"Nowadays
people often feel sadness, despair, lethargy, laziness, apathy, and all things
satanic. They are downcast, discontent
and melancholy. They disregard their
families, spend vast sums on psychoanalysts and take anti-depressants. People explain this as 'insecurity.' Our religion believes that these states derive
from satanic temptation.
Pain is a
psychological power which God implanted in us with a view to doing us good and
leading us to love, joy, and prayer.
Instead of this, the devil succeeds in taking this power from the
battery of our soul and using it for evil.
He transforms it into depression and brings the soul into a state of
lethargy and apathy. He torments us,
takes us captive and makes us psychologically ill.
There is
a secret. Turn the satanic energy into
good energy. This is difficult and
requires some preparation. The requisite
preparation is humility. With humility
you attract the grace of God. You
surrender yourself to the love of God, to worship and to prayer. But even if you do all in the world, you
achieve nothing if you haven't acquired humility. All the evil feelings, insecurity, despair
and disenchantment, which come to take control of the soul, disappear with
humility. The person who lacks humility,
the egotist, doesn't want you to get in the way of his desires, to make any
criticism of him or tell him what to do.
He gets upset, irritated and reacts violently and is overcome by
depression.
This
state is cured by grace. The soul must
turn to God's love. The cure will come
when we start to love God passionately.
Many of our saints transformed depression into joy with their love for
Christ. That is, they took this power of
the soul which the devil wished to crush and gave it to God and they
transformed it into joy and exultation.
Prayer and worship gradually transform depression and turn it into joy,
because the grace of God takes effect.
Here you need to have the strength to attract the grace of God which
will help you to be united with Him. Art
is required. When you give yourself to
God and become one with him, you will forget the evil spirit which drags at you
from behind, and this spirit, when it is disdained, will leave. And the more you devote yourself to the
Spirit of God, the less you will look behind to see the spirit that is dragging
at you. When grace attracts you, you
will be united with God. And when you
unite yourself to God and abandon yourself to Him, everything else disappears
and is forgotten and you are saved. The
great art, the great secret, in order to rid yourself of depression and all
that is negative is to give yourself over to the love of God.
Something
which can help a person who is depressed is work, interest in life. The garden, plants, flowers, trees, the
countryside, a walk in the open air -- all these things tear a person away from
a state of inactivity and awake other interests. They act like medicines. To occupy oneself with the arts, with music
and so on, is very beneficial. The thing
that I place top of the list, however, is interest in the Church, in reading
Holy Scripture and attending services.
As you study the words of God you are cured without being aware of it.
Let me
tell you about a girl who came to me.
She was suffering from dreadful depression. Drugs had no effect. She had given up everything -- her work, her
home, her interests. I told her about
the love of Christ which takes the soul captive because the grace of God fills
the soul and changes it. I explained to
her that the force which takes over the soul and transforms the power of the
soul into depression is demonic. It
throws the soul to the ground, torments it and renders it useless. I advised her to devote herself to things
like music which she had formerly enjoyed.
I emphasized, however, most of all her need to turn to Christ with
love. I told her, moreover, that in our
Church a cure is to be found through love for God and prayer, provided this is
done with all the heart."
A selection from Wounded by Love: The Life
and
the Wisdom of Elder Porphyrios
Source: http://orthodoxhealing.blogspot.com.by/2010/03/elder-porphyrios-overcoming-depression.html
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