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The Alchemy of the Human Mind: Depression to Gratitude

Writer's picture: Tabassum ChowdhuryTabassum Chowdhury

Music by Katie Wise & Bhakti Explosion: Lokha Love. Not original Content. Not for profitable use.


Does anyone else really struggle with gratitude?


Almost every spiritual practice relies on the state of gratitude to guide one to happiness and contentment. I guess it’s no surprise that I struggle with gratitude given my frequent dances with depression.


When I came across anti-transcendental William Faulkner’s quote, the scientist in me felt a spark of curiosity: “Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: It must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.”


But isn’t that the age old question, the money maker: how to create electricity and energy from nothing? Energy is neither created nor destroyed, it just changes forms. It flows. Stagnant or blocked energy is explosive, destroying everything in its path.


And that’s what depression and anxiety are: stagnant or blocked energy, with the potential to explode or implode. If the energy were to flow, then sadness or nervousness would pass through, sometimes harshly like a winter breeze, but flow past nonetheless until the warm spring returns. But if the flow is stopped, depression and anxiety can destroy one’s life.


And if gratitude, the only route to happiness and contentment, requires a similar flow to electricity, electrons moving large distances in fractions of a second, how does a depressed person get there? How does one cultivate gratitude from what feels like lack? There is depletion of energy, or energy blockages-and the task a depressed or anxious person is left with is that of magic and alchemy - making gold out of coal.


That’s the conundrum-literally the road to happiness requires a depressed person to defy physics…


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“One more night in Cancun wouldn’t be bad, but we need to get back to reality.” says an Indian woman in the seat in front of me. We are on board a plane from Cancun to Chicago, and I guess she and her family were in Cancun for a wedding. They were supposed to fly back last night, and I guess their plane had mechanical issues.


And as I listen to her, I wonder what that’s like. I wonder what it’s like to have a life at home that you are eager to get back to. I wonder what it’s like to have people that are eager for you to come back.


Maybe the problem is that my dogs are the only living beings that are waiting for me back “home.” They are the ones that have brought me back, several times over.


2021 was rough. My life had reached a new low of dissatisfaction. At least before COVID, I had hobbies that I looked forward to-some sort of human interaction-even if I wouldn’t be missed from any of it. Two breakups, one with a man I really thought was end game, a devastating forced job switch, family illnesses and tense dynamics, the list could go on. My self hatred and sense of doom and gloom had peaked so badly that not even my love for my dogs was making me eager to fly home.


And despite my best efforts to create movement in my life - making offers on a house, starting filming for a docu series, forcing myself to work, traveling and immersing myself in ceremony-nothing was working.


So there I was, anxiously sitting behind this woman who wanted to share with the whole plane that she needed to get back to her son, her work, basically her amazing life. And as the plane waited in line to taxi to the take off, she grew increasingly nervous that she would be delayed yet another day. And I grew hopeful that I would have another day away from my miserable reality.


What did I have to be grateful for? Yes, my friends are lovely-but I’m no longer intricately involved in their lives like I was in college. Sure they can say that their children will miss their aunt Tabs, but the reality is, people move on. It’s parents, children, and significant others that have a harder time moving on. With no significant other and parents that only wanted me around for their needs - all I had were my dogs.


The plane took flight much to the Indian women’s delight while anxiety flooded my system. Have you ever had to force yourself to breathe, because even breathing hurts? Have you ever had to force yourself to hydrate or eat because any nourishment feels like you are betraying your desire to end the pain? My senses became more acute and I took everything around me in at lightning speed. The smell of people’s fast food they brought on the plane. The sounds of the crying children muffled by the deafening sound of the air and the plane colliding. The texture of the mask’s strings on the back of my ears. The dryness in my mouth and the exhaustion in my sleep deprived eyes.


Sensory overload kicks in and I literally feel like I am going to explode. The tears start streaming down the corners of my eyes into my mask and I grew nervous that the couple sitting next to me would wonder about me. Luckily for me, they were too involved in looking at pictures of their nieces and nephews-undoubtedly planning for their own children very soon.


I purchase the internet on the plane in hopes of finding a distraction. I start writing about the trip. I reach out to friends on facebook. I listened to music and guided meditations. I knit. I read. I don’t know how, but I make it through the four hour flight. I make it through customs (thank you Global Entry) and anxiously make it through baggage claim. I step out into the Chicago winter (28 deg F) in just flip flops and a hoodie, and wait for my Uber.


Barely containing my tears, I step into the Uber and the driver asks me about surge rates. I tell him I have no idea how much I’m paying. He stares blankly saying it’s on your phone. I literally have no awareness of my surroundings. I literally have no idea how I was going to continue breathing through the next minute, let alone assimilate back to normal life.

The first night at home is rough. I sob hysterically into my pillow as my dogs lick my tears away. The first week is rough: adjusting back to a routine work flow, trying to fit in with others that are genuinely joyful to be there, adjusting to regular interaction with people that are content with their everyday lives. I want something more for my life. This cannot be what my life boils down to.


Working to make money to buy morsels of happiness that do not last. Working to make money to buy opportunities for joy that I don’t know how to embrace.


I plow through the week and make it to a local ceremony. I sit in ceremony two days in a row and everything shifts. The every day details are the same: work, working on the show, interacting with the same people - but everything is different. The ceremony enabled mystical alchemy in my mind.


And while details of my ceremonial experiences will eventually come out in a TV series entitled, “Ceremonial Tales,” I will share that good ceremonies combine energy exchange, catalysis, movement, and spacial ease, creating a dynamic that ensures magical shifts of the mind, body, and soul.


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A week later, I’m trying to analyze how everything shifted. How I was able to cultivate gratitude from my sadness, once more, through the help of ceremony.


Ceremony allows for alchemy to occur in one’s energy field, that much I am sure of.


I started researching a bit, and came across this article:


As I read through the article, I realized there were four main ways to shift your energy (from a mass and energy balance perspective):


  1. Energy exchange - this involves a direct energy exchange between you and your surroundings. Examples include:

    1. Breathing -inhale fresh oxygen which pumps through your blood, and release carbon dioxide

    2. Drinking water - hydrating with fresh water, releasing wanted water through perspiration, urination, or tears

    3. Eating - fresh energy and release of used energy (defecation and work)

    4. Crying - release of water particles, creating need for new moisture

    5. Writing things out, laughing, yelling/screaming/howling, calling someone, singing - releasing energy of thoughts to create space for new thoughts

  2. Catalysis - inactive additions into your field that lower the amount of effort needed to create shifts. Examples include:

    1. Reiki and other energy work: healing facilitators use external energy sources to ease/remove blockages and or aid you in shifting your energy. These external energy sources don’t stay within your body, but are merely helper agents

    2. Substances that pass through your body: medicines (both western and indigenous): break down barriers or soothe pain so that energy can more easily move

  3. Movement: physical body movements that facilitate shifting of energy. Examples include:

    1. Kegels or orgasms: releasing potential energy harnessed in sexual organs facilitates movement of other energy

    2. Yoga/Tai Chi/Qi Gong/Dance: coordinated movement in physical body allows for energy to flow within the container of the body. (also aligns with breath and energy exchange)

    3. Tapping: allowing for release of blocked energy locations via pressure from active energy pathway

    4. Meditation: lack of movement (or moving meditations)-stillness of the mind allows for flow

  4. Change of environment: changing the surroundings allows for different expansivity. By altering the environment, you change the concentrations around you, allowing for different states of equilibrium between you and your surroundings. This equilibrium shift then alters the homeostasis within you. Examples include:

    1. Smudging

    2. Taking a Shower or Bath

    3. Sound healing

    4. Essential Oils

    5. Going Outside


All of these are tools to help shift energy. There’s no single recipe that will work for every single case. But know the end goal: to re-establish flow.


Ceremonies and rituals are great. They combine multiple aspects of all these elements in a mystical, nurturing, and loving way. That’s why they work.


Who cares how it is achieved? Every single case is unique. Throughout time, people have discovered all sorts of ways to achieve flow, and flow is the only way to alchemize the condition of the human mind. And sometimes alchemy is what it takes. After all, how do you turn coal (the blockages of depression and/or anxiety) to gold (gratitude)?


It is magic. It is ceremony. It is the infinite number of combinations that can occur to get the electrons moving freely again. The key is to remember that the possibilities are infinite, and the energy will not stay stagnant forever. It can’t. One way or another, blocked energy must be released.

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1 Comment


crystallynnbell126
Feb 15, 2022

I am loving this blog! So soulful, and such deep insights!!

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