Expressions

I am now browsing through a book dedicated to Markus Ng titled A Shooting Star. It is on loan from my friend Mei. The book writes of a young man who died young, a young man who suffered from depression, a young man his family and friends felt was a beacon of light that faded out.

From the moment I heard that Markus passed away through a friend's status on gmail, I knew that he was not unlike me. We are what the medical term call sufferers of depression or mental illness, if you like. His writings (or expressions of thoughts) are not unlike mine, searching for the meaning in life and death. The only difference is I know that I am just a part of a whole.

Depression sounds so depressing, so mental. I would like to say that it is just a disharmony between mind and spirit. Spirit says experience life, mind labels life. Spirit says internal God, mind says external God. Spirit says love, mind says a lot of other things less than loving. Spirit says forgive, the mind is full of anger and mistrust.

I think I was depressive all my life, not because I could not cope with life, but my views were in conflict with what I felt deep inside me. Conflicts of life's conditioning and the so called realities of life. Fortunately for me, I discovered myself later in life and questioned life no more. Life is just that, an experience for the spirit, the immortal. After all, we are all light, made man. We all came from the same place and we are in the same place (this planet), and we will go back to the same place, Consciousness.

Just as people get sick, suffer from illnesses such as cancer and diabetes, depression is a state of mind, of unresolved issues. And the mind (put to good use) can heal. Yes, we all have healing powers, if we believe in it (or better know it).

However, we have to remember that we all have a mind which projects images of ourselves and others based on conditionings, we all have what is called the Ego, a mind-made self, we all have thoughts which are all mind-made stuff, we all have emotions, we all have past pains. All these are parts of who we physically and mentally are, some more physically and mentally strong, so to speak. Some less mentally strong, so to speak.

While it is good to remember Markus for who he was and what he was, it is also good to remember that his spirit lives on in all of us, whether we knew him personally or not. Remember, parts of the same body? We are like the blood that flows through the body, we are like the energy force (the qi) that keeps the body alive. It is just that spirit has no name, no personality. Like God. After all, we are all light beings (souls) from the Ultimate Consciousness (what we call God). We are all stars in the night sky. No beginning, no ending.

I still get into "depressing" states but I know that it is part of life, like the seasons of life. And just as the seasons change, I change. A master once said "Hot and cold are the different states of the same thing." Enough said.