Many of these are positive and would seem to be introducing measures to advance our society and our prosperity.  Have the changes brought us benefit and promise to continue along a path we wish to go? Or have we lost our way?

Those who cherish values of order, ethics and morals according to natural law are not pleased but rather aghast at the extent our culture is disintegrating. People are encouraged to give way to unhealthy thoughts and behaviour instead of the personal disciplines that lead to nobler paths, purposes and peaceful lives.

Those who make sincere effort to achieve some quality in their own self culture receive little support from social climate or are offered deliberate encouragement from others who are aware of their strivings toward excellence.  We are apt to find ourselves in the classroom of the world without a teacher to guide, without sympathetic companions and can only retreat to do our ‘homework’ alone, whether it is in matters of physical health or mental fitness.

The wonderful realisation that brings us courage is that there is nothing and nobody to stop us progressing as our own minds and ideas tell us is ‘right’.  We do not have to challenge others if we are generally minding our own business and working toward the lifestyle and the ideal of the quality human being we seek to become. We are free to discover our inner pursuits no matter what material circumstance present themselves.

In regard to outer difficulties, we all have to overcome any fear we may feel about the future as well as current events. The practise of inner self confidence is our tool. To focus upon our own inner centre gradually brings us from the initial deliberate effort towards the time when we feel free. Then we are able to dissolve any fear or stress and experience a spontaneous and genuine identification with our inner spiritual nature that possesses the powerful qualities of love and light that disperse darkness.

Meditate to experience this.

Unless one creates a self image the personality is apt to become pressured and influenced by what others think, and this may not be as you would wish.

Use your self image to become whatever or whoever you wish to be – to pattern your future, determine your habits and reactions and help you to succeed in your achievements.

Determine to be whatever you yearn to be.  Include love, truth, gladness and peace in your aim.

Seek to become your own ideal – expect no other person to fully represent your ideals or disappointment will ensue.

Pattern your life in reflection of those whom you most admire.

Maintain a sense of your own personal uniqueness and your worthiness not only as an experiencer of life but as a capable contributor to society.

Sally E Janssen

Depression melts away when our mental waves and restless thought is stilled.

We learn to take pleasure in making no conscious effort.

We find that we enjoy periods of just Being.

And find that it is Good.

Happy people think nice thoughts

Loving thoughts make happy feelings

Happy feelings urge us create

Creating things makes us feel happy

Happy feelings keep us kind

Kindness grows to deep affection

Affection leads to deeper loving

Loving thoughts and loving feelings

Loving actions, loving lifetime

It’s love that makes us happy.

With so much in life to love

Much happiness is assured!

Alternatives are available if we consider that there are many other avenues open to us that are safe and natural. However we must be involved in the therapy to the extent that the ultimate responsibility lies in our own self discipline and choices.  We must be willing to confront the causes of our depressed state of mind and emotions. We must do this before we can expect to become truly free.

Some may argue that it is not easy to pinpoint why you may be unhappy, but it is essential that we do the exercise and being to unravel the reasons for not being of good cheer and loving being alive.

There are positive thinking programmes that offer what appear to be very simple methods of turning around personal negative reactions to people and events to express radiant joy and well being. It is a very successful programme for some as long as there is no ongoing challenge to every thought and situation to cause anxiety in itself. We must be patient with ourselves, and kind.

So to find a way of relieving acute depression there are practical measures we can use without any further concern in seeking professional help.

• Deep Breathing – at interludes and approx. 10 slow breaths is advised (in relaxed position)
• Add a thought of increasing your vitality as you inhale
• Add the inhalation of a naturally attractive perfume as an essential oil
• Practise relaxation lying on the floor, eyes shut and releasing muscular strain through body. Do this for about 20 minutes at a time when possible

• With reasonable skin protection, bathe in natural sunlight for a short time, making no effort. Enjoy about 10 minutes surrendering to the energy recharging your psyche. It is the best tonic.

• Change your diet to a dominance of fresh fruit and vegetables and cancel out the ‘bad’ foods that have become habitual. Natural healthy foods that our palate does not like are often needed by our brain and body nutrition, and the ones we enjoy, we overdo and enjoy too much. This is often a very successful guide in establishing your health diet.
• There are many food supplements and culinary herbs that make food more exciting.
• Sign up for a health course of some kind – tai chi, yoga, gym etc. and exercise each day
• Break old routines and create deliberate small pleasant changes – the route to work, your daily time schedule, reading matter, hairstyle, and dozens of examples
• Create exciting plans for the day, the week and further to plan some travel plans or holidays that are in keeping with ideas you’ve always wished to fulfil, and usually don’t!
• Each day, use a simple mental formula to recite to yourself e.g. I am happy, oh so happy!  Or sing ‘I whistle a happy tune…” or a poem or prayer or saying that keeps you on track.
• Music is magical when you choose wisely. Listen to melodic classical music not the loud drum beats and ugly noises that deny harmony that is real health.
• Keep a diary and be sure at the end of each day you can enter a positive item such as complimenting another person, demonstrating affection in some way, or helping another who is less fortunate.

The list could go on and on and you will find a way to help yourself if you really want to change.

If you are at this moment suffering severe ‘clinical depression’ and are under medical care you must of course continue the treatment you have decided upon. The above suggestions will not interfere with any system of therapy.

Remember this, that no one can change how you feel, how you think, or lift you from depression, with or without various therapies, as it is always our own responsibility to live happy, healthy and constructively.

Where it has been considered that eight hours sleep is the requirement for an adult to undergo physical and mental refreshment, it is common to find that many are in the habit of perhaps sleeping only six hours. Individuals do seem to vary in their need for sleep, but the ‘average’ number eight is the result of considerable research.  It does not allow for those who sit up playing computer games or TV viewing beyond ten o’clock.

If sleep deprivation is as serious as being now presented, it should certainly be classed as one of the most important factors that must be immediately corrected if we wish to avoid heart disease, cancer, depression, dementia and all other serious diseases.

In Australia the symptoms of mental disease such as depression are continuing to increase at an alarming rate in the community. Some reports indicate about fifty new cases being diagnosed each day. Others claim the ratio is now one in five people suffer mental disorders such as mild, moderate or clinical states of depression or early signs of Alzheimer’s disease, poor memory or reduction of mental faculties.

The existence of so much mental stress and disease indicates an urgent need for us to take stock of our own health regime in order to avoid adding to the existent statistics. We must return to basics and the health rules that we may know but do not follow.

Children cannot function healthily without their regular hours of sleep – quiet sleep without electronic sounds, iPods and loud music. Parents should be strong in disciplining young ones and this is serious as many children who have frayed nerves and suffer fatigue will be tempted to turn to drugs.

Adults who suffer insomnia and who drive a vehicle in that state of fatigue are proven hazards on the road and cause many otherwise avoidable accidents.

Are you getting enough sleep time?

When we relax we have a chance to offload our tensions, stress, anxieties and our tight and uncomfortable reactions to life, to people, happenings or events.

We have the chance to melt away any physical tension to allow nature to send its energies to heal and vitalize every cell of our body as we breathe rhythmically.

We shut our eyes to cut out external distractions and go inward in our awareness after directing our muscles to be still. Only the rhythm of our breath is evidence of muscular activity.

As the body becomes comfortable, we are able to cast off any emotional stress that prevents us feeling totally at peace. This we do by an attitude that admits that we feel best and most loving when we are not trying too hard, or attempting to bargain with our love, or to be selfish. Just feeling that we can let go all our emotional efforts so that our circulation of our feeling nature is restored and nature can energize us as naturally as it does our body.

Then with our minds concerned only to release effort, we can become a little too self conscious when trying to subdue the habit of thinking or even may wonder what we should be thinking about! To help with this, we return to the assistance we have with respiration, and put our thought only into rhythmic and equal inhalation and exhalation to an easy count and sustain this for a few minutes.

Then, ceasing even the thought of respiratory rhythm, enjoy again how you feel.

You may feel light, heavy, calm, strong, shapeless, tingling, vital, or on the verge of sleep.

The time in relaxation is individually experienced but you will be likely to feel many new and pleasant experiences as you give your mind a ‘holiday’ and just be free.

Try it…….

However, we have yet to admit the dangers and destructive effects of mental pollutants that continue to degrade the quality of our mental fitness and undermine the progress of our modern culture towards the ideal of total human health and well being.

In our society, individual choice is highly respected as a freedom that each of us enjoys and wishes to retain. The principle relates readily to our personal selection of physical health choices that most immediately affect us, but also to our right to read, listen to, absorb or to eliminate unwanted mental thought and ideas. But because our mental choices are transmitted directly into our social life and environment to affect others, it is more complex.

Our mental environment, the world in which we live with our minds, just as surely as our physical environment needs to be free of damaging thoughts and destructive or toxic ideas. The mental environment has no boundaries and consists of complex mix of influences that affect us all in a measure often according our choices or reaction as individuals.  Our sense of awareness  helps to regulate our mental health, by affording us opportunity to avoid negative thought atmospheres and make clear, conscious choices regarding our mental health.

However, unwanted or unselected material easily enters our minds uncensored by our conscious choice as a by-product of what we watch in public entertainment, public press items, and as a result of absorption of energy in group situations where we share the same mental atmosphere.

We are willing to raise our voices individually and as a group to make complaint about physical environmental issues and do so very vocally. But we are either unaware, or not interested in applying the same criteria to mental health and mental pollution. It is time to recognize the damage caused by the toxic mental material found in both group venues and fostered in private mental space.

Once toxic material is identified, it is logical that it will be restricted or prohibited from use. But this is not always the case, either with physical toxic substances or with the subtler poisonous thoughts and ideas that spread mental disease.

But the public remains tolerant, and even encourages continuance of recognized pollutants in our society that are responsible for much psychological chaos, mental breakdowns, drug overdosing and suicides as individuals attempt to escape from the negative influences in which they feel enmeshed.

Science identifies many of these influences such as the damage done to our brains and bodies by toxic fumes, chemicals, drugs and noise. We need to listen and to act upon our scientific knowledge but also to what our scientists of the mind guide us towards in freeing our minds from toxic thoughts and negative influences if we are seriously aspiring to total health of mind and body and avoidance of disease.

Relaxation-  Practice lying flat on floor if possible either in quietude or gentle classical music. This requires no thinking but feeling awareness only  – Let nature’s vitality flow through and refresh your psyche

Enjoy a professional relaxation massage – to feel energies renewed

Physical exercise followed by a warm shower or bath with lavender or neroli bath oil

Take a series of slow deeper breaths before you decide to become active again – then deliberately inhale the perfume of one of the natural essential oils that appeals to you

Spend 5 minutes in upright position repeating your personal affirmation that inspires and makes you feel happy and strong

Drink pure water – rainwater if possible or drink a pure fresh fruit juice -sipping a little at a time and consciously drawing vitality

Appreciate being alive – Look around you and focus upon the beautiful forms, plants, sky, trees – to realise afresh how wonderful to be alive to learn and to enjoy nature and participate in the Life Adventure

Finally, promise yourself to remain as long as possible in this pleasant mind set or mood. Let nothing disturb you. Let no one have the power to disturb you. Remain calm in whatever circumstances

Attend classes or participate in sports that are directly helpful in lifting your mood –confiding in your therapist, attending  laughing groups, comedy shows, or, listening to favourite melodic music

Be creative – painting, playing a musical instrument, sewing, crafts, singing or skills in a sport

Seek for a skilled psychologist who will help you without recommendation for prescription drugs, many of which cannot claim to cure and many can prove harmful

Find a healthy natural alternative to The Pill that is one proven cause of depression

Any or all of these are positive self determined ways to overcome depression and you will benefit continuing efforts especially when you find what really works for you personally.

Prayer is the universal ‘advice’ or technique to help lift your mood

Don’t

Drink alcohol – it will not help your depression in the long run

Don’t take antidepressant medications –  many will be detrimental to your mental well being

Don’t remain solitary except to practise your private relaxation but enjoy walks and the company of a friend.

Don’t get in the habit of repeating to yourself or to others “I’m depressed ..” or “I’m feeling bad” – this has a negative effect upon the subconscious mind that relies upon positive thought feed-in.

Don’t continue any old habit – substitute a better one!

Don’t seek solace from food – when depressed is the worst time to digest food and your body will suffer

Don’t try to focus your mind in reading dutiful learning or study but rather choose to study a subject or hobby of genuine personal interest

Don’t bombard your brain with heavy rock noises or music that is loud and without melody at this is the cause of much depression.

Don’t burden your love ones or take out your moods upon others if you can confide in a psychologist or counsellor who is trained to be impartial and just listen.

REMEMBER 

You are a special and unique person, created to experience and enjoy life as well as to offer your personal gifts and talents to others. Why waste life time?

However, in spite of the emerging proof of the dangers of these psychiatric drugs and their potential to effect mind changing behavior negatively, even to a point of suicide, most doctors continue to claim that by far the most prescriptions they make out in their practice are for antidepressants for adults, and increasingly Ritalin for ADHD or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in children.

Where once our social concern focused upon the dangers of hallucinatory drugs, mind drugs have now become big business, regardless of the damage they cause the brain.

Doctors who once trustingly followed the claims of the pharmaceutical industry are now disenchanted with toxic chemical drugs.  There is a move by some professors in psychiatry to ban their use in the U.S. as has already been done in some other countries where dedicated psychiatrists are inclined to explore the older methods or seek safer, more natural, alternative methods of treatment.

The increasing threat of litigation from patients seeking compensation may serve to motivate this.

This is a serious issue indicated by more than 12 million entries in Google on the Dangers of Psychiaric Drugs.