Category Archives: Depression

A healing poem

13 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by in A Course in Miracles, Depression, Fear, Healing, Health, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Literature, Mary, Miracle, MS, Poetry, The Divine, Universal Intelligence, Writing

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This poem originated from an experience several monthes ago, when I took a rest on our terrasse from intense business with various texts and an aching heart. I was afraid to suffer a heart attack any moment. Through the experience, where this poem is coming from, my pain was gone within a short time and I could take some relaxed breaths again.

 

As I found out later, this poem has, the deeper you go into its thoughts, a healing capacity indeed. I have had the experience, that it can be applied helpfully to all sorts of restricting and frightening situations. 

 

 

A HEAVEN’S KISS

 

The hush of Mary cools my aching, burning heart,

her love comes streaming through my dark.

 

While Jesus’ hands relieve my shoulders from behind,

putting to ease my troubled, busy mind.

 

The while my legs and belly feel a Chinese master’s touch,

they never had relaxed that much …

 

And from above comes Heaven’s kiss,

oh what enormous, time- and space-less, happy bliss!

 

Christoph Engen

 

A terminal kick in the butt of fear

21 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Depression, Fear, Healing, Literature, Miracle, MS, Multiple Sclerosis, Responsibility, Therapy, Writing

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MS-relapse

 

“Every disease is a musical problem, any healing a musical solution.”

Novalis

 

Suddenly in the early summer of 2010 I fell back into the mental state of a little overburdened and panicking child. Several difficult situations had come together in my life and I felt sheer panic as to how on earth I could ever handle all this. A state of massive depression followed and lasted for over two years.

 

Due to this depression almost immediately my health situation got worse. The neuropathy in my feet that I had gotten used to meanwhile began to spread all over my legs and all the way up to my bottom. My incontinence got so bad that I hardly dared leave my four walls. I was pursued by constipations and especially from late afternoon on my legs shook with spasms. To get rid of this horror and be able to think clearly again and happily would only work the six, seven times I succeeded to follow my inner guidance and stay up a whole night and the following day. However soon as I went to bed again I felt my old fear creeping in again and take over and the next morning my panic and disorientation was worse than ever before.

 

Hadn’t it been for Evi who kept life running for the two of us over this entire period, I would have been lost completely. Whenever she left home in the morning to go to work and I heard the door shut behind her I felt like a prisoner in his dungeon.

 
 

The laughing apple

 

“I decided to be happy, because it is better for health.”

Voltaire

 

What finally slingshot me out of this hell of depression was the final memory that I myself was the one and only cause of all this horror and that I had had plenty enough of all of this panic and fear and these rotten MS-symptoms. It was one day before my 55th birthday. A good 53, 54 years before as a baby I had been in a little crèche under my grandfather Paul’s beloved apple tree marveling at the beauty all around me. I had felt so relaxed and so very well protected by my grandparents’ and my parents’ love.

 

The light from the end of the tunnel first dawned on me the night of July 27th. During the day two very dear elderly friends of ours, Elisabeth and Manfred, had taken care of me during the day time since Evi had had to go to the hospital for a foot surgery. I had been very afraid of how on earth I would be able to deal with these three days with no skirt to hide behind. All day long Elisabeth had driven Manfredo and myself through the Bavarian countryside and I remember how moved I was to see there were still cows around and meadows and villages and beer gardens and normal people leading their normal lives. Over the two years of “imprisonment” within my four walls I had been sure I would never be able to get out again and lead this kind of a normal life and enjoy such wonderful little human delights as going to the country.

 

Back home alone this night after finally being able to end an eight day antibiotic therapy I had had to do because of bladder infection my spastics too returned back to “normal”. The antibiotics had worsened these spastics tremendously from evening on all through the night, sparing me but one or two hours of sleep. So this night promised to be less crampy and shaky. Near midnight I watched a wonderful documentary on a tour by the German singer and songwriter Konstantin Wecker and from deep within me I felt my WILL TO LIVE wake up again!

 

I was so fed up with these depressions, I was fed up with these pains, and I was fed up with this jerking of my legs! I was so completely fed up with this entire MS! Fed up, fed up, and fed up with all that!!!

 

And what I was fed up with most of all was this constant fear that had meanwhile spread over so many areas of my life like some exuberant cancer! Fear, fear, fear, wherever I looked in my life! Meanwhile I was afraid of everything. There was fear of walking anyway. Of course there also was fear of eating something wrong. There was fear of smoke, fear of alcohol, fear of white bread, fear of my hunching about on two canes, fear of peoples’ reaction who saw me that way, fear of falling down, fear of death, fear of life. Fear of everything!

 

And it was this very own fear of mine I had fostered and nourished and pampered for so very long that I rendered a definite, terminal kick in the butt that night! I wanted to be alive and happy again.

 

Next noon Evi returned from the hospital. It was my birthday and yes, I truly felt born again!

 

Eight weeks later I had recovered considerably from my MS symptoms and there were still three apples on the little apple tree of our small city-garden. The one laughing apple had already fallen to the ground and so had his follow-up apple with less distinct smiley markings. Over the weeks those laughing apples had continuously reminded me of God’s face that unflinchingly showered me with its smile and I am sure some of the apples in my grandfather’s garden had smiled at me just the same …

 

Christoph Engen

 

Excerpt from http://www.miraclesarenomiracles.com

Miracle of Miracles!

29 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by in A Course in Miracles, Awakening, Chronic dieases, Depression, Enlightenment, God, Healing, Heaven, Oneness

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FROM THE SOUL’S SPARK TO THE GREAT DISCOVERY

 

Almost a year after I had finally kicked my disease-identification with depressions and MS out of my system by rigorously deciding I want to live and be happy and sane, which had triggered such a surprising recovery from all my symptoms that today for walking I just occasionally have to use a cane, or after, so to speak, my soul’s spark had definitely ignited, one afternoon I experienced on our little city-porch what all spiritual traditions refer to as awakening.

 

At that time I had often watched the YouTube videos of Mooji, a wisdom-teacher in the tradition of Ramana Maharshi and Papaji, correspondingly working with a central thought from “A Course in Miracles”, that we are not bodies.

 

With these thoughts I sat down in an armchair on our porch for a cigarette I had just rolled. I glanced at the big houses to the right, left and in front of our little garden leaving but two 30 degree angles for looking further and toward some high trees.  Okay, then I’ll let go of this body-identification, I thought to myself.

 

My inner self-image appeared, the image I normally see when I look in a mirror. Okay, so I’ll let go of this self-image, I kept thinking.  Very gently and easily it went “puff” and I had totally left my entire Christoph-identification. No more thought of a Christoph-person separate from whatever. No more thought of a Christoph-body.

 

Instead of that an experience of home like never before. I immediately knew, I am all that: this garden, these houses, these windows, this sky. No more Christoph far and wide. From everything my look fell upon it said: “I!”

 

This was the essence of all love, the essence of  all freedom and joy, the essence of all peace. It was so spectacular and yet so simple and gentle.

 

The brief memory of my body came back and I felt my chest glowing. The feeling of not being separate from anything however remained. Same as the knowledge that I had definitively left my body and achieved the goal of all human striving, the great, eternal “I”. No, not “I” had achieved this, that’s not correct. By giving up my “I” or by my “I” giving up itself, automatically the great, divine “I” had become the experience of everything.

 

In this experience no memory of my body or my person remained. Neither the least yearning for that. For what I experienced or rather, what experienced itself, was the deepest fulfillment of all that could ever be yearned for. On the one hand it happened completely beyond body-perception and yet simultaneously it included everything physical the look fell upon: houses, plants, windows, sky, trees, fronts. Everything sang: “I”, “I”, “I”, “I”.

 

That love is self-evident, that peace is self-evident, that freedom is self-evident, that God is self-evident, that I am self-evident, was completely beyond questioning.

 

And that in truth there always is only this “One”, that everything else is nothing but dreams, all way too weak to describe this “One”, to reach this “One”, to experience this “One” …

 

A thought appeared: “I should take another puff from my cigarette,” followed immediately by: “Not now”. I didn’t listen to this voice and took another puff.

 

And, puff, I was pulled back into my body sitting in an armchair on the porch …

 

Since then I know I indeed need do nothing else but, whenever I want to, go into this experience … Since then I feel how this experience extends by itself into my entire world and brings healing. According to rules I – thank God – do not have to understand!

 

My soul’s spark that had unequivocally ignited one year ago, which had made it so easy for me to follow my inner routes and inspirations – what before had only been possible with biggest effort and discipline – had unveiled its deepest core at last.

 

And, miracle of miracles: this spark of light is in everybody and everything! Always but accessible and free to be experienced by every man, every woman, every child, every animal, every being!

 

 

The only simple task to be accomplished is to let go of the identification with the ego as one’s real self!

Dr. David R. Hawkins

Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else; nothing outside this Oneness, and nothing else within.

A Course in Miracles

 

Cristoph Engen, September 29th 2013

 

For further texts, audios and videos please see:

http://www.miraclesarenomiracle.com