The Sacred Weight of Sadness/Melancholy!

2160th BLOG POST

I was reading a book where melancholy was given a positive perspective. It spoke about how, in the modern world, people suppress the feeling of melancholy through medication, terming it an illness. There are moments in life when you don’t understand what’s happening with your mind, and the automatic way of handling it brings out tears for no particular reason. People around you get confused about why you are acting depressed and throw every kind of motivational talk at you. How do you ever explain to them that there is nothing making us sad, but that it is a phase where the mind seems unable to calculate what it is being overpowered by — null moments of happiness and a trace of sorrow, or a complete silence of emotions, which makes it difficult for the mind to comprehend what exactly scares it enough to respond with tears?

 

Maybe these are those moments when we are not controlling our mind, but the mind itself is controlling our senses. Hence, it processes emotions in a particular manner that makes it even more difficult for us to understand the whole phenomenon. These melancholic moments appear rarely, and often when we least expect them. It can happen on a fine evening when your day has been wonderful, perhaps while driving back after one of the most happening parties where you have danced your heart out. Perhaps the mind balances its emotions; rather than allowing itself to be overwhelmed by happiness and joy, it makes you shed a few tears so that you realize there is more at work within you than you consciously understand. Your mind may be trying to tell you that, ultimately, it is the boss and not you.

 

I remember going to the very first satsang organized by the Isha Yoga Foundation after completing my Inner Engineering program with them. Through a guided meditation by Sadhguru, all of us were practicing a new meditative process with our eyes closed, following all kinds of visualizations the voice on the audio asked us to imagine. After a few minutes, I found many people crying with loud outbursts, which scared me for a moment. But, as instructed by the hosts before beginning — not to open our eyes and to concentrate on our own practice — I continued with my meditation.

 

After we opened our eyes, I found all of them wiping their tears and smiling. That smile which emerges from nothingness — where it feels as if you were given a blank canvas and could paint anything on it: a Full Moon radiating brightness or a New Moon painting the entire canvas black, revealing the deepest darkness imaginable. It was evident that people had found their minds blank after shedding tears and releasing excess pain. They had a choice to begin afresh, and they did — with a smile so powerful and soothing that even a spectator like me could feel its energy, though I hadn’t experienced the same thing myself.

 

Sometimes, we should respect the inevitable and accept it as life — or as a part of it. We shouldn’t judge every aspect of our actions, reactions, responses, and emotions. Some things happen because we are part of this vast universe and are deeply connected to it. We can’t disassociate ourselves from nature. You must have heard about the Butterfly Effect, and perhaps we have become the effect of nature’s cause somewhere in this world. We should feel acknowledged by this planet and the universe for allowing us, among billions of lives, to experience melancholy rather than feeling bad, sad, or depressive about it. Let life be the way it is, without constantly trying to change it.

 

Thanks!

WRITING BUDDHA