Depression and spiritual awakening: two sides of one door | Lisa Miller | TEDxTeachersCollege

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.
Is depression, as most of us experience it, meaningless suffering? Dr. Lisa Miller presents research that lends meaning to the experience of depression and to our experience on planet Earth.

In the dark of the night, 4 a.m.,

I look over and my husband's not there.

I look further, and I find him

flat on his back,
looking at the ceiling, arms out.

"Our lives are hollow
and meaningless without children."

It had been two-and-a-half years

of hopes and prayers
and failed fertility treatments.

No one had come.

And the despair that ripped through
our hearts woke us night after night -

to the point where friends and family
called just to see how we were doing.

Because we so clearly were depressed.

As a clinical psychologist and scientist,

I had been trained to see
that depression is a disease.

Much like cancer or diabetes,
depression as a disease had symptoms

of despair and isolation.

And yet that simply did not explain
the road we were traveling,

nor did it explain the depression
that follows loss of a spouse,

miscarriage, trauma,

or the natural transitions
sophomore slump, mid-life crisis,

portholes in passages - chapter breaks
that seemed core to who we are -

were not aberrant illnesses.

They were not diseases.

And so my husband and I continued

with each cycle ending in a disappointment
that felt like a funeral.

And as we continued
down our road of trials,

we started ever so gradually,
over months and years

to open our eyes from a dark
and isolated place, quite alone,

to a place where we started to hear
the guidance of helpers and healers:

the folks who, on the Appalachian Trail,
through hikers called "trail angels"

for bringing food and water
when they need it most.

Our trail angels brought
what we needed most:

wisdom and guidance.

So one day I came home
after yet another in vitro

with the haunting feeling
as I drove my car

that this too was a failure.

And sure enough, as I stepped to the door,

the evidence was incontrovertible.

A tiny dead duck embryo
lay on my threshold.

And I knew it was not possible
the embryo in me was alive.

And so I went to bed
and had a long depressing nap

to awake - (Imitating knocking sound)
to a duck -

the mama duck,

who had lost her aspirational baby.

And the mama duck was persistent.

I thought what would the duck
want with me. (Imitating knocking sound)

She wanted to come towards me.

And as I opened the door,
I saw she had brought me a gift -

the most precious thing
in the world to her.

She had brought me a plump, juicy worm.

Mama duck and I, there we were,
two aspirational mothers, not alone.

Not alone because duck and I
were side by side,

and not alone because
of the great force that brought duck.

And so, too, through that force
came the guy on the bus.

And the guy on the bus winked,
leaned over, and said,

"You seem like just type of mother
that would go all around the world

adopting all types of kids,"
opening up that new possibility.

Listening to the helpers
and healers opened my awareness,

so that the next time
I was woken in the night

was not by the rip of depression,

but by a great
and clearly sacred presence -

a presence with a love so great
and a gravitas that I sat up.

And the presence said,
"If you were pregnant, would you adopt?"

And I said something so awesome
and great: the truth, which was, "No".

But I also knew that this journey

was more than a disease,

and that this depression
was opening the door

on a path of "becoming" -
a spiritual path.

Continuing down this path,

I wanted that baby.

It was great that I was on
a spiritual path, but I wanted that baby.

And so we didn't quit.

Up and down the East Coast
to the best IVF labs in the country.

We went so far as to find
the team that invented IVF,

and sitting there in solidarity
on bed rest with my spouse,

we found that the remote was stuck
in our hotel room on one channel -

one interminable documentary,
four hours

(Laughter)

of a little boy -

a little boy who stood
in a garbage dump alone,

and said, "I don't care that I'm poor.
I don't care that I can't go to school.

But it hurts so much to not be loved

that I sniff glue
to make the pain go away."

And lying there
in our multiple rounds of IVF,

my husband and I looked at each other.

And he said it first.

We knew there was a child
out there for us.

We made our way

to a wise woman
and hovered around her table,

the daughter of a once clergyman.

She looked at us and said,

"Frankly, what is it that you are
looking for in your child?"

And I leaned in and said,

"Well, I don't care
if this is a boy or a girl.

I don't care what race this child is.
Just please, a child who can love."

And my husband jumped in and he said,
"Well yes, all that, but kind of a girl."

(Laughter)

What we knew in common
was that the voice that said

you will never be parents, the voice
that came from being alone in darkness

was now a voice
that said parenting is love.

It hurts so much to not be loved.

All he wanted was a mom,
all I wanted was a child.

What would have made us family was love.

Parenting was love.

This was depression as a portal
to a world of connection, a world of love,

a world in which we walk a spiritual path.

This was depression
as only one side of the door.

And on the other [side of the] door
was illumination, warmth, light,

and spiritual path, a spiritual passage.

Now, as a clinical scientist,
it was clear to me

that anything true

through yet another human lense
of knowing can be again shown.

The certainty I had

that depression and spirituality
are two sides of one door

seemed well within reach of science.

And so my lab, together with that
of Myrna Weissman and Brad Peterson

and Rafi Bancell, did the science:

two sides of one door -
where is it in the brain?

Where is depression as the portal
of the spiritual path, not the disease.

And we found it.

And we found it in broad
and pervasive regions of the cortex.

We welcomed into our lab

deeply depressed people from families
loaded up with generations of depression,

and similar people with families
loaded up with generations of depression

who through their journey of suffering

had reached a foundationally
spiritual path.

People whose lead foot was now depression
for having traveled the darkness.

And what we found

was that in precisely
those regions of the brain

which atrophied and withered
in lifelong depression.

For those people with a strong
personal spirituality,

there was a thickening
of those very same regions.

The cortex was thick

as if you were looking
at a tree in the Amazon

versus a tree whithering
under the cold and drought.

Two sides of one door is in us.
Depression is not always an illness.

It can be.

We can need to be rebooted
or recalibrated or medicated.

It can be.

But very often, depression
as everyone will face it

is core to our endowment,
and core to our development.

My husband and I continued
now with this knowledge:

that we were on the spiritual path
in search of our child.

It was clear that our suffering
was not for naught,

it was not an empty symptom,

and with the awareness
that we were "becoming,"

the presence came back.

The presence asked the same question
in a deep and profound way.

And my answer was honest,
which is I am getting there.

I can feel we're down the road.

There is the possibility

of spiritually evolving into
the person who would answer yes.

But no, I'm not quite there

where I would still adopt
a child if I were pregnant.

My love has grown,
but is my love that great?

Not yet.

And so we continued, and I found myself

in the community of those
who for generations have known

that depression
is but one side of the door,

and spiritual awakening the other.

Seated on the floor
of the "Inipi", the sweat lodge,

among the Lakota in South Dakota,
I joined the circle of women.

And here, each woman talked about
the suffering which had brought her

to our collective prayer.

'My son, he's 40.
He has not come home to his family.'

'My son, he's 14, and he's starting
to use substance.'

I, in turn, shared that I was
searching for my spiritual child.

Together, we prayed and we sent it up.

We sent our prayer both for one another,
ourselves and the collective, up

to Great Spirit, "Wananchi."

That night, a call came.

They had found him, that very night
on the other side of the earth.

We have found the Miller's child
was the message.

There are great girls
and we can sure find you a girl,

but this is the Millers child,
and this is a son.

This time, clinical science

had something to say
to the spiritual path.

When we looked at the women
who, through suffering,

had come to a spiritual path,
with nice thick cortexes,

they also had another quality:

the back to their head gave off
a certain wave length of energy

that we call "Alpha."

And it's also found on the back
of the head of a meditating monk.

Alpha has another name,
it's Shuman's constant.

It's the wave length of the earth's crust.

The spiritually engaged brain vibrates
at the frequency at the earth's crust.

From the Inipi across the globe
was found Isaiah, in through this matrix

of consciousness, love, this sacred field
that is in us, through us, around us

and covers all living earth.

This is the world in which we live -
a world in which we're never alone

and in which there is guidance,
trail angels, helpers and healers.

And through the field of love
comes just the person,

the guy on the bus, the medicine woman,
just that living being, the duck,

the wise, generous animals,
our sisters and brothers.

In fact, we can no longer begin to think
that we are actors on an inert stage,

but that the world is alive

and infused with that sacred field
we might measure as high amplitude alpha.

Knowing this, we live
into an inspired life -

a life of meaning
that is not one that we create

but meaning that is truly
in the fabric of the world.

We live in an inspired life.

Isaiah, my son, had been found,
named Isaiah,

for "one world" in Lakota
for those who helped find him.

And yet, we still,
although far less depressed

and much more full of love and connection,

had the anxiety of actually
meeting him, finding him,

bringing him home.

And then one day, the FedEx came
and we peeled it open

and there was the video.

We popped it in

and the most joyous little boy,
full of happiness, arm around the nurse -

a love like I had never felt lifted me up,

and any remnant of depression
were shards on the ground.

And together, my husband and I
went to bed as parents.

That night, the presence came back -

the great sacred presence
for the third time.

"If you were pregnant now,
would you adopt?"

"Yes, I found my spiritual son, yes."

And that night,
we conceived naturally -

his sister.

We had spiritual twins.

So when you hear the knock,

consider the invitation.

What sounds shocking, and as if the hand
that takes from inside the darkness

when we walk through the door
is the hand that invites

that guides and ultimately gives.

On the other side of the door
is the inspired life

brought to us by the presence.

Thanks.

(Applause)