Question: How can we come out of a depressed state?

Sri Chinmoy: If you know that you have taken poison, you have to take the antidote, which is cheerfulness. You can do this through gratitude, by remembering that once upon a time you were cheerful, and by remembering what cheerfulness did to help you. So if you take depression as poison, then you will let cheerfulness come to you again. If you are cheerful, then you make progress. It is an absolutely false, wrong theory that sadness, frustration and depression will expedite your progress. You cannot say that you are making very good progress just because you are suffering. You cannot say that everybody will sympathise with you and give you illumination just because you have a heavy load on your shoulders. First they will observe whether the load is self-imposed or not, then they will immediately see that you have thrust it upon yourself. You want to run the fastest, but you are carrying the heaviest load. Cheerfulness is the way, for it is cheerfulness that expedites our progress.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Transcendence of the past, Agni Press, 1977
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/trp