Depression

Depression is a lowering in quality, vigor, or amount, the state of being lowered or reduced in force, activity, intensity, a lowering of the vital functions or powers, a state of reduced vitality, the condition of being depressed in spirits, dejection.Oxford English Dictionary
  Depression is a state of feeling sad, low spirits, melancholy; a mood disorder that is marked by varying degrees of sadness, despair, and loneliness and that is typically accompanied by inactivity, guilt, loss of concentration, social withdrawal, sleep disturbances, and sometimes suicidal tendencies.Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary
  Synonyms for depression include sadness, melancholy, sorrow, grief, gloom, anguish, unhappiness, oppression, misery, dejection, despair.—Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary
  Depression, in psychology, is a mood or emotional state that is marked by feelings of low self-worth or guilt and a reduced ability to enjoy life. A person who is depressed usually experiences several of the following symptoms: feelings of sadness, hopelessness, or pessimism; lowered self-esteem and heightened self-depreciation; a decrease or loss of ability to take pleasure in ordinary activities; reduced energy and vitality; slowness of thought or action; loss of appetite; and disturbed sleep or insomnia.Encyclopedia Britannica


“Sinking into depression is sliding down the greased pole of self-pity.”
—Edna Lister


The current world population stands at more than 8+ billion, growing at a rate of around 0.91% per year in 2024. Depression is the most common mental disorder, and depressive disorders are the leading mental health issues worldwide, affecting an estimated 5 percent of adults globally. That's a huge and ever growing market, and more than 90 different drugs are being prescribed to treat the depression those 400,000,000 people experience. Someone is making a lot of money. And these numbers do not include the millions who self-medicate with illicit drugs and alcohol.
  A popular definition of depression is anger turned inward. In many people depression results from having their will twarted. Depression is a vicious circle, a self-reinforcing physical positive feedback loop and thus, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Self lives on a diet of positive feedback, always desiring more praise and approval. Soul acts as the brakes in the system with negative feedback. The voice of conscience is usually negative feedback. Self skews the body’s chemistry, but soul stabilizes it. The ideal state is homeostasis, a physical equilibrium.
  Depression is a soul taint that begins with arrogance and exercising self-will to the point of disobedience to law as we know it. A sense of guilt and sorrow, from being out of balance under law, creates the depression. We hang on the pendulum, swinging between the poles of self and soul, until we repent and work our way back to balance.
  David, the psalmist, helped King Saul to battle depression by composing the Psalms; we can battle ours by reading them.





Edna Lister on Depression

When you lift anger or depression, you can redeem the misused life sparks, return them to the fire, and Light, as the creative fire, will fill the spinal column to illumine your consciousness.—Edna Lister, The Nervous System, February 8, 1936.


Sinking into depression is sliding down the greased pole of self-pity.—Edna Lister, March 27, 1950.


When you let the subconscious mind rule, you run into snags, depression or illness.—Edna Lister, Eternal Youth, 1955.


You die a little each time you fail to finish a project, keep your vows or promises. The mental body atoms deflate, causing stiffness, mental fuzziness, depression and paralysis in body or affairs.—Edna Lister, The Well of Living Waters, July 31, 1955.


Being depressed is swallowing the dragon’s tail first.—Edna Lister, August 22, 1957.


Lift your anger and depression to create great spiritual illumination.—Edna Lister, March 13, 1958.


When you are depressed, you wonder where God has gone; He then shuts off the Power so you cannot misuse it.—Edna Lister, The Woman Clothed in the Sun, May 13, 1958.


The contrast between earth and heaven is a natural reason for some sadness and depression. Instead of spending time longing, climb in consciousness and do your outer work quickly.—Edna Lister, November 3, 1958.


If you repudiate law, you feel depressed, irritable, moody and low.—Edna Lister, Heaven as a State of Consciousness and as a Place, June 16, 1959.


The lifting quality of the joy of God possessing you draws all things into its radiance. It can transmute depression and discouragement into itself, for its whole reason for being is to absorb darkness into Light.—Edna Lister, Five Keys of the Kingdom, 1964.


The heart is the last organ you fully transform into desire body substance, and it can take two phases, low or high blood pressure. You may have fits of depression, then the fever of self mounts. Sloughing the physical is difficult because you slip at times on details, letting things get by, especially doing what is not good for the whole world to do all the time, which produces the heaviest cells of indifference, self-pity, and depression.—Edna Lister, February 12, 1966.


I’m depressed is declaring that God is handling you incorrectly. When some unpleasant experience comes, God is saying, Come up! You have been too low. Edna Lister, October 20, 1966.


You can feel no depression when a fully inflated auric sphere of Light surrounds you.—Edna Lister, June 9, 1968.


Many cases of depression are self-indulgence, instinctive human nature stuff from the self. It is nothing but allowing your little self to have full sway.—Edna Lister, August 3, 1969.


God is wiping out depression. No matter what happens, reach for the stars and declare the bubble buster is not there. The time will come when you will be immune.—Edna Lister, August 3, 1969.


You cannot live in the house in depression, but in the Light as the creator you are. No matter what happens, your roots go to the center of earth for invincible protection. There is no place to go to escape the Light. Declare, Let there be Light! Edna Lister, August 3, 1969.

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Ten Tips to Beat the Blues

1. Only self can be depressed; soul never is.—Linda Mihalic
2. God didn't make junk the day He made you.—Isidor Reisman
3. The negative things you think about you are forms of mental malpractice.—Lotus Landis quoting Edna Lister
4. About 99 percent of your detractors are jealous.—Ruth Johnson
5. Stop judging yourself by what the gossips say about you.—Jessica Davis
6. God still loves you no matter what anyone else says.—Ed Pembroke
7. The Master approves of you; what do you care about anone else’s opinion?—Ed Pembroke
8. Behind every inferiority complex lurks the secret arrogance of a superiority complex.—Lotus Landis
9. I am the daughter of a King!—A 4-yo wearing a golden homemade crown at the grocery store
10. Just because someone rained on your parade doesn’t mean you have to wallow in the mud.—Jessica Davis

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A Story That Illustrates Depression

King Saul: Self-will and disobedience to law breed depression. Continued persistent disobedience creates manic depression, now called bipolar disorder.

And the Philistines gathered themselves together to fight with Israel, thirty thousand chariots, and six thousand horsemen, and people as the sand which is on the sea shore in multitude: and they came up, and pitched in Michmash, eastward from Bethaven. When the men of Israel saw that they were in a strait, (for the people were distressed,) then the people did hide themselves in caves, and in thickets, and in rocks, and in high places, and in pits. And some of the Hebrews went over Jordan to the land of Gad and Gilead.
  As for Saul, he was yet in Gilgal, and all the people followed him trembling. And he tarried seven days, according to the set time that Samuel had appointed: but Samuel came not to Gilgal; and the people were scattered from him. And Saul said, Bring hither a burnt offering to me, and peace offerings. And he offered the burnt offering. [Saul disobeyed a direct order.]
  And it came to pass, that as soon as he had made an end of offering the burnt offering, behold, Samuel came; and Saul went out to meet him, that he might salute him. And Samuel said, What hast thou done? And Saul said, Because I saw that the people were scattered from me, and that thou camest not within the days appointed, and that the Philistines gathered themselves together at Michmash; therefore said I, The Philistines will come down now upon me to Gilgal, and I have not made supplication unto the Lord: I forced myself therefore, and offered a burnt offering.
  And Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast done foolishly: thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God, which he commanded thee: for now would the Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel for ever. But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the Lord hath commanded him to be captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that which the Lord commanded thee.—1 Samuel 13:5-14.
  Then came the word of the Lord unto Samuel, saying, It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel; and he cried unto the Lord all night. And when Samuel rose early to meet Saul in the morning, it was told Samuel, saying, Saul came to Carmel, and, behold, he set him up a place, and is gone about, and passed on, and gone down to Gilgal. And Samuel came to Saul: and Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of the Lord: I have performed the commandment of the Lord. And Samuel said, What meaneth then this bleating of the sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear? And Saul said, They have brought them from the Amalekites: for the people spared the best of the sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed. Then Samuel said unto Saul, Stay, and I will tell thee what the Lord hath said to me this night. And he said unto him, Say on.
  And Samuel said, When thou wast little in thine own sight, wast thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the Lord anointed thee king over Israel? And the Lord sent thee on a journey, and said, Go and utterly destroy the sinners the Amalekites, and fight against them until they be consumed. Wherefore then didst thou not obey the voice of the Lord, but didst fly upon the spoil, and didst evil in the sight of the Lord?
  And Saul said unto Samuel, Yea, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and have gone the way which the Lord sent me, and have brought Agag the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in Gilgal. [Note that Saul says, "thy God."] And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king. And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned: for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord, and thy words: because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice. Now therefore, I pray thee, pardon my sin, and turn again with me, that I may worship the Lord.
  And Samuel said unto Saul, I will not return with thee: for thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord hath rejected thee from being king over Israel. And as Samuel turned about to go away, he laid hold upon the skirt of his mantle, and it rent. And Samuel said unto him, The Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine, that is better than thou. And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent. … And Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death: nevertheless Samuel mourned for Saul: and the Lord repented that he had made Saul king over Israel.—1 Samuel 15:10-29, 35.
  Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed [David] in the midst of his brethren: and the Spirit of the Lord came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up, and went to Ramah. But the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him. And Saul’s servants said unto him, Behold now, an evil spirit from God troubleth thee. Let our lord now command thy servants, which are before thee, to seek out a man, who is a cunning player on an harp: and it shall come to pass, when the evil spirit from God is upon thee, that he shall play with his hand, and thou shalt be well.
  And Saul said unto his servants, Provide me now a man that can play well, and bring him to me. Then answered one of the servants, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the Lord is with him. Wherefore Saul sent messengers unto Jesse, and said, Send me David thy son, which is with the sheep. And Jesse took an ass laden with bread, and a bottle of wine, and a kid, and sent them by David his son unto Saul.
  And David came to Saul, and stood before him: and he loved him greatly; and he became his armourbearer. And Saul sent to Jesse, saying, Let David, I pray thee, stand before me; for he hath found favour in my sight. And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.—1 Samuel 16:13-23. z
  And when Saul enquired of the Lord, the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets. Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and enquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor. And Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and he went, and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night: and he said, I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring me him up, whom I shall name unto thee. And the woman said unto him, Behold, thou knowest what Saul hath done, how he hath cut off those that have familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land: wherefore then layest thou a snare for my life, to cause me to die? And Saul sware to her by the Lord, saying, As the Lord liveth, there shall no punishment happen to thee for this thing.
  Then said the woman, Whom shall I bring up unto thee? And he said, Bring me up Samuel. And when the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice: and the woman spake to Saul, saying, Why hast thou deceived me? for thou art Saul. And the king said unto her, Be not afraid: for what sawest thou? And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth. And he said unto her, What form is he of? And she said, An old man cometh up; and he is covered with a mantle. And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground, and bowed himself.
  And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered, I AM sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams: therefore I have called thee, that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do. Then said Samuel, Wherefore then dost thou ask of me, seeing the Lord is departed from thee, and is become thine enemy? And the Lord hath done to him, as he spake by me: for the Lord hath rent the kingdom out of thine hand, and given it to thy neighbour, even to David: Because thou obeyedst not the voice of the Lord, nor executedst his fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore hath the Lord done this thing unto thee this day. Moreover the Lord will also deliver Israel with thee into the hand of the Philistines: and to morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me: the Lord also shall deliver the host of Israel into the hand of the Philistines. Then Saul fell straightway all along on the earth, and was sore afraid, because of the words of Samuel: and there was no strength in him.—1 Samuel 28:6-20.

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Edna Miriam Lister
1884—1971
The original Pioneering Mystic,
Christian Platonist philosopher, American Idealist, Founder, Society of the Universal Living Christ, minister, teacher, author, wife, and mother.


Edna Lister


Etymology of depression: Latin deprimere, to press down.


Depression is a soul taint.


References

Britannica, Editors of Encyclopaedia. depression.Encyclopedia Britannica, March 25, 2024.

Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, 2024.

The Holy Bible. King James Version (KJV).

Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. 2024

The Oxford English Dictionary: Compact Ed., 2 vols. E.S.C. Weiner, ed. Oxford University Press, 1971.


Related Topics

Despair

Worthiness