The answer to every problem

In this week’s Success Newsletter, I would like to reveal the latest scientific discovery – the key to peace and happiness and how it can also help to conquer depression, anxiety and addiction.

First a quick update:

“Healthy Relationships”
Roshan – a reader wrote to me for more clarity surrounding healthy relationship and I will be answering this in detail in a future newsletter, along with answers to his questions “What do two healthy people ask from each other? How do they avoid using each other to get their own needs met?” Meanwhile, you can also read my newsletter from April 12, 2007: Healthy Relationships. I reveal that there are six elements that also play a significant role in building and keeping a relationship strong so that both partners feel loved and fulfilled, read more.

Now, let’s talk about the latest scientific discovery which offers the possible key and door to peace, happiness and freedom – and from depression, anxiety, stress, compulsion, addictions and post traumatic stress disorder.

On the weekend of April 15 – 18, 2010 in San Jose California, a rather bizarre conference was held: Psychedelic Science in the 21^st century. The conference was not, as one might expect, attended by former hippies or present day junkies but rather its attendees and presenters included world renowned doctors, researchers and scientists such as:

• Andrew Weil M.D. – Integrative medicine proponent
• Charles Grob, M.D. – UCLA psilocybin researcher
• Stanislav Grof, M.D. – co-founder of transpersonal psychology
• Roland Griffiths, Ph.D. – principal investigator for CSP’s Johns Hopkins psilocybin study
• Ralph Metzner, Ph.D. – consciousness researcher and psychotherapist

The purpose of the conference was to discuss the results of studies of psychedelics for the treatment of depression and acute anxiety in cancer patients, obsessive-compulsive disorder, end-of-life anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction to drugs and alcohol. These studies were conducted in the US, Canada, Switzerland and Israel amongst other nations.

And what are the findings and results of these studies?

One participant, Dr. Martin, age 65, a retired clinical psychologist was treated for depression as a result of his kidney cancer. A year later Dr. Martin says that his one-time treatment with psychedelics helped him overcome his depression and profoundly transformed his relationships with his daughter and friends.

Now please bear with me as I explain the significance of these findings and their relevance to you and me. And please note that I am not, in any way, promoting or encouraging the use of any of these psychedelics; they are being tested in very carefully controlled and government-sanctioned tests and experiments.

So what are the relevant findings and transformation of this patient – Dr. Martin?

One year after the treatment, Dr. Martin was still reporting a phenomenal transformation in his life from a one-time experience that lasted about six hours:

“It was a whole personality shift for me. I wasn’t any longer attached to my performance and trying to control things. I could see that the really good things in life will happen if you just show up and share your natural enthusiasms with people. You have a feeling of attunement with other people.”

Dr. Martin’s experience and description is similar to other subjects who reported life-changing revelations:

• Feeling as if they were part of a larger consciousness
• Their egos and bodies vanishing
• Personal worries and insecurities vanishing
• Feeling transformed internally – mentally and emotionally
• Reevaluating past relationships with a new perspective of empathy and compassion

These revelations and experiences are extraordinarily similar to those reported throughout history by religious mystics and people who meditate and this was validated in neural imaging studies.

Roland Griffiths is a professor of behavioral biology at Johns Hopkins. In one of Professor Griffiths’ psychedelic studies, published in 2008, the experimental subjects rated the experience as one of the five most meaningful events of their lives and they said it was a profound spiritual experience with long-lasting positive effects:

• Significant improvements in their general feelings and behavior – even 14 months after the experiment
• Increased satisfaction with their lives
• An improved outlook on life after experiencing the boundaries dissolving between the self and others

Again these life changing revelations & spiritual experiences by the psychedelic treatments, the experiences of mystics and people who meditate reflect similar reports by people who have undergone NDE – Near Death Experiences.

A near-death experience is defined as a person who has survived clinical death and come out completely unharmed. The heart has stopped or the person is in a deep coma, which should cause irreversible brain damage but inexplicably does not.

In 1975, Dr Raymond Moody, a psychiatrist and professor of psychology and philosophy published a book that sold more than ten million copies and created a storm. Life after life opened the door for public discussion and investigation of near-death experiences in which people reported encountering a spiritual being, an angel or some kind of being of light.

Dr Moody talked with many people who had “come back from death,” and he revealed that the most profound and common aftereffect is that people say their lives have been changed. They seem less interested in material pursuits, do not fear death, and now feel that the most important thing they can be doing while alive is “to learn how to love each other.”

So the common thread here is that magic discovery that leads to peace and happiness – sometimes termed as enlightenment – the ability to accept change and to feel at one with everyone.

Dr. Charles Grob, a psychiatrist and researcher involved in psychedelic experiments at UCLA, describes them as “existential medicine” and says that it helped dying people overcome fear, panic and depression: He sums up what I refer to as the key to freedom:

“Under the influences of hallucinogens, individuals transcend their primary identification with their bodies and experience ego-free states before the time of their actual physical demise, and return with a new perspective and profound acceptance of the life constant: change.”

Yes, the solution to almost every problem in our life lies within our mind; our perceptions and beliefs.

Think of the pain, disappointment and unhappiness that come from the identification we have with our physical body and our inability to accept change – in whatever form and area of our life.

Think of the people obsessed with the vanity of the physical body, constantly fighting to try and control what they cannot and so anxious and depressed because they cannot accept the body’s changes; the result often being self-loathing and low self-esteem leading to addictions, pain and broken relationships.

Yes, as I recently explained on Australia’s national TV show, The Morning Show, one of the key causes of anxiety is our constant obsession with trying to control everything. The more we try to control what we cannot, the more helpless, anxious and afraid we feel. We easily become consumed and overwhelmed as we try to control and change things, events and people in life which, we cannot.

Yes, there are things to fight for – your beliefs, your values and your principals; yes, there are times that we must act to protect the helpless and the innocent; but, we need to accept the things we cannot control such as other people. We waste so much energy trying to change people around us, trying to make them whom we want them to be and yet, we fail daily and feel worse and unfulfilled. Peace and happiness come from being able to accept change.

Thus the solution to all of our problems lies within our mind as the subjects in these experiments listed at the conference reported common discoveries and experiences:  the acceptance of change, the release for the need to control, letting go of attachment to outcomes, and the feeling of being connected to everyone else; the feeling of being one.

This list above is the goal whether it be realized via meditation, a mystical experience, hypnosis, an awakening or by some other means.

You might like to ask yourself: What am I not willing yet to accept? Whom have I not yet forgiven? How can I learn to trust people again? How can I feel closer to other people? How can I let go of my judgments of other people? How can I be more loving and accepting?

For more insights and secrets to happiness, read my book “How to find Happiness”.

If you would like to comment on this newsletter, click here. If you have received this newsletter as a forward and would like to receive all of my newsletters please enter your email address on the home page.

I wish you the best and remind you “Believe in yourself -You deserve the best!”

Patrick Wanis Ph.D.
Celebrity Life Coach, Human Behavior & Relationship Expert & Clinical Hypnotherapist
www.patrickwanis.com