often valid. This is a great relief and joy. Self-confidence begins to blossom. But this is only a tiny step on the latter and he is not yet quite sure of the reality of this phenomenon. Since he is so unsure, he is frightened to find out that he has only imagined it all, and guards against the dreaded disappointment by summoning his inherent childish claim for omnipotence, as a counter-measure. If he remains at that stage, without recognizing this factor, he will never completely grow out of his inferiority feelings. But by recognizing this, he will learn that he is not without worth or value just because he is not always right. He will no longer fear it and therefore enter into a more realistic relationship with himself.

All growing and learning is determined by curves and cycles. If the cycle is stopped, growth is stopped, and the person eventually reverts to his old state, where he had begun to take his first tentative steps. The temporary improvement is not followed through; the person was blinded by actual success but not yet secure enough not to fear the illusion of the experience -- therefore nothing is really resolved yet.

The immature psyche always fluctuates between under and overestimation. Neither is reality. Only by continuing on this curve can one attain the true perspective, and thus will self-assurance come in a genuine way.

If the wrong conclusion, so frequent, "If I admit I am not always right, then I fall back into my inferior state," is recognized, then all is well, and the fear of being wrong will vanish. He will realize that the more he can allow for not having to be right, the more his intuition will grow; the validity of his judgment will increase -- but by no means will he always be accurate. Of crucial importance at this stage of the curve is the awareness of the fear which forbids being wrong, due to the unfounded danger that the growth experience was illusory.

I close with very special blessing for every one of you; for every one who reads these words; for every one entering this work now, or being in it already, or entering it in the future. I bless this entire working year and I leave you with my love and warmth for all of you, and with the promise of active help that can come to you to the degree that you recognize and humor your own resistance against self-facing. Find your willingness to recognize your rationalizations that keep you from truth and reality within yourself; that keep you from growing into a meaningful, full life. May this blessing, that is going into you and enveloping you, help each and everyone, wherever you stand. And may you come to know that life is benign and that your depressions are unreal. The flow of living is continuous and only in your limited view need you fear. The more you remove the shackles of your unconscious, voluntary blindness, the more will you experience the truth of these words. Be blessed in God.

The Guide
by Eva Pierrakos
September 14, 1962

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