Dear Friends,

May is Mental Health Month, and a timely topic it is. For the first time in a century, our life expectancy in the US is now declining over the last three years, as opposed to continuing what many saw as an inexorable rise. The culprit is not the usual suspects of heart disease, cancer, and stroke, but instead this alarming dip in longevity is due to the opioid crisis (which killed 72,000 Americans in 2017) and a sharp rise in suicides across broad categories of age and gender (increasing overall 26% in the US between 1999 and 2015).

This tsunami of misery is related to the relative spiritual vacuum in our culture – a secular society that maintains only the material world exists and any other phenomena are illusions to be ignored. Our predominantly physical approach to mental health (in the form of pharmaceuticals) has failed to reverse this alarming trend, but striking alternatives exist. I will be co-presenting a course in Fall 2019 to health practitioners on one such modality. The solutions lie in developing a facile relationship with our more capable “higher souls” through a practice of going within. Only then can we address the emptiness inside that leads people towards depression, anxiety, addiction and suicide. Quieting the mind is challenging for most in our modern world, especially for those struggling with mental health issues.

As many of my fellow physicians are discovering, any true physical, mental and emotional health depends fundamentally on spiritual health. Spiritual, in this sense, is not necessarily religious, but simply an admission of the connectedness we all share (with other sentient life as well as with the universe at large), as well as a sense of meaning and purpose of our existence. Personally, I have maintained an ongoing sense of connection since my coma journey from listening to Sacred Acoustics audio recordings on a regular basis. Such a process helps me to connect with the neutral observer within in order to gain a broader perspective over life’s challenges and to find inner peace.

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With Love, and Gratitude,
Eben