World Mental Health Day 2020

ॐ ​सर्वेषां स्वस्तिर्भवतु ।
सर्वेषां शान्तिर्भवतु ।
सर्वेषां पूर्नं भवतु ।
​सर्वेषां मड्गलं भवतु ॥
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः

Om Sarveśām Svastir Bhavatu
Sarveśām Shāntir Bhavatu
Sarveśām Pūrnam Bhavatu
Sarveśām Maṇgalam Bhavatu
Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti

May there be happiness in all
May there be peace in all
May there be completeness in all
​May there be success in all
Om Peace, Peace, Peace

The above was copied from the Sajeeva Yoga website and you can read more about it on their page. It is called the Sarvesham Svastir Bhavatu mantra and it comes from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Brihadaranyaka translates as “Great Forest”. The Upanishads are ancient teachings from India that cover many philosophical concepts. This came back to me as I was thinking about today being the World Mental Health Day and I thought I would share something I wrote a couple of nights ago which seems apt.

Here is a paradox

Why is it in an increasingly connected world many people are suffering from a sense of isolation and alienation? Perhaps it is because we are all putting more and more labels of identity on ourselves which in turn place us into neatly defined boxes that cut us off from others.

The way to rectify this is to look outside of the boxes and re-imagine the connections between all of us as we are all part of one whole. There is no fundamental difference between any of us as we can feel and sense the common life that is within each of us and exists throughout the wider natural world.

We have become prisoners of our own innate mental tendency to classify and analyze things into categories to bring about a sense of order. Much like we might organize our music collection into genres, these categories can be fairly arbitrary as there are many cases where the distinction is blurry.

The good thing is that there is also an innate tendency to look at the wider context of things, “the big picture”, although this may not be so prevalent in our culture at present. In other words we need to learn to see the wood AND the trees. That way we will hopefully be able to look at our lives and our place in the natural world differently and to the benefit of our own health and mental well-being.

We will also hopefully see ourselves and our fellow humans not as trapped inside the confines of our labels but free to be our own true nature of infinite potential.

See a full list of my blog posts here.