In our last video we made the proposition that using little to no control over our mind and following all of its desires, urges and proposals has not resulted in making people happier. Instead what we have been seeing in recent decades is a significant increase in anxiety, unhappiness, depression and suicide, especially in younger people.
In order to go along with the experiment of endless consumption of material things and experiences, people had to compromise values that they held dear for centuries such as modesty and caring for others. Instead we have been encouraged to become more and more self-centered. We are encouraged to harden our hearts, to not see those who are in need. We are being told that this is ok as long as you get what you wanted. In order to get ahead materially, we had to adopt new values of greed, envy and lust. Why have we been warned for thousands of years that developing a greedy mentality is harmful? Because greed fosters an attitude of always wanting more and more, never being satisfied. This will ultimately lead to anger and frustration.
Living a self-centered life where we basically only care about ourselves and not about others is a dead end street. It can never produce happiness. There is truth in the saying “Giving is better than taking”. Why is this? Because to give and to share is in harmony with our real spiritual nature. Our spiritual nature is to love others as much as we love ourselves. When a person experiences real spiritual love, they are completely happy and don’t need to take anything from others. Rather they are very eager to want to give and help others.
When we go against our spiritual nature, this is the original root cause of all the problems that we experience in this world. Society overall has been promoting the purpose of life being one of becoming increasingly self-centered, hedonistic and not caring much about others in the process. Many younger people especially when they hear this message, they feel that something is not quite right, that something must be missing. They often become social outfits or rebels because they are unhappy with what the mainstream society is offering to them. When one does not have a purpose of life that renders meaning to one’s existence, this will leave a big hole in one’s life.
People in this world are trying to cover up their anxiety, unhappiness and depression in many different ways. Some will take drugs, both legal and illegal, while others just stay busy with endless stimulation of the mind and the senses. But underneath of this is a sea of unhappiness and depression. In 2018 leading health insurance companies Blue Cross and Blue Shield looked at medical health insurance claims from 41 million insurance holders and determined that major depression is on the rise among Americans from all age groups, but is rising fastest among teens and young adults. Regarding suicide statistics there are many studies in recent years who show increases anywhere from 20-50% over the last 10 to 20 years. According to the American Psychological Association, suicide was the 10th-leading cause of death in the United States in 2016. It was the second-leading cause of death among people ages 10 to 34 and the fourth-leading cause among people ages 35 to 54.
We hope that our mindfulness videos do not make you depressed! Rather we will be focusing on the solutions to the problems of life in our future videos. In our next video we will be looking at what our natural condition is and how we can get back on track.
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