False Images [with Video]

This article by John-Roger was previously published in the Movement Newspaper, October 1986

“In awareness, when you consciously choose the positive action to support yourself, negativity is only a temporary visitor.” – John-Roger

People ask me, do you get depressed? However, they are probably asking another question so let’s look at depression a little differently to get another perspective. I’m sure that none of us have experienced depression all the time. Depression then has to be a false awareness if we retain it. It’s a falseness within us. It’s like a shifting of consciousness so that you can see life from another point of view. It stops you from looking at life through rose-colored glasses.

Physically, depression will often hit us in the stomach and it comes up into the heart and chest, then through the back of the neck, then into the eyes and head, and we may experience a headache. Often we’ll go to bed because we don’t feel well, which is part of the escape mechanism that we have within us.

When I see depression coming, I treat it like a suit of clothes that I wear periodically. I sometimes put it on and look at life from that perspective, then take it off and get rid of it. I have no reason to be depressed because it is no more a part of me than a suit of clothes.

However, if you affirm that depression is you then it becomes a part of you, because that’s the law. As you are in your conscience, that’s what you become. If you sit and say, “I’m getting depressed,” you will be locking yourself into a false image.

One of the Ten Commandments says, “Thou shall have not other gods before me.” Depression is a false god. The true self within is the true God force. That is our connection with the supreme God. We should have no other god in front of us that we worship except that true image.

There is a false image within us that prevents us from seeing what’s going on. Many people say this is the devil. They have a lot of names for it and if this is true, then the devil is in everyone. There may be a lot of truth in that. However, we also have a true self and it is this truth within us which is God.

It’s interesting that we have both the positive and the negative within us at one time. Sometimes we can think of some of the most noble, uplifting, beautiful expressions and fill ourselves with joy and then along comes the negative self, the false self. It may put up an image of a beautiful, wealthy, know-it-all, but along comes someone and they pierce the image. Then you lose your security and feel depressed trying to defend a false image.

Many times we may stop defending an emotion, and we temporarily experience a vacuum within us. We may feel a freedom from the emotional strain. Maybe the emotion was greed, and we come to realize that everything is all ours anyway.

All the air is ours to breathe – but we can’t take it all at once anyway. We discover it’s not necessary to enter into these areas where we think we are not getting our share out of life.

When we can accept ourselves, we can accept others. But we often try to make everyone else in our own image, and if they’re not like us, we say there is something wrong with them. It’s a game that we play with each other – whose going to be the boss? I think we would find it much easier to accept one another if we didn’t feel the need to control.

If we feel depressed and not in control, we’ve discovered that it’s best to admit it and say, “I’m depressed, I wonder why I am allowing this feeling to come in?” It’s usually when you begin asking questions like that, that your answers start coming and it becomes amazing what we are able to do with ourselves.

There may be many things within your consciousness that you don’t feel like sharing because they are sacred to you. At the same time, you feel a oneness with the total beingness of everything, and you feel you are at one with everybody. If this is so, you are always with them and there is no separation; so therefore whenever we are alone or when we feel lonely, that’s a false image. In a sense we are alone physically, but spiritually we are never lonely. We can just start reaching into the spiritual realms and spirit is in a constant movement and evolving upward.

If we sit down, sit still and do nothing in a physical consciousness and we enter into a physical depression, then the body may ache. Whereas if we move into the spiritual expression we enter into a movement which throws away the feeling that we call depression and we use it only as a guideline – when we think we are stepping out of line. Then we’ll bring ourselves into balance because we are in control. That form of control is just another way to exercise the gift of Spirit. In awareness, when you consciously choose the positive action to support yourself, negativity is only a temporary visitor.

Baruch Bashan, which means, the blessings already are.
John-Roger

WATCH A JOHN-ROGER VIDEO: “Where you place your focus, there will be your heart”