You are as good as anyone. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees or the stars. You have a right to be here, and whether or not it is clear to you, the universe is unfolding the way it should be. Therefore, you can accept that there is a universal plan, greater than any man, greater than any one of us, and so, you can be at peace with yourself. You can be at peace with yourself if you want to be … and that comes to the second point.

For in that plan that affects everyone in this universe, outside of natural disasters, all depression is subconsciously self-inflicted. That is the second point. All depression is subconsciously self-inflicted. Now, each emotion of the mind is reflected in the electro-chemical balance of the brain. Prolonged feelings of depression can cause chemical imbalance that, most times, corrects itself. With my clinical experience, I can usually tell who will respond successfully if I place them on medication right away, and who can respond successfully without it. In either case, you will be successful in conquering depression. When you do feel well again, you may do so for only a matter of minutes or hours, and then depression may return, and it may be another several days or even weeks before you again feel well. There may be a half dozen of such ups and downs before the symptoms are gone for good.

Now the third point has to do with time and the absolute necessity to live, not just in the present, but the moment of here and now. The third absolute truth has to do with the necessity to live each moment of the here and now. For example, yesterday you were depressed but today is a new day. Every day is a fresh beginning. Every day is a fresh beginning, and every morning is a world made new. Today is our most important day. Yesterday is gone. We cannot live in the past, else we cannot go forward, because living in the past dulls the keen edge of our imagination. The past, even yesterday, can be of value only as we glean lessons and profits from our experiences. For as Longfellow wrote, “Nor deem the irrevocable past as wholly wasted, as wholly vain, if rising on its wrecks, at last, to something nobler we attain.” Have you ever felt circumstances crowding in upon you because of failure and disappointment and depression and said, “If I can only get a break, an opportunity to start all over again?” Well, then, remember what Walter Mallone wrote about opportunity – “They do me wrong who say I come no more, when once I knock and fail to find you in, for every day, I stand outside your door and bid you wake and rise, to fight again. Though deep in mire, ring not your hands and weep. I lend my aid to those who say, ‘I can’. No shame-faced outcast ever sank so deep, but yet, might rise again and be a man.” Yesterday, the sun sank behind the horizon at the close of the day. The sky was overcast, no stars appeared within the firmament, and you were downcast, depressed, because the day had brought only frustration. Today, you awaken with the sunlight pouring in through the window, a new day is at hand, a new opportunity to build upon the lessons learned from yesterday’s failures. Now, each of us is here to accomplish something, some particular phase of the universal plan that is greater than man, greater than each and every one of us. This universal plan or life force goes on whether we like it or not. When we face life as a whole, and try to realize that every experience is leading us towards fulfillment of that plan, when we take each day and endeavor to make the most of it, then, things come out alright. Someone has said we must listen for life to happen, listen expectantly. Now, you have not been listening expectantly. You really have not been listening at all. You have been concentrating on your problems and as long as you concentrate on a problem, then you have a problem, because you are what you concentrate your mind upon.

You are what you are greatly concerned with. Now, when you let go of that concern, when you let go of that problem, by changing your thinking, when you say, “To heck with the problem!” then you begin to see the solution to your problem, because your mind is free, and therefore, when your mind is free, you can utilize it to be effective to make it work. You must say from now on, “I let go of my depression. I develop and maintain a happy disposition each day. Each day I reject the negative and see the positive in all things.” Because the only reason that you have been staying depressed is that you have not learned yet how to deal with your negative thoughts, to allow in the positive thoughts of truth and love and hope. Every day is a challenge, a new opportunity to prove yourself in reality, to be a believer in truth, and love and hope, that you do not need to feel helpless and hopeless, that you can separate off and distinguish the vast difference between those events in your life and your reaction to them, for they are vastly different. They are not the same at all and you must separate off from those events in your life and your reaction to them. The problem is not whether you need a new job, whether your wife or your husband has gone or left, or that someone else did right or wrong, or that you did right or wrong, or the terrible things that occurred in your life. It is not any of those things at all. It is your reaction to them. It is the sentences you say in your head, such as, “Oh, my husband is gone! I cannot live without him!” Or, “I’ve got a terrible pain in my back! I’ll never live a normal life again!”