Did you know your odds of being born are 400 trillion to one? This tells us there’s a reason you were put here- no matter what the circumstance you’re sent to endure.
I have been giving readings for over 50 years- and can say with certainty that a huge proportion of my “sitters” want to escape by death, namely suicide. The temptation crosses many boundaries- old, young, gorgeous, chunky, poor, wealthy- even many of the 1% richest people on the planet often confide to me they just can’t go on anymore. Of all that surprise me the most, it’s the drop-dead bombshells that shock me continually, while the 1% r’s surprise me the least.
I have come to the crushing conclusion that there’s some part of our brain that can be triggered to do this- to end it all- and Mother Nature inserted this little gem into all our skulls to cull the masses. Get too upset, lights out.
In America there are 123 suicides per day, 7 out of 10 are white males. So 44,965 Americans kill themselves each year- and the staggering numbers are on the rise. There are 25 attempts for each suicide that succeeds, and firearms tend to be the handy-dandy tool of choice for 51% of them. 26% of suicides are done by hanging, while poison accounts for around 15%.
The highest rate of people wanting to die tends to be between the ages of 45 and 54. The second group of unhappy campers happens in the 85 or older gang, while third place goes to young adults between the ages of 15-24. Every 65 minutes a vet takes his own life. As awful as this all sounds it’s only getting worse, because suicide is on the rise and is become socially unsurprising.
Did you know in Japan, an incredibly socially integrated society, there are suicide clubs? So when you want to leave this world, there are plenty of places to meet new friends where together you can meet your ends.
Suicide is the 10th cause of death in the USA. They are bracing for the numbers to sky-rocket by the year 2030, where they estimate it shall be the number 2 cause of death (good old heart disease still reigning supreme).
This isn’t a new phenomenon, Shakespeare even wrote about it in the soliloquy, ‘To Be or Not to Be’, where Hamlet internally grapples with trying to decide between being or, well, not.
‘To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die- to sleep,
No more; and by sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream- ay, there’s the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause….’
In a nutshell, Hamlet wrestles with the worry that maybe death is much worse than the crap we sadly deal with when alive.
Everyone has been touched by suicide, including me with my own father, and so it has been a particular concern of mine. It constantly baffles me how those with the most seemingly perfect lives are the first ones to want to pull the trigger. A woman I know, who was extremely wealthy was friends with a man who had just as much wealth. She had a party and the man was there and he was someone that many respected and wanted to be- he even flew his own jet. After a few drinks, he told us over dinner that flying over people’s back yards and seeing them having fun at their pool parties, water balloon fights, and festive barbecues made him realize how shallow his life was. He said it made him see his lifestyle was sad and empty and he didn’t think he could live with this awareness anymore. He also confessed- and I kid you not- it tortured him the average Joe was having more fun than he.
Oh for god sake, I thought to myself, he can’t be serious? Everyone started laughing but I knew he was scared knowing people with far less had a better life than he. He was not sitting near me and I barely knew him, so it wasn’t my place to interject. His ego had contorted his thoughts so severely it was like listening to the machinations of a mad man- and within weeks he took his jet for a nose dive into the sea.
This indicates it’s not always about the physical world- but that which is going on inside our head. If we become too isolated and cut-off from that of our fellow man we implode, and waiting to take control is our ego, who wants nothing more than to bring us to our knees if we don’t indulge its senseless demands- like having better pool parties, water balloon fights and barbeques with friends.
If you take a second, place your hands upon your head. It’s not that big, is it? Yet this is where all the insanity rages, and we lose sight of the world because we lose sight of ourselves. We lose perspective because our soul loses control as our ego takes command, so we lash out at ourselves at a point of absolute derision. We can no longer see the truth, we collapse into ourselves and the easy way out- or so it seems- is to out ourselves into utter oblivion.
Plato once said that, in order to happy we had to be part of a community, needed in that community, and loved by that community (in other words we had to be part of a society). Aristotle was the most erudite of the three ancient Greek philosophers (Socrates, Plato and Aristotle), and many came to him with philosophical questions about finding happiness in their life. Aristotle spent a lot of time ruminating over this subject and believed the following was necessary to lead a contented life;
You need to discover who you were, and what you came here to be.
You needed to work on it.
You needed to share it with the world.
Aristotle called this being in a state of ‘Eudemonia’, when you loved what you did and were glad to get up every day to do it.
The problem today is we paint ourselves into a corner and by the time we see what we have done, it’s too late. There’s no way out. We are doomed, there’s no reason to go on, we don’t or can’t go up and see no point in anything.
Whose fault is that? We are captains of our own ships, so we need to realize even though we got ourselves into this mess, we can get ourselves out. No matter how hopeless or meaningless our life seems the answer is simple.
We need to help another in distress.
Why should we help someone when we are on the brink of madness ourselves?
Because charity emits a chemical in our brain that makes us feel good about ourselves. Did you know that, even if a stranger smiles at you, that stranger induces a serotonin cascade that lifts your soul? This is why it’s so dangerous to be around ‘toxic’ people- they affect our chemicals too (but in a noxious way).
If you have nothing to live for, no one cares and there’s no point in going on all you have to do is one thing. Join the Red Cross or any organization that will relocate you to some distant shore and recalibrate your world by being around people who are in desperate need. This will do a multitude of recuperative things;
First it will wash away or fade the energy of issues that kept you up at night, it will insert you into a group or a community of kind-hearted people, and it will allow you to help those on the brink of death (most likely several will be angels in disguise) and as you give to them the serotonin cascades that brings you back to yourself.
If unable to do something so drastic such as joining the Red Cross, go to volunteer at the local food bank, animal shelter or old folk’s home. The important thing to do is give to those in delicate situations. The secret to happiness is giving unconditionally to those souls around you, because through this interaction of their receiving, nature has created a secret code that emits a sacred formula to help lift your soul as you escape from your chemical prison.
I have spoken to many people, who do not know one another, who have medically died, and were whisked off to some kind of nether-world place.
They all said that there were caring beings surrounding them, who explained carefully it was their choice to stay there in the spirit world, or go back to their physical realm. They said there were many souls waiting to get a shot at life, so if they decided not to go back, another soul would gladly take their place. This made each person appreciate the luck they had to be allowed to own sentience, and they all chose going back to their life.
We don’t all need that intense kind of awakening, but it should galvanize you to the realization you are meant to be here, and there are always others glad to take your place. When you find you’ve lost sight of yourself, just be of service to others. That’s the place where you can experience a chemical cascade that will let you out of your emotional prison, as your soul escapes the binds that contain it and your tattered wings will once again fly free.