Islam and Depression; Natural vs Unnatural Existence
by William C. King, Halifax NS October 2011 We are physical beings; there is no doubt about that! We are bombarded every waking minute of everyday with messages whose purpose is to communicate with our physical selves. Every success and every failure, every joy and every suffering, even life and even death itself is inventoried, packaged, marketed and shipped to the consumer in terms of the physical self. We like things. We like things which we can value based on weights and measures. We like things we can physically compare; who is taller, who is heavier, who is richer, who is older. Why is it then that by all measures of the physical world we can not determine based on these measurable distinctions which person will be happier? Why is it the case that the poor subsistence farmer in the third world may not suffer from depression while the rich millionaire who has no physical needs unmet may be devastatingly unhappy? Why is it that a beautiful, young, Hollywood star may be suffering while an older, simpler woman may be content and happy? Why is it that diagnosed cases of clinical depression are skyrocketing in the first world developed, industrialized nations while we enjoy a greater standard of living for the most part than any other people in the history of humanity? Could it be that our attention on the physical world has left us starving for spiritual sustenance? We feed our physical bodies and quench our physical thirst at least 5 times a day. What are we doing to maintain the balance that we as physical and spiritual beings must have in order to be healthy? Many of the solutions we arrive at either through our own deliberations or through the help of others tend to concentrate on alleviating the symptoms of imbalance in our lives, namely the outward physical symptoms of anxiety, worry, panic, despair, low self esteem among many others. We do this by masking the symptoms but never unwrapping the source of the ailment itself. Why do we do this? One reason is that namely because unwrapping the source of the ailment takes time and it takes effort and it requires a structured endeavor on our part. In the world of fast food and faster prescriptions we just do not have the time… or at least we choose not to have the time. So we continue on, often self medicating with alcohol or numbing our mind through TV and shallow entertainment in order to not have to deal with who we see ourselves as being. We can continue to try to fake a happy face to the world and try to look like we have it all together while as we lay ourselves down to bed each night the silence brings back all the worries and troubles we tried to avoid. Often in this quiet alone time we come face to face with the true reality of our situation in this life; that is we come face to face with our own mortality and imminent death and the death of others. Unreconciled emotions and thought plague us as we have never been taught any truth about these things and the nature of our existence. Since we value the physical and ignore the spiritual these unresolved issues surrounding these often competing worlds become uncomfortable to deal with.... so we don't.... but they are still there. Since we know deep in our hearts what we value of this life will eventually end and we do not have a solid system or focus on how to cope with our relationship with the One who put the physical world in motion we are in a state of imbalance. This is not to say that there may be cases of physical imbalances leading to psychological difficulties which may need to be addressed, however it is the opinion of the writer that the number of these cases are over diagnosed as many psychological practitioners themselves do not have the time and tools to be able to obtain a deep and clear picture of the full makeup of an individual. Often the same pressures that are manifesting symptoms of anxiety in the client are the same pressures which are pressuring the psychological practitioner to come up with a diagnosis under tight deadlines. Often there is no time for long term work on the establishment of a "new life approach" or "system" for the one suffering anxiety or depression, therefor a prescription is given and the client is quickly on his way. This is not to belittle the concern and dedication many of those in the health-care field approach their relationships with their clients, it is simply the statement of a fact...our lives, each of our lives are becoming more fast paced and hectic, including theirs. Our fast food mentality may be indicative of where many of our troubles stem from and this approach may be the quick and easy fix for the problem....or at least the symptoms - because the underlying problem never goes away Why don’t we see these symptoms in the natural world? Or wait, do we???? What we do see in the natural world is that as the natural order becomes more and more unnatural we will see erratic, unnatural behaviors and indications of anxiety becoming apparent in other animals. While, if the system remains, natural and the animals are allowed to be as they are naturally inclined to be we do not see unnatural behavior and symptoms of anxiety. Put an animal in a cage and you will see the behavior change. Are we in our own human-made cages? A cow knows how to be a cow and a fish a fish… a fish does not desire to become a cow nor a cow desire to become a fish, each knows it’s place and is content in that role. Why is it that we are forgetting how to be natural human beings? What unnatural pressures and systems are being applied to our daily lives which are resulting in these increased anxieties and unnatural behaviors? Why is it that we desire to be that which we are not? Why are we looking to those who have more “stuff” for the answers when it is apparent that they do not hold the answers any more than we do? We have a large leak in our boat and we are busy painting the hull of the ship to make it look good. We admire it’s beauty as it sinks below the water and don’t realize our predicament until the water comes up to our noses. Our spiritual starvation is unapparent to us as we polish ourselves on the outside to appeal to the physical world all the while our hearts rust for a lack of a scrubbing. Like the drowning man in the boat we will not realize our predicament until the angel of death appears before us. Today is all you have, now is the time; right this second to decide to put down the paint and stop beautifying the hull of the ship; now is the time to at least give equal weight to what is causing your problems as the weight and money applied to painting over the symptoms like the hull of the ship; NOW is the time to see REALITY as it truly is and this life for what it truly is. NOW is the time to start to embark on understanding what you PURPOSE here truly is. The ship has a purpose; the bee has a purpose, are you less than these? The dignity of the ship is in fulfilling the purpose of which it was made. What good is a beautiful ship if it lies at the bottom of the sea? Remember the Titanic. In arrogance it was launched as “unsinkable!” While other less glamorous ships performed their daily duties, the Titanic sunk swiftly to it’s end. So shall we. Will we fulfill our purpose or will we try to fill our purses? It is related that the world was revealed to Jesus (Peace be upon him!) and he saw it in the form of a toothless old woman upon whom was every kind of ornament. Then he said to her, "How many have you married?" She replied, "I cannot count them." He said, "Did they all die and leave you, or did they all divorce you?" She said, "Nay, I killed them all." Then Jesus (Peace be upon him!) said, "It is a pity for the rest of your husbands. How do they not take warning from your past husbands how you have been destroying them one after another, and [how] are they not on their guard against you!" And Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessing of God Almighty said” "What relationship with the world have I? My similitude is like a traveler on a mount, halting in the shade of a tree (for a short while only to leave it again, and proceed along the journey)." He, peace be upon him also said: “There will come a time for my nation when they will love five things and forget five things – they will love this life and forget the life to come; they will love property and forget the grave; they will love wealth and forget the Day of Judgment; they will love their children and forget the truth; and they will love themselves and forget God. They have nothing to do with me and I have nothing to do with them.” When the system around us; when life’s pressures around us; when our relations; when the way we interact with our friends; when our home life; when the way we relate to even our food and food sources….when these become outside of the natural way we have been created then the only “normal” way for us to react is “abnormally. When a mother has to leave her daughter in the care of a stranger to quickly go back to work; when on FaceBook we have 900 friends but never see them; when we spend more time engaging with the TV than our own husbands or wives; when the source of our meat has been tortured with the results of stress induced toxins stored within there bodies; then the only normal reaction to living within the confines of such a SYSTEM is SYSTEMIC anxiety and depression. We do not have the slightest understanding of how even the technology we interact with everyday affects our emotional state. What effect does the refresh rate of the laptop screen have on human psychology? What are the long-term effects of mobile phone use? What about noise pollution? Genetically modified foods - the list goes on. A way of life which is conducive to mental and physical health has to have a structure which provides balance between the physical, the emotional, but also the spiritual. To forgo one is to forgo balance. Interestingly enough it is what we can not weigh or see which we always tend to ignore but this is to our own detriment. You can not see the air but try not to breathe for 2 minutes. And most certainly were you a billionaire and you were running out of air you would spend your entire fortune to be able to breathe… so what value does the money have compared to that which we can not see but is given freely to us at no charge! We can not see Oxygen and Hydrogen but combine them and they become water, the building block of life, for without water there is no life! Everything operates within a system. In the natural system it is ordered and balanced, where an unbalance in the order is naturally remedied and equilibrium is found. This is one of the laws of the natural order. This is how the universe was created. If there is a higher pressure in one room than the other, the door will eventually be forced open and the pressures will equalize. This goes the same for the human being; when pressures become unbalanced, something tends to either brake or a natural system is put into gear. Like your ears depressurizing when you land in an airplane.... however if these pressures are too great, the system can not cope. Since we can not manufacture ourselves into different human beings we must then analyze our system and logically address the imbalances or the areas of equilibrium within it. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him said: Every human being is born pure and holy. When people are in harmony with their natural uncontaminated state spiritually, this natural state leads to peace and tranquility. It is the intellect which allows human beings to aspire towards that which causes imbalance between the natural created spiritual purity and that of the love for this, the physical. This imbalance is not in harmony with the natural, pure state in which we were born. To remain balanced requires us to be strong physically and spiritually. But in terms of our strength and weakness, we have been created weak by nature: As God says in the Quran Man has been created weak. (4:28). Truly we have been created very weak, even the most powerful body builder will eventually age; once being able to lift hundreds of pounds he will eventually not even be able to lift himself out of bed. If his whole reason of living centers around his physical strength and attachment to this world, he will not be able to handle his old age or illness very well emotionally. Even the poorest of men may be master over that which rules the rich man...namely greed and love of wealth. Happiness in this case comes from the detachment from depending on the power and the wealth to be the source of happiness because truly that is fleeting. Even the dentist may get a toothache and the pain of a simple tooth may leave a big man exhausted. The heart surgeon with all his knowledge can not operate on his own clogged heart. Nothing of this world can provide you the balance needed for the spiritual self. Since the spiritual self is unseen would it not be logical that to strengthen it, the path to do so must come from following the system provided to us by the Creator whom is unseen but sees all. Does it not make sense that the source for peace must come from the One who is called "The Peace" (As-salaam); being one of the Creators 99 names. To find peace in other than the unseen lord is like the King who lost his camel and looked out his window to see a man on the next rooftop looking around for his camel... the King saying to the man, "you will not find my camel on the roof" ... the man replying, "and you will not find God while you are immersed in earthly desires inside your palace. If you want to be physically strong you lift physical weights and you keep increasing them day after day until 6 months later you can lift that which you never thought you could lift 6 months prior. If you want to be spiritually strong then it follows that there must be a routine to follow to keep you on tract as well as a methodology which helps you develop this spiritual strength. Our spiritual strength is developed through our ACTIVE relationship with our CREATOR. I say ACTIVE because just as we can not be passive and expect the physical weights to lift themselves.... we must put our own energy into the relationship knowing that God Almighty will assist those who struggle towards him.... just as Moses physically stamped his staff on the ground.... then God split the sea. In this way, know that the Creator has said in the Quran, Blessed is He in Whose hands is dominion, and He has power over everything (67:1) and great things can happen once you start to place your life around him. In order to be balanced individuals we must place our lives around God, not God around our lives. Allah says in the Quran, And I have not created Jinn or man, except to worship Me. (51:56). Our main purpose is thus to worship Allah and to realize our responsibility towards Him and therfore to ourselves, to others, to nature and all created things in a manner pleasing to him. Look around you. All things follow a system ordained by God Amighty... it is we that use our intellect either to submit and place our head on the ground knowing that we are weak.... or out of arrogance we wait standing tall saying, "I can do it myself" or "the doctor is the one I rely on". We stand tall thinking it is the world that helps us until one day our head is on the ground anyway because our time has just run out. Islam is to submit to Almighty God using our intellect, seeing the signs of His ownership of this creation around us, knowing that we eventually will submit to Him in death. We know the hat has a purpose and if someone gave us a hat we would thank them, but do we thank the One who gave us the head? Allah says in the Quran (26:115), "Did you think that We have created you in play without any purpose and that you will not be brought back to us, so exalted be Allah the true king none has the right to be worshipped but He, the Lord of the Supreme Throne” The worship of God almighty is not for Him. It is for us as the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) related in the authentic hadith that Allah said: “O My servants, you will not attain harm in Me so as to harm Me, and you will not attain benefit in Me so as to benefit Me; O My servants, were the first of you and the last of you, the human of you and the jinn of you to be as pious as the most pious heart of any one man of you, that will not increase My Kingdom in anything; O my servants, were the first of you and last of you, the human of you and the jinn of you to be as wicked as the most wicked heart of any one man of you, that will not decrease My Kingdom in anything; O My servants, it is but your deeds that I reckon up for you and I recompense you for. So let him who finds good praise Allah and let him who finds other than that blame no one but himself.” [Reported in Saheeh Muslim, No. 6246] I tell you from experience that Islam is the system that can help remove the depression and anxiety from the heart. The car maintenance must follow an organized system as you must change the oil regularly.... the gas gauge is checked many times during a trip and the car is refueled when it is getting low. The changing the oil does not increase the manufacturer of the car (not comparing the creation of course to God as God is far exalted above His creation.) The testimony that there is only one Creator, unseen but who sees all, and the 5 daily prayers are the start of the following of an organized system to connect to the One who is the Only One who truly has the Power which does not end. The placing the head on the ground and asking God for help was the methods of all the Prophets, peace be upon them, including Jesus whom Muslims revere and love. Why has this methodology of connection been changed? Jesus certainly did not change the form of prayer. Would it not make sense that sense you would bow to the Queen that you would not go the furthest you can in humbling yourself in front of your lord; this being your head on the ground... as He is the One who gave you your head. I have not found a better statement then "there is no god but God, Allah" and I have not found a more reverent, humble, real form of prayer which combines the physical with the spiritual than the placing the place of intellect and decision making on the ground. Does that not make absolute sense. An ACTIVE, PHYSICAL prayer as we are spiritual creatures wrapped in the physical body. I urge you to read about the system within Islam and what it means and how it can help! Unwrap the physical, address the source of the imbalance by submitting to the SOURCE of all balance! |