Taking Out Stones: Dealing with Depression

I remember when I lived off the grid in Oregon.  It was on the edge of nowhere which is often more full of somewhere than the agreed upon “somewhere” that people call cities or townships.  I had gone to the farmer’s market in the nearest town and traded a vendor daffodil bulbs in exchange for a shoulder massage.  I came back to the nowhere that was very much a somewhere to plant these bulbs in the earth, but I did not have a shovel.  What to do?  The ground was full of small rocks that were lodged into the packed earth, tightly holding onto their mother. After  being used to dwelling in one spot for so long, they did not want to move.   But, I wanted to plant flowers to add much needed color to this landscape. 

I sat on the ground next to my small, crumpled paper bag of bulbs and put my hands on the earth.  My hands became the shovel.  But, that is no easy task when the earth is so tightly packed with an order that makes everything fit perfectly, an order I intended to disrupt by planting bulbs.  Perhaps the fairies wanted to see flowers on this land, too.  I felt that there was a force helping me that I could not see, but had the same intention. 

When I tried to dig with my hands without any order, it was grueling.  If I had not surrendered my situation, I would have been there to this day, puzzled with tired hands.  Instead, I “heard” which rock I had to pull out first.  Magically, I was guided.  First I needed to loosen this rock before that rock would budge.  Then I needed to tend to a rock nearby that held others in place.  There was an order to this digging and I had been “invited” to partake in changing the scheme of things one stone at a time.  I could not rush things.  I could not control things.  I had to listen to which stones could be dislodged first so that they next one would come loose. 

I was able to remove enough stones, one at a time in a certain, unseen, order, to create space for the daffodil bulbs.  I had left that area before winter, so I never got to see the yellow splendor that decorated the earth, but I was told they spread and created a fairy world of wonder. 

It is years later that the memory of planting those daffodil bulbs wafted into my consciousness.  I was trying to make things in my life change without heeding the lesson of one stone at a time. I was frustrated at the timing and seemingly disorder of things.  I wanted situations to work out the way I thought they needed to be.  Instead, I had to stop and remember that lesson:  One Stone at a Time. 

We can become depressed when we think things are not working out as we planned.  But, thinking in another way can help us remove a lot of negativity.  One stepping stone leads to another stepping stone.  One stone is loosened to help remove another one.   We don’t have to understand, with our ordinary mind, the whole process.  We might understand some day, we might not.  Trust the process.  We may only “hear” to remove one stone at a time or to step on one stepping stone before another, but we may not see the whole picture.   Something important is happening, but it is below the surface so we cannot see it.  We often panic or get depressed because we cannot see the order underlying things.  In our fret to control, we might try to remove stones that are not loosened by other stones first.  We might try to jump to stepping stones that are too far away from where we stand, causing feelings of failure and misery.  We might lack patience and try to bulldoze everything at once leaving ourselves exhausted and disconnected from our true selves.  We might live our whole life trying to dig in areas that are not meant for daffodil bulbs.  

Relax.  There is an order to things when we stop to connect with an energy that speaks to us when we are quiet and receptive.   The rest of the world may not understand, but that is not important.  What is important is that your intention to beautify the world in some way has been heard.   You will be guided, step by step, to loosen stone by stone.  This, in itself, is a way to overcome many types of depression.  Trust the process.  Listen to your heart.