# Are you depressed?? Read this



## Guest (Nov 24, 2001)

In the name of Allah, the most Beneficient, the most Merciful.(This incident took place on 23rd November, 2001, on a Friday in the holy month of Ramazan, the Muslim month of fasting. I am a first year student living on campus in Canadaï¿½s most reputable university. It has been almost two years since I developed an energy draining health problem) On Thursday I was overcome with gloom. I went to the CS advisor begging him to tell me the procedure to defer my exams. He wasnt very helpful, he said you should first talk to your professors and if that doesnt work then appeal to a committee to treat me as an exceptional case. He did not sympathise with me when I told him about my current health problems. After the meeting I felt so bad, having to beg others for help, something I had never done before in my life. By God, I had never copied anybodyï¿½s homework when I was healthy, and now it has come to this that I copy every other assignment off of someone else, giving the pretext to my conscience that I lack energy and cannot handle so much work. I felt bad for having fallen to the lowest point in my life. I did not merely feel bad, I felt angry, angry at God, I charged Him for maybe having forsaken a good servant. I thought to myself, how could God give me this curse when He knows that if I was healthy I could do so much for the people in this world and maybe for His religion as well. I blamed him for continuing this curse for so long, almost two years now, that I do not see any more hope. I had fallen into depression because I could see no hope of ever getting well. I cried, tears engulfed my eyes, I was angry and sad and once again thought of committing suicide. But of course, I would never do such a thing as a person committing suicide goes to hell according to my faith, but the mere fact that I often contemplate suicide represents how depressed and hopeless I feel. I walked along one of the walls of the MC building where people could not see the tears in my eyes. Is this why Allah made me, just to suffer, why cant Allah restore me to my former self, havent I suffered enough. I prayed to Allah to either kill me or give me some hope somehow and in my opinion the only way I could get hope is to get well which seems possible only through a miracle.Friday morning and I was still feeling bad, whenever I come out to cycle these days I say to myself: ï¿½Aaah, wouldnt it be wonderful if a car overran me, this would surely put an end to my misery.ï¿½ Of course, I also dont want to die so soon because I have so many sins and I would want to exceed them by good deeds before I leave this world. In short, I still felt cursed and so bad that I felt no energy in my body due not only to the health problem but also to the lack of hope. I rode to the MC building and submitted my assignment, a copied one as you might expect, and then I took a copy of Imprint, our studentsï¿½ magazine, and walked slowly to the SLC building and then to the bathroom besides Ground Zero to make ablution for the Friday prayer at 12:30 which I expected to be in the SLC prayer room. Soon as I was about to open the door of the bathroom, my new friend Faiz came out of it. As I expected, he had made ablutions for the prayer as well, but he said he was going to E2 building for the prayer, I didnt know where that was, but he said he would wait for me and go with me to E2, wherever that was. One thing to note here is that if I had been a minute late or a minute earlier then I would have missed Faiz and he wouldnt have taken me to E2 *. So after making ablution I came out and Faiz took me somewhere near E2, but he didnt know its exact location and the room number of the place where the prayer is held. But on the way I unexpectedly came across a new friend Javed and he took us exactly to the room 1303E where the prayer was to be held although he didnt even have to pray there. So, due to Javed we made it on time to the prayer room for the khutba (address to the congregation of Muslims). An Arabic guy delivered the khutba (ofcourse in English). His khutba was as follows, it was so specific to my situation and an answer to the crying and praying I had done the day before. I had been brought to this place miraculously and it further strengthened my faith in the existence of a Power that looks after us. I had been planning to do Istakhara** about my problem to ask God if I would ever get well, but I received an answer to all my questions in this khutba (address). It was as if God was talking to me through this person. This khutba was a proof to the fact that Allah had not forsaken me at all, and this brought tears to my eyes during the prayer, and also the fact that I had blamed Allah made me tearful of my folly. How could I blame Someone who looks after us in such miraculous ways. Here is a summary of what the Imam said:ï¿½There are three types of persons and Islam accepts just one of these and rejects the other two. The first type is he who looks at this world through doom and gloom because of the hardships he has faced. The example of him is just like the person who walked into his blooming garden and said that ï¿½Aah, my garden will always be as beautiful as this.ï¿½ And of course, this was not true. Allah says that everything changes, whether it will be a change from good to bad or a change from bad to good. If there was no change and Allah made night constant then how would we get light. So, it is a fact that everything changes but we cannot look into the future and know when that change will come. So, every person, no matter how grave his situation is, should never lose hope. How can one tell that in the very darkness that he is in, he might find a small seed that will grow into a tree which shall provide him with shade and fruit. There will always be change and such persons who lose hope are kafirs (disbelievers) because they have lost hope in the Spirit of Allah that has been blown into every human being, the spirit that gives us energy and stamina and the ability to work hard. These people do not believe in the Hereafter. People who look at the world through doom and gloom and think that things will always remain the same are doing harm to themselves, they lapse into depression and lose all productivity. The second type of people are those who seem very happy because they expect some sudden miracle to take them out of their present hardship. For example, they expect a great leader to suddenly appear and remedy their problems or they might expect that God strikes their enemies by lightning or through angels. These people are very optimistic and expect their enemies (or their hardships) to be eliminated automatically by God without them ever doing anything.	The third type of people are the ones accepted by Islam. They are the ones who accept that change is constant and they use their knowledge and sheer hard work to realise their dreams. They put their faith in Allah only after doing their utmost to address their hardships. These people are enthusiastic and the true Muslims.ï¿½ Thank you dear Allah for answering my questions in such an effective and miraculous manner, and showing me the straight path. I shall always work hard, God willing, to achieve the goals I had set for myself when I was healthy. Verily, all praise and glory is due to Thee alone.* In the morning when I had woken up to go to MC to submit my assignment I had realized that I was missing my folder which had all my class notes, I felt very angry at myself and God that I had lost my most important folder but after scanning my brain for all the places I had been to yesterday (Thursday) I realized that it might still be in one of the computer labs in MC unless somebody had stolen it or submitted it to Lost and Found. After having submitted my assignment I went to one of the labs and found my folder lying safe and sound besides a computer. Since I was in the lab I decided to sit on the computer for a while and surf the net before I went to SLC for prayer. So in this way God totally synchronized my meeting with Faiz. If I hadnt lost my folder the day before I wouldnt have gone to the lab and I wouldnt have had a rendezvous with Faiz because the time taken by me to get to SLC would have been shorter. It is also worthy to note here that I have never lost any folder before, this was the first time it happened (on Thursday). On Friday evening when I was contemplating the remarkable incident of the day I also realized how good things can come out of bad incidents: I had lost my folder but this also proved to be the reason why I went to E2 to pray and not some other place. If I hadnt gone to E2 then I wouldnt have heard the khutba (address). So guys, never lose hope if you are in a bad situation, it might very well prove to be your saviour.** Istakhara is an Islamic terminology for an act of worship where a Muslim (who is confused about what he should do to counter some specific problem) performs his nightly prayer and then reads a special arabic verse asking God to show him what he should do, and then the Muslim goes to sleep on a clean bed. During the sleep, God answers the Muslimï¿½s question through a dream. I have myself done this once and the results were accurate. My mom has faced a lot of crises in her life and each time she did Istakhara she got very specific answers in her dreams. Once, for example, our belongings suddenly started disappearing from a cupboard, and my mom did Istakhara about who was stealing the stuff and she saw in her dream that it was someone amongst our neighbours. My mom was surprised and did not pay much heed to the result. After a couple of weeks while we were coming back home after some shopping we saw that our combination lock to the entrance door was open, and when we entered our house my little brother and I saw our neighbourï¿½s young son Shahid hiding in the tarris. He had been doing the stealing all along!! (an interesting fact is that soon as my brother saw him, this neigbourï¿½s boy Shahid jumped out of the tarris and fell down three stories!!! Thankfully, he grabbed hold of a water pipe along the wall of the building and did not hurt himself much)


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## Tamgirl21 (Sep 2, 2001)

Interesting story, but if I am depressed, exactly how does this story make me feel better?????????????????????????????


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## Guest (Nov 26, 2001)

Hello Tamigirl,Actually I wrote this whole document for myself so I wont forget the lessons that it teaches, but then I thought why not post it on this site as well, maybe it will help someone. Since I am the one who experienced the incident, it might be hard for others to relate to it. I am going to give an answer to your question but the problem is that it is hard to type down all your knowledge and share it. You might feel that whatever I say here is just ####. But let me assure you Tami that what I say here is the truth and not just some crazy belief that I have made up for myself. I am not some best-selling author that possesses the ability to captivate his reader. So my presentation of the facts and truths might seem a bit too hard to believe and u might just ignore this as nonsense, but trust me, it is not. Just read the book that I shall recommend, it surely posses the ability to transform a person.Briefly, as I said, just the day before Friday I had asked God to show me the right path and I had promised that I would follow it and the way God answered with the exact answers to the questions I had in mind just dazzled me.Actually, as I began to further analyze the incident I realized that God had actually put forward a solution as well to my problems, I didnt quote that solution here because I hadnt inferred it yet, but now I have. My problem was that I dont feel much energy and stamina in my body to work anymore, but the Imam said: "the Spirit of Allah has been blown into every human being, the spirit that gives us energy and stamina and the ability to work hard." On Sunday when I was thinking about this statement, I realized that I had read in detail about the spirit in a must-read book "Essential Sufism" by James Fadiman and Robert Frager. Both these authors are Ph.D's and expert psychologists. If u truly want to understand how this story provides a solution u must read that book. Let me just give u a brief introduction:"The Spirit of Allah (God) exists in every person but it is up to us to struggle towards trying to make this Spirit overcome our lower self. Our lower self is what makes us materialistic because of all the requirements of our body such as food, intercourse etc. Think about it, dont we do everything just for our bodies?? Just think. But the soul (spirit) is pure and if we can struggle towards allowing our soul to overcome our lower selves then then the energy provided by God's spirit (as the Imam said) will power our stamina and allow us to be happy and prosperous."What the incident has done is that it has allowed me to form a link between the khutba (address) of the Imam and my previous knowledge about spiritualism. From my knowledge I knew that one can overcome the lower self to attain closeness to God and from the khutba I have received confirmation that the Spirit of God can illuminate our hearts to give us energy. Tami, when our hearts are illuminated by God's energy then we dont need anything from this world, no pain in this world can make u feel down, and no happiness in this world is greater than the happiness u achieve with closeness to God, who becomes your sole Provider. According to God it is not the medicine that provides relief, it is God, so u should pray to God and not just restrict yourself to seeing a doctor, the doctor cant do anything unless God allows it. Sufism (or mysticism) aims to eliminate all veils between the individual and God. Sufism is in itself a science, although one that has not been explored well by us because of our materialism. Sufism is by no means an easy path, and u have to struggle alot, but it is the only path that can provide total happiness. There are very few people in this world who have reached the revered state of a Sufi (a mystic), they are by no means strange fellows engaged in the worship of God all day, they infact try to balance life with spiritualism, they live life to the fullest but dont get shackled by it. Rober Frager and James Fadiman, the authors of "Essential Sufism" are Sufis. I recommend that u read this book, it is very interesting with incidents and situations that were faced by normal humans on their search of the eternal truth and and became Sufis (mystics). If you ever see these people they will have a smile on their faces and they are the kindest people to fellow humans. When u achieve union with God you get a share of His knowledge as well (thats really cool, u become kinda like a super human being, i am not kidding, u may even acquire abilities to do supernatural things that if i quote here people will think I am crazy).Tami, I am going to atleast try to follow the path of Sufism because I had promised God on Thursday that whatever solution He proposes I shall try my best to achieve it. I hope that if u have read so far, u will take the initiative to read the book i have recommended, I am not sure where u might find it. Read it, its for normal people like us, a little extra knowledge never hurt anyone.


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## Guest (Nov 26, 2001)

oh and Tami, i got so involved in spiritualism that I forget to mention one more thing that might help someone depressed, and that is the fact that the Imam outlines in his address that things are always changing, from good to bad and bad to good, so we should never lose hope, who knows u could overcome your hardships tomorrow, so never be depressed, u could be rid of your hardships just like u got them. As it was said: "who knows that in the very darkness that you are in, u might find a small seed that grows into a tree that shall provide you with shade and fruit."


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## Nikki (Jul 11, 2000)

I think that is a lovely story Sulloo!Are you still around on the board? How are you doing now? Are you feeling any better?


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