In preparing my science classes for the high school I work in, I sometimes run into interesting information from diverse fields of knowledge. It happens that some days ago I stepped into an article published by Scientific American in 2016. They were making reference to the results of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey performed by the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality in 2013. According to what Scientific American published, 1 in 6 Americans consumed, back in 2013, psychiatric drugs, being antidepressants the most common, followed by anxiety relievers and antipsychotics. Reading the Scientific American article further, I found that twice as many women as men, consumed this type of drugs. Other interesting figures from this study are that while nearly 21% of white Americans consumed this kind of drugs, almost 9% of Hispanics did, and that, maybe not surprisingly, people over 60 years of age more than doubled the people between 18 and 39 that took them.
It made me wonder. Focusing on the first cipher, what could be so different between men and women to account for such a huge difference in legal drug consumption?
Apart from the obvious differences in physiology between men and women and the effect of our defining hormones on how we perceive the world, I believe that there is something more related to the gap between our true nature and the role we have learned to fulfill, more in line with not feeling allowed to freely be all we can be, all that we really are, that causes depression or anxiety. It is no secret that women have, traditionally, given up our most profound yearnings to comply to what is needed or expected from us, and fit in the roles that have long been associated with our gender. Deprived of our connection to our true nature life becomes an endless chain of meaningless days at the office, at home, at school. We have become trapped in the endless comings and goings of modern life and don’t seem to have time to actually be ourselves, and this is something we surely share with our male counterparts. We might find ourselves asking “Is this all there is to life?” Deep within us we know that this is not all, that there is a part of us that craves to come to the surface, but we have forgotten the way in. The way into the depths of our being where the pearl of our essence is safely kept has become hidden, and we might tend to believe that it never was there. So, we close our eyes and our ears to that drop of consciousness, and we simply endure. Life loses its flavor, its crispness.
It is here that the value of the Creation Exercises is palpable. Recovering our right to crave for something in life different from what we currently experience or have is the first step to finding our way into who we truly are. Life is not something to be endured but to be fully experienced and enjoyed. It takes time and dedication to really uncover the power of the Creation Exercises, and this commitment of writing them for 90 days is a very fit entrance to the world of the Language of Creation. Finding the language that can truthfully express what we crave will point to the one craving and observing. That woman or man who knows life was supposed to be much more than what it currently seems to be. That woman or man who yearns for her or his direct link with Creation and the inherent right to create. It is boredom of a lifestyle that wants to direct who we can be, and is basically defined by consuming instead of creating, that is driving us nuts.
So, my invitation to you this week is to keep on delving into yourself by writing your exercises daily, and uncovering who it is that peeps shyly from the depths of your being and would like a chance to play at life.