World mythology and religious literature is ripe with tales of darkness and pain. Joseph Campbell created a classic template when he wrote The Hero With A Thousand Faces, and one of the main therapeutic benefits of reading this work, in my opinion, is the way in which it can reframe difficult experiences into archetypal adventures.
But we needn’t read Campbell or be an expert on religious narrative to understand that it is possible to ascribe a host of different meanings to the same experience. And the meaning we assign to experiences and events no doubt affects the way we feel about them. In fact, one could even say that the main contributor to our emotional state is the meaning we assign to things. It follows naturally, then, that assigning empowering, captivating meanings to things will benefit us more than assigning debilitating interpretations. This technique can help with painful moods, and it was even introduced as a form of therapy by psychologist Albert Ellis.
Of course, this is not to say that depression, anxiety, and mental unrest don’t have a biological basis, or that we can simply rearrange truth to better suit our purposes, but most of the pitfalls of this life are things that generally befall everyone sooner or later, and our psychological resilience is largely determined by the meaning we choose to give our trials and challenges. Could depression not be a rich, gothic tour of a majestic Underworld? Can unfortunate events not be seen more poetically through the lens of mythology, as if we are Odysseus drifting far from Ithaca on a detour of trials?
What meaning we choose to assign to things can powerfully impact our emotional response and our future actions. It’s at least something to keep in mind the next time – because it will happen – we are in a bad mood.
Hi, wonderful post. Two things caught my attention.
one, about Albert Ellis – he was very much a rationalist, and his therapy – unfortunately – is very little about "meaning," but rather, simply giving a more "rational" interpretation of the ‘irrational" beliefs that often lead to depression, anxiety and other psychological ills. This by itself is quite powerful, but more integrative therapists over the years have found that by incorporating the kind of depth of meaning you are writing about here, they have a much more powerful tool for treating depression, etc.
As far as the cause of anything psychological, the only research that has ever been done that can, technically, determine if something is psychologically or biologically caused, is on identical twins raised apart from each other. it turns out, except for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, none of the research has been conclusive. And it also turns out, that most of the research done in regard to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, has also been much in question.
The whole idea of material or physical causation is in such confusion these days, and most scientists do not have the philosophic (or theological) training to investigate it.
For me, the final word was spoken nearly 1000 years ago by the Persian poet Rumi. He wrote, "The entire Koran is teaching nothing from beginning to end but abandonment of belief in phenomenal causation."
Paul put it more simply – in Him/She/That we live and move and have our being.
Being omnipresent and omnipotent, God is the only cause of all that happens.
But of course, if this is not understand in a contemplative light, it may be misunderstood as determinism. It actually, shows us the path toward absolute freedom.
To the extent we are identified solely with our biological conditioning, we are utter slaves. Rising higher (as told by Krishna at the end of Chapter 3 of the Bhagavad Gita) to our mind, we are relatively free, though the ordinary surface mind (as neuroscience is finding out) is pretty much determined as well.
When we "step back" and find that who "I am" is something more than mind or body, we begin to taste true freedom. And even when we awaken (are saved) wholly, we are not simply lost in God, but rather, as a Taoist sage once "sagely" remarked, "when the dewdrop slips into the shining ocean, the finite is not lost in the infinite, but in some way our rational minds cannot begin to comprehend, becomes the ocean without losing its individuality (shhhh – don’t tell this to Cynthia Bourgeault because she thinks this is unique to Christianity:>))))