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Mental and Spiritual Healing

Depression
52 million American's are depressed at any given moment. This affects our jobs, relationships, and our overall mental capacity to deal with life.

Even the people claiming mental well-being are often only superficially so. Their perceived happiness is very transient and it totally depends on whether they are "in-love", accepted, attractive, successful, appreciated, and so on. As soon as one of these falls through the cracks, their happiness does as well. This is the whole premise behind a mid-life crisis. When the looks go down the drain, companies start hiring younger people, people of the opposite sex stop looking, the aches and pains in your body start, you start to panic at the sudden glimpse of your own mortality, and then realize you've been putting your energy in all the wrong places your entire life. But instead of going within and correcting that misplaced thinking on where happiness truly lies, they get younger dates, hotter cars, facelifts, etc. All this time, they thought their lives were supposed to be a grand episode of Friends, and when they realize that their series has ended, they end up depressed.

Current social happiness is fickle. What I would like to help people with is a permanent, life long, inner happiness. Is this possible? Sure. Most people do not have this inner happiness, but they hide it quite well. Take it from a woman who can see into most people's souls. The general public is so dummied up and numb with television, superficial work and relationships that they themselves can't figure out what is wrong with them, and why they never feel truly satisfied and fulfilled.

Mental Healing: The Brain
There are many components to healing. One is the brain. We create paths in our brains when we think. These form habits and very deep recesses in our tissue. So when we think, thoughts get fired off and travel down the same ingrained path, over and over. When I first took art classes, they used to make me draw with my left hand, eyes closed, or with the picture upside down. They did this because they wanted to open up long closed off brain cells and create new ways of thinking and expressing. We only use 10% of our brain because we continually follow the same paths and don't force ourselves to develop new ones. Think of your main "thinking path" as a raging river, where your thoughts flow. When we force ourselves to think new thoughts they take a detour from this raging river into a tiny creek. This creek still exists in your brain. However, your thoughts will continue to be dominated by the raging river because the path is wide, strong, and the path that your thoughts are used to taking. It takes will power to start to feed your new thoughts into the creek that you have formed. This does not happen overnight, within weeks, or even within months! You are reprogramming your neural networks! However, the good news is that as you take your old negative thoughts from the raging river, and feed them into the positive stream, the raging river will recede and the creek will grow, until one eventually dominates over the other.

Aligning Lower Self with Higher Self
Another component to mental and spiritual healing is getting into alignment with your higher self. But to do that, you have to have an inkling of what I'm talking about. Your higher self is what speaks to you, when you are out of your negativity. Ịt is what encourages you to do things, like find your life path, being true to yourself (meaning true to your higher self). The higher self is about self-love, unconditional love for others, honesty with yourself (honesty with self is evidence of inner love); it is about letting go of ego, fear, separation and all things that are not in alignment with the higher self.

Getting Honest
If you are suffering depression, get ready to change your thoughts. Your thinking has not worked for you, for if it had you wouldn't be depressed. This is part of self-honesty.

Our lives won't change until we change. You will continue being you no matter what job, spouse, home, or country you are involved or live in. The most important thing now is to start being dead honest with yourself. Continue building that self-love that you have started. You may say, "What self-love that I have started?" Well, it's the inner love that wants something better for you. The inner love that drives for change and improvement. It is there. It is always there at the highest level.

Sit down and write out your thoughts, beliefs, fears, and resentment. And for every one of those, find the positive counterpart and practice forgiveness towards self and others. And trust me, you will not believe any of the positives that you write out to be possible, or real (if you did, you would be using them in your daily life). The task is not to instantly convert you, but to start rebuilding who you are. Remember, you recreate yourself every single day of your life by your thoughts. You have already labeled yourself as to whom you think you are, but I guarantee you, who you think you are is very far from who you really are underneath all of your programming! When we change our words, our mind, and then our body, follows. It doesn't matter if it isn't true at the time for it becomes true.

Medication and Drugs
I wanted to share a few thoughts here on medication and drugs. More and more people are using drugs to deal with their depression. Depression has been around since the dawn of man, but the insurgence of depression drugs has only been in the last 50 years. What we were willing to deal with before, we are not anymore.

Drugs do not change our core selves just the ability to deal with that core self. I have several very close friends on depression medication, but they are still themselves and all they are doing is covering up the real issues that led them to depression in the first place. This, to me, is like alcohol or recreational drugs. When the buzz is off, you are still you, despite how high you felt at the time.

These depression drugs are legal (unlike many other drugs) because they allow the person to operate within the social paradigm. Taking these drugs does not bring us any closer to truth. It does not teach us anything about ourselves, for we don't have to work towards it anymore. We seem to make time for the easy stuff, but not the issues that really matter.

Of the people taking medication, many swear by its reprieve from depression, but what happens when we die? Our Prozac won't be at arm's length anymore. Depression medication restores chemicals in the brain to pre-depression states, but what created the altercation in the first place? Our body reacts to our thoughts in every way. If we feel depressed, then we are being told something about our mental well-being. This is like someone who takes pain medicine for a reoccurring body ache. Why are they aching? Your mind, like your body, is trying to tell you something so stop and listen.

I'll share a story about a woman on medication and where she ended up. I went on vacation about 3 years ago and met a group of people (this is funny, but how we met was because I suddenly "knew" the name of one of the girls sitting there which dumbfounded the whole group) and before I knew it, we were all just talking about ESP, etc. Well, as the evening grew on, and I shared with them aspect of myself, they begged me to do soul readings for them. First, there was healing to be done in all of them (as is the case with 99% of humans on this earth), but this one woman (in her late 40's) was all dopey and quiet. I didn't know what was going on in her life but as I held her hand, I could suddenly feel agony. Not of the physical sort, but of the spiritual sort. As I started to read her, I could see she had been molested as a little girl, and I told her this. Well, this pretty much opened the dam. She indeed had been molested and her life ever since was "illness and medication." She had just gotten in a car accident and was on even more medication. I even told her that her car accident was just a manifestation of her inner pain, self-hatred, and suffering. She was diagnosed as depressed and on that pain medication as well. The fact is, until she healed the childhood part, she was never going to get off that medication, and inevitably she was going to kill herself (car accident, suicide or self-created illness).

Not only are adults dependant on drugs, but the number of American children being treated with psychiatric drugs (Prozac, Ritalin and Risperdal) tripled from 1987 to 1996 and showing no sign of slowing, per a Washington Post article today. It was stated that "Insurers have increased their profits by decreasing the use of psychotherapy, which is more expensive than drugs." The insurance system has given an incentive for medications and a disincentive for therapy. These children will grow up to be adults, and dependant not on resolving their problems, but covering them up with drugs of varying kind. It's a cycle that is becoming predominant in our society.

The only time I would recommend medication is if your life has become so unmanageable that you can no longer take it (contemplating suicide), nor are you in the mental state to deal with it at any level. In that instance, taking medication to simply get yourself under control might be advisable.

And of course, if you are on medication right now, do not go off of it because of what I've written. I am not a doctor, and am merely stating opinion based on my experience. What I am suggesting is that you take a deeper look at your issue and address it with the help of a qualified professional and when the two of you decide you are ready, then wean yourself from this.

Mental Health Before Love
It is important that we deal with our inner issues before taking on a romantic relationship. The love we think we'd be giving to a partner wouldn't be love anyways. A person who is deeply suffering would enter the relationship with gaping holes and put incredible pressure (conscious or otherwise) on the mate to fill them. We may deny this, but this is exactly what all people do who are not yet developed. They think love will cure them but it is no better than the medicine they are taking. It is a band-aid on the real issue. It may FEEL like they cure you, that you are better, that you are happier, but it is transient! You have free will and will do what you want, but my suggestion is that you heal and learn to love yourself first. Then you will resonate at a much higher frequency and the mate you attract will be of a much higher nature. Think of your energy right now and your aura. What do you think you are expelling? If you are as blocked as you think you are and negatively programmed, then you will attract someone that is resonating on that level. Just think about that.

If you are already in a relationship and are lucky enough to have a supportive mate, then share with them what you are going through, and work towards a healthy solution.

Summary
I am speaking from experience here. I suffered depression much of my early life. It was only through years of going inward, getting myself in alignment with my higher self, finding self-love, letting go of my ego, loving my fellow man, and reprogramming my negative beliefs that I was able to step out of those shadows.

Why you have blocks, or are suffering is a highly personal issue that only you can get to the root of. Be honest with yourself; start to explore the inner workings of your heart and mind, and you will find the source.

Your progress will depend on how much energy and love you put into yourself. It is a very arduous path that only a few muster the energy for, but the rewards are grand. There is no quick fix here, however, you are the most important thing you have, and isn't that worth all the effort in the world? You can experience peace, serenity, inner love, and wonderful relationships that last lifetimes not only in this one, but the next. No drug can offer you that.