In this world most people have accepted that it is normal to experience unhappiness, unease, anxieties as part of this human journey. Yet we all want to find peace, happiness, love. We are searching and searching and searching. And so many people are offering something to fill up the emptiness in people. Yet nothing seems to offer a permanent solution. The mental health situation in the world is so catastrophically bad, that they expect the cumulative cost to be about $16 trillion US$.

We would like to share two fundamental truths that can help all those who suffer from all kinds of anxieties and depression. The first is to not have unrealistic expectations of this world. The things that you truly seek and desire, the nature of the happiness that you desire, the living happily ever after that we hear in love novels, this cannot be experienced in this material world.  It happens in the spiritual dimension. But when we are thoroughly absorbed in material conception, we are looking in the wrong place. We keep on looking and trying again and again to find happiness in so many places, but it does not work. What we desire, spiritual love and happiness, comes from the soul. It is a good and natural for us to want these because it is our natural spiritual nature to experience true spiritual love, happiness, carefreeness. No anxieties, no depression.

Many people struggle with concepts of self-worth, worthiness, am I lovable? And it is all based on the body. The body ages. It is a fight against time. You cannot avoid the reality that it is all downhill. It ends with the death with the body. And here we are struggling with the illusion that this is me, and I am seeking validation, worthiness, be loved and accepted, all on the basis of this temporary and ever-changing body. Sometimes a woman feels that you don't really care about me, all you want is my body! This is the beginning of enlightenment.

The eternal spiritual being is glorious and cannot be destroyed. We have eternal value. When we don't know about our real value and worthiness and try to find it through material means, e.g., our body, this is a great cause for the anxieties and depression that we experience. And we seek happiness by stimulating the senses and the mind. No matter how much stimulation we get, it leaves us empty. There is a great difference between pleasure in the body and the mind and real internal happiness. No material experience can truly touch us in our hearts. This is a realization that the experiences in this world cannot satisfy us completely.

The craving for happiness is a spiritual longing. We need spiritual food. If we have unrealistic expectations of materialistic relationships, of anything in this material world, thinking that these will make us happy, at some point you will become profoundly unhappy and depressed. The world cannot deliver what you seek.

The second truth for us to to grow in appreciation of is that this body and this mind is not me. According to ancient wisdom, the mind can be one's greatest friend or one's greatest enemy. So, what about our mind which is connected with all the mental health problems people experience? Your mind can have an effect on your physiology. What the body goes through. Many forms of illness can be caused and originate in a very disturbed and unhappy mind. We realize there is this connection. But for one who appreciates that they are not the body and not the mind, they have a whole different way of dealing with things. Such a person treats the mind and the body in the same way that they treat a vehicle that does not give you everything you want and need. Such a person knows he needs to be the one directing the mind, making conscious choices, be very selective what to focus on, what to listen to, who to hear from.