When we lose control of our internal situation , our state of mind , or of our external circumstances, we immediately start suffering from mental restlessness. And when these situations continue and become chronic, we find ourselves suffering from mental restlessness all the time , while awake and during sleep. It does not leave us.

This did not begin today. From a very young age, our unconscious mind has been accumulating millions of desires , desires that are non-practical or unrealistic, and that life cannot fulfill because of various circumstances. A child wants something and cannot have it , the desire is suppressed. A young person dreams of something and it remains unfulfilled; it gets pushed down. An adult carries the weight of countless unfulfilled wants from every stage of life. These suppressed desires do not simply sit still. They connect with each other. One unfulfilled want feeds another, and together they generate new desires that are even more unrealistic than the originals. This is not a passive accumulation. It is an active, ongoing process , and it produces an ever-growing number of unwanted and useless thoughts. It is this relentless generation of delusional ideas and thoughts that keeps our mind engaged in internal discussion 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is what we call mind chattering , mental restlessness.

In this state, we experience various fears , fear that our desires will not be fulfilled, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of the future, fear from circumstances beyond our control which is responsible for ongoing stress in life. Each of these fears triggers the continuous release of cortisol, a stress hormone that keeps the body on high alert and locked in survival mode. The body does not distinguish between a real threat and an imagined one , it responds the same way. And when this response becomes chronic, it quietly dismantles us from within: poor immunity, higher inflammation, inability to focus, poor memory, accelerated aging, poor metabolism, exhaustion, poor quality sleep, mood swings. Organ by organ, system by system, our entire body begins to function below its true capacity.

To understand why this cycle is so difficult to break, we must understand something about the nature of the mind itself. We are composed of mind, body, and spirit (consciousness). The mind and spirit are non-tangible; only the body is tangible. Science has established that the body naturally absorbs what is useful and discharges what is toxic or harmful. The mind operates on this same principle. During deep sleep, the mind undergoes a daily process of cleaning , a housekeeping , in which useless, harmful, and toxic thoughts and ideas are meant to be discharged. But for most of us, this process does not work. The unconscious mind , a dense accumulation of suppressed, non-realistic desires , has become the dominant force within us. And it blocks the very process that is meant to clean it.

According to the natural design of the mind, all useless, harmful, and toxic thoughts , including our non-practical delusional desires , must be discharged during this daily housekeeping. But because of immaturity, lack of experience, lack of guidance, and the absence of genuine well-wishers in our life, we are deeply hesitant and fearful to let these desires go. We hold on to them , not because they serve us, but because we do not know who we are without them. Hence, these non-realistic desires never exit our mind.

For their survival, these desires feed us false hope , they tell us that fulfillment is still possible, that if we just hold on a little longer, everything will be fine. They remain embedded in the databank of information, desires, and experiences that exists within our mind. And from there, they continuously integrate with other desires and produce thousands of new desires , without our awareness, without our willingness. The interaction of these thoughts, ideas, and desires is what generates mental restlessness. And it persists until our death.