Updated: August 5, 2024
Hello, my friends. Today, I wish to address a very important question, something that has been of great importance to me all my life, and that is what we call total well-being. So right now, there's a crisis in the world. And that crisis is a pandemic that is bigger than COVID 19, or any other pandemic that we have. And the pandemic is mental distress, mental disorders, and in many cases, suicide as the last resort by many people. Today, as we look at the statistics, every 40 seconds, somebody is dying from suicide. And at the same time, it's become the second most common cause of death amongst our teens. And with all the bullying
and everything else that's going on, on social media and people confusing themselves for their selfies, it is something
that seems even unstoppable.
So there are many
organizations working towards mental well-being, including the Chopra Foundation and its initiative, Never Alone. Check out www.NeverAlone.Love, and also an initiative called Freedom from Suffering that is offered by Never Alone.Love and is an initiative of the Chopra Foundation. I mentioned this because I have, after a lot of reflection, come to the conclusion
that what we call mental well-being is an oxymoron. There is no such thing
as mental well-being by definition. The mind is always vacillating between happiness and sadness, and that is what the mind is. It only experiences through contrast. And over the last century, everything has been tried for so-called for people
with so-called mental disorders, including gruesome things like like lobotomies and injections of epileptic drugs and, of course, even surgeries which are barbaric and medieval. And of course, in the last two decades, the advent of what some people feel are very effective pharmaceuticals or especially for psychosis, what is considered deep psychosis or treatments for schizophrenia, etc..
And some of these pharmaceuticals have indeed been effective. But overall, overall, we are losing the… I hate to use the word, "battle", we are losing our ability with conventional methods to treat mental distress
from mild depression to the extreme of suicidal ideation. And therefore, you know, after a lot of reflection
and also work over the years in this area, I have come to the following conclusions.
There's
no such thing as "mental well-being". The mind by nature is restless and always vacillates between poles of opposites as far as experience goes. So to say that well-being is possible "mental well-being", is in a way, an oxymoron. And I'll try and explain that. But bottom line is, no mental approach, including psychotherapy, no pharmaceutical approach, and no surgical approach has been universally effective.
And that should raise some concern because then we have wasted decades of research, decades of attempts to cure mental distress, and none of it has succeeded. So I want to pose a few other questions that I've been thinking about. What do we think is the normal mind? Okay. If you look around us
and you see the evidence of a collective so-called normal mind, it has created war, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons,
cyber warfare, eco destruction, extinction of species, climate change and terrorism, and a planet that is slowly with this collective mind walking and sleepwalking to extinction. Just one of those things. Cyber warfare, nuclear weapons, climate change, mass pandemics due to mass, you know, migrations
and rapid transformation and rapid transportation. And climate change
has a lot to do with it. And also the fact that our collective mind has no idea that it is asleep. Our collective mind has no idea that it is asleep. So this collective, insane mind is trying to heal mental distress.
This collective mind, which we call normal, but is the psycho pathology of our collective consciousness, is trying to create mental distress and those who do not conform to the insanity of this collective mind. We say the you know, and we include a motley a motley group of sages, psychotics
and geniuses in this category, those who do not conform to this collective condition, separate, fearful mind are labeled mentally ill as well. Some, of course, have severe mental pathology. But, you know, we are basically using a fearful, separate, divided, I have to say, insane mind to treat those who are not part of our conditioning. And that is the immense tragedy. So what, if any, is the solution? I think first we have to recognize that even the so-called healers and therapists and doctors and I include,
you know, myself in the past frequently get burned out.
I don't know if you know that suicide is a very big problem in the medical profession and among psychiatrists too. You know, psychiatrists have a huge issue with mental disorders, too. So we as healthcare providers, physicians, psychiatrists,
psychotherapists, are in no condition to help others that we think are in mental distress. So is there a solution? And I believe there is.
And that solution is a spiritual solution. We have to transcend the mind and enter that realm of awareness where we feel spontaneously deep love
because of our unity consciousness and understand that there's no such thing as the separate mind. The separate mind is a socially induced hallucination, and has been causing havoc throughout history. Look at all the war. History,
the books you read, all you read is about wars. Look at all the movies you watch. They're all full of violence. So this mind cannot heal any other mind. And we have to ultimately go to that realm of awareness where we are inseparable,
where we recognize love as the ultimate truth, at the heart of creation, and where we experience
spontaneous empathy, which means we feel what others feel. We have compassion, which is the desire to alleviate suffering because alleviating other people's suffering alleviates our suffering. And then compassion can lead to love in action. Love in action
is referred to as karma yoga in the wisdom traditions, because love without action is meaningless, and action without love is irrelevant.
But when we collectively participate in love in action, then we can hopefully create that critical mass for a more peaceful, just ,sustainable, healthier and joyful world. And that should be our goal not treating mental illness, but to create a pandemic of joy in the world. And that pandemic of joy can only come if there's a critical mass of joyful people in the world. That is the intention of www.NeverAlone.Love That is the intention of our course:
Freedom from Suffering. Please help spread the word. Join NeverAlone.Love As a global community where we have the intention to create global communities online and offline that have four goals: Attention, deep listening, together,
listening to each other; Affection, deep caring and love
for each other and compassion. The third is Appreciation. Noticing with gratitude that each of us has a unique gift to offer to the world and radical Acceptance. We call these the "Four A's": Attention, Appreciation, Affection, and total Acceptance.
And if we can create that critical mass global online offline communities, courses to help people, so join our initiative NeverAlone.Love www.NeverAlone.Love Check out the programs offered by Chopra Foundation and become part of a global community of sadhana, which means spiritual practice transcending the conflicted, separate, fearful mind, entering the domain of universal love. Sadhana. means practice. Seva, love in action, service and sangha community. This has been said by other teachers,
including the Buddha, who said, Take refuge in the Buddha, which means hired consciousness. Take refuge in the Dharma, which means higher purpose and take refuge in the Sangha. this community of people that practice divine attitudes such as empathy, compassion, love in action and joy.
Joy is the goal. Joy is who we are. Joy is how we came into this world. Joy is how we should live in this world. And joy is should be our legacy to this world. And if joy becomes the ultimate measure of success and joy becomes
the ultimate measure of well-being, then we will be holy, we will be whole, and we will be healed. Because that's
what health is, well-being is. It's the return to the memory of wholeness. It is holy, it is all inclusive, it is oneness, it is healing, and it is love. So forget about mental approaches to mental distress because the people who are providing those are not well themselves. And I know this
from my personal experience having been burned out as a physician, resident, intern, and until I took care of myself,
I realized there was no hope that I
could ever take care of anyone else.
So thank you for listening. Spread the word and join NeverAlone.Love and the Global Sangha of Freedom from Suffering and joy. Joy is spiritual. It's not mental. It's independent of the vacillations of the mind. It's independent of what we call happiness and sadness. Happiness is the opposite of sadness and vice versa. But joy transcends both, and joy brings energy and joy brings wonder and curiosity and adventure and sparks our imagination and our creativity and our higher vision for enlightenment as well. Thank you for listening..
