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Feature Article: The "Beloved" as Anti-Depressant
Depression Essays Book
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Marty L. Cooper, MFT

(415) 937-1620

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4831 Geary Blvd.

San Francisco, CA 94118

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martycooper

@mlcooper.com

 

April 2013                      Vol. 5, Issue 3
Greetings! 

Wishing you a good spring!  
 
You'll see reflected in this month's newsletter something that's true about working with depression, that it requires moving between focusing on details and "doing stuff," and focusing on large--sometimes very large--scale issues, such as meaning, purpose, and spirituality, or what I'm calling here, "profound meaning."  
 
So in this article, I'm focusing on the experience of "The Beloved," or those places in one's life where you experience...something deeper, something basic, something gut-level true and enlivening.  Some call that the "numinous," but however one names this experience, without it the world is a depressed place.  With it, the futility that is the tap root of depression abates.
 
I hope the article is useful to you all, and as always, welcome feedback and thoughts.

 

Enjoy,

Marty

The "Beloved" as Anti-Depressant

 

...The real beloved is that one who is unique,

who is your beginning and your end.

When you find that one,

You'll no longer expect anything else:

that is both the manifest and the mystery.

"I am only the house of your beloved"
--Rumi (tr. Masnavi)

 

"Beloved (n, adj): dearly loved; dear to the heart"

(Merium-Webster)

 

So, what is the "Beloved"?

 

The "Beloved," as a concept, can be understood as:  that thing (person, object, animal, "visceral idea") which we are in relationship to, which is specifically tuned to our own unique selves to allow us to experience the numinous, or you could say, "the profoundly meaningful." (The "numinous" describes that which has the quality or presence of the base level of meaning, often thought of as "the divine".)

 

Many religious and spiritual traditions (and, arguable, branches of modern science) say that the stuff of this world is all of the same essence.  However, in our day to day lives, this same essence doesn't show up equally as potently in all places. We have very particular histories, proclivities, characters, and nervous systems, and because of how these create in each of us a distinct perspective or lens, we see this essence of life, this "profoundly meaningful," through our unique lens. "Beloveds" exist not because all of life can't be experienced as sacred, but because our funky particularity makes it more obvious and visceral in some places and not so obvious in others.

 

Ok, admitting that all might sound s bit abstract, I'll give some examples from my own life (and then I'll relate these ideas to depression below.)

 

At this point, it is totally clear that dogs are one of my Beloveds (we all, when we look, will find many). It doesn't much matter which dog, or whether I'm rolling around with one or seeing a dog across the street. The same felt-sense of Belovedness arises in me in contact with the dog's "dogness"; when I get a hit of that, I'm gone. For me, for mostly mysterious reasons, dogs (rather than cats, or birds, or hamsters) are the place where my very particular particularity resonates with the "profoundly meaningful." I do not argue that cats or birds or hamsters have less of the Profound; it's simply that given my funky particularity, "dogness" is equivalent to "the numinous."

 

Another example: I love complex freeway systems. The Maze, over at the East side of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, is, like dogs, another place where the numinous pokes through, for me, the mundane and strides forth as a Beloved. Why? I can make a story about it, about intricacy, about balancing materiality with creativity with intellect, with organizing an awesome amount of resources into a useful form...but that doesn't really explain why it shows up as a Beloved to my heart, and as an ugly collection of concrete to another person. Beloveds are not what they are because we can explain them. They are what they are because they are implicit in our unique minds and hearts and bodies. We don't create them. Rather, we discover them.

 

The felt-sense of the Beloved is exactly what Rumi says, "both the manifest and the mystery." It's not an airy, cerebral sense, nor is it simply a pleasant physical zing. It is Meaning embodied, physicalized, viscerally felt in a particular and unique "location." It is profound or "basal" meaning, and therefore a resting place that doesn't point anywhere else, except to the existence of the profound, the numinous. The Beloved is a tangible person/place/activity/being; it's not a metaphor or symbol. Again, as Rumi says, it's "your beginning and end." It's your tangible and unique place, where you experience the numinous and profound. Whether it's dogs or cats, the engineering of freeway systems or the subtle architecture of plants, Edwardian design or post-post modern high rises, my wife or your husband: if it has that felt-quality of Belovedness, then it's your Beloved.

 

The way to identify your Beloveds is to actually look for where you already experience the "tangible numinous." The question is, "What do I love, already, observably, especially, inexplicably?" It's not at all what you are told, or think you should, be in love with. It's not an idea or a cultural injunction. It's what already pre-exists...whether you like it or not.

 

An example of the "like it or not" quality:  I recently toured a famous Craftsman style house in Los Angeles, in a famous neighborhood full of such houses. We walked through the neighborhood with our docent, and I found the architecture interesting, historically and intellectually curious, but only when I get to the peaked and protruding lines of the Queen Anne house do I find that, as Wordsworth wrote, "my heart leaps up." I don't really know why, because it's a fairly formulaic house, and I'd much rather see myself being seen as entranced by the cerebral and unique Craftsmen style houses. But there it is. The Queen Anne is, apparently, my architectural Beloved.

 

Again, like it or not, approve of it or not, your deeper self loves what it loves. You can do deep inquiry with yourself by following this map of your own Beloveds, but you can't control them, and you can't make a Beloved out of what is really a topical curiosity or interest. If you do try, something in you will feel profoundly not right.

 

Exercise interlude: 

 

Before relating the Beloved to depression, I'd like you to take a few minutes here to feel into your life and see how many Beloveds you can identify. They often will show up categorically, so you can explore by asking, "What is my domestic animal Beloved?" Or, "What is my Beloved family member?" Or, "What is my ecosystem Beloved?" And so on. Or you can also simply pose the question, "What are my Beloveds in my life?" and then let your mind roam to those places where there's an inexplicable love, passion, and attachment. Then, having identified at least one Beloved, feel into what that's like (maybe contrasting it with something you experience as mundane). Try to feel into what a Beloved feels like, in your mind, heart and body.  Notice if there's any reactions to this exercise or to identifying a Beloved (maybe, "I can't trust it," or, "What if I'm wrong?" or, "I want more of this!").  Remember, this is discovery, or observation, not analysis.

 

Ok, so why is this meaningful in relation to depression?

 

The short answer is that a world without Beloveds is a depressing world. A world without Beloveds is experienced as lacking the numinous, and a world without the numinous (profound meaning) is experienced as shallow and without roots. Living in this world, you are vulnerable to experiencing self and world as meaninglessness, futile. A meaningless world is, by definition, a world of disconnection, and is seen as a useless place to put much effort or attachment.

 

Thus, engagement is registered as essentially futile:  not this relationship or that relationship, but relationship itself. And, since futility is the fulcrum point of depression, when our deeper mind assesses some relationship or pursuit as "futile," it initiates a process of disassociating or letting go of whatever that is. But, since we humans are driven at all levels of our being and nervous system to relate (see the book Loneliness, by Caioppo and Patrick, for a the science supporting this idea), we can feel "letting go" as a kind of catastrophe, and so cling on for dear life. This dilemma--let go of the futile, but letting go equals destruction, so hold on to survive--triggers the backup circuitry to get us to detach from what's deemed futile.  Instead of an elegant grieving, letting go, we collapse into depression.

 

Thus: if we experience a lack of "profound meaning" (the numinous) in self and world, a lack of Beloveds, then we are vulnerable to depression. (A person may hold it back for a while, but given enough stress to surface this lack of the numinous, we will sink.)

 

The Deep Injunction of Depression

 

For depressives, it's not enough to find good-enough relationships, ok-for-now meaning, because for us, relating per se has come to be felt as futile, meaningless.  Why relate when we can't see anything worth relating to?  So for us, like it or not, we are driven down into the existential level to find "profound meaning." The table scraps won't, and actually can't, satisfy us. In a very real way--the suicide rate is much higher with major depression than the general population--this is a life or death question.

 

But, ironically, this is one of the gruesome benefits of depression: it drives us to find the base of reality, and to discover what we are in our true authenticity.

 

There are many things that help with depression, but ultimately, for the depressive, without uncovering this "base authentic," there is a chronic sense of lack, of meaninglessness, and therefore of futility, and therefore an ongoing vulnerability to manifesting depression. Depression--like it or not--forces us to find our real, undeniably meaningful self. There are various palliatives, to be sure, but nothing else cures.

 

Because we are forced into the bedrock level of meaning, and cannot sustain ourselves for long with surrogate meanings, beliefs, or stories, we actually have to discover our Beloveds, the unique places where we experience "profound meaning," in order to survive and thrive. We have to discover the tangible, undeniable numinous, trustworthy and personally relevant expression of the "profoundly meaningful." That is, our Beloveds.

 

The Beloveds are a vital dimension of what answers this basal question, the staggeringly beautiful, robust, and stable answer to, "What is the real meaning of my life?" This question has gotten a lot of flack for being heady, philosophical and useless navel-gazing. But that is so far from the truth, and a bias that is actually dangerous for the depressive, who in order to live, has to find out its answer. 

 

 

My Book is Now Available:

Anxiety and Depression:  42 Essays on Overcoming the Wild Moods

My book,

Anxiety and Depression:  42 Essays on Overcoming the Wild Moods, is for sale as paperback or Kindle.

 

It is a collection of short essays, focusing on the challenge of managing, and ultimately, uprooting depression and anxiety.  You can find a few sample articles here, and

can purchase the book on Amazon here.

Archive of Past Newsletters
   All past issues of Tame Your Mood can be found here.
Audio Recordings
   Various audio recordings can be found here.
About Marty

I am a San Francisco psychotherapist who helps individuals struggling with anxiety and depression to not only manage theseMarty L. Cooper, MFT "wild moods," but eventually learn how to overcome them.  I work comprehensively with mental, emotional, bodily, and spiritual dimensions and anxiety and depression, all of which are necessary to overcome the chronic quality of anxiety and depression.

If you are interested in exploring working together in psychotherapy, please contact me at:

 

(415) 937-1620,
Or email at: [email protected].