Health IT’s All about consciousness
Everyone wants to be healthy, yet so many of us are repeatedly sick and some of us seemingly cannot get well.
We experience illness as something extremely personal––in some ways, one of the most deeply felt personal experiences we ever have. Similarly we tend to think of our health as highly personal, perhaps one of the most personal aspects of our life.
Although we experience health in a personal way, when we investigate more closely it becomes apparent that the source of health––which I will explain in a moment––is impersonal. For instance, can you hug your health or kiss it? No, it’s something that arises within the body quite spontaneously and without our controlling it.
When we are healthy we are largely unaware of our body, whereas when we are sick the body demands our total attention, to the point we can often think of little else.
We cannot separate our health from our essential being, as if it somehow were a thing we possess, because its source is more encompassing than just the body. This is because, although we were born into the world, we didn’t originate from our physical birth. Each of us is a physical manifestation of an essential being that encompasses far more than our material existence.
We didn’t spring just from matter. Consequently our physical body isn’t just a machine whose functioning is entirely dependent on what happens to it in the world of matter. When the body is healthy, we are experiencing not a state of matter but a process we refer to as well-being. The process of experiencing health is a reflection of our essential being. Even the term “well-being” shows us that wellness is an expression of being.
Health is the natural result of simply being.
Just as health is grounded in being, this essence of who we are is itself grounded in a universal oneness I will call our One-Self. This One-Self is the divine essence of the cosmos that people often refer to as God. It is our true being, the divine love that birthed the universe.
As the source of everything that exists––and as the heart and core of our individual being––this One-Self knows nothing but well-being. This is because, as a oneness, there is no fracturing within the source. Rather, it is whole, or holy. The words “holy,” “holism,” “holistic” and “healing” all carry this root meaning.
This wholeness of the universal oneness in which we are all grounded is the source of health. Hence to be healed means to be made whole––to be made holy––which is to experience reconnection with our multidimensionality and interconnectedness. It is to know our One-Self––that is, to experience ourselves as a manifestation of the whole. In contrast, to be unhealthy is to experience ourselves as disconnected and separate from the whole.
Just as health is a process of being, disease is also a process, as is obvious when we examine the word. Dis-ease is a condition of uneasiness, which creates an imbalance in the body. For instance we speak of being “ill at ease.” This is in contrast to our natural process which is to enjoy a flowing aliveness and vibrancy. Disease is a state in which there is no longer an easiness about us, no longer an unimpeded flow of energy, no longer a suppleness.
Whenever we find ourselves diseased, it means we are doing something to create an energy blockage. Our energy has been diverted from its natural flow and consequently the balance within the whole has been lost.
What Healing Is
Disease is the result of an energy blockage caused by experiences we haven’t fully worked through, allowed ourselves to feel, and really accepted. In contrast, healing is the result of an aware detachment from those past experiences that have created energy blockages in us.
Everything with which we don’t experience completion—everything that isn’t integrated into our life and fully digested for what it’s intended to teach us––will repeat itself until we at last allow ourselves to experience it in its fullness. These incomplete and undigested experiences haunt us, following us wherever we go, recurring over and over in different forms until we embrace them fully. This is because our mind projects every unfinished experience onto the world around us.
The mind dwells on unfinished experiences, clinging to the hope that if we can just avoid facing what’s unfinished in us, we will one day magically feel fulfilled. But the hope of completion “someday” and fulfillment “someday” is hopeless.
When so many unfinished situations hang in our unconsciousness, stored in memory, it’s no wonder many of us are alienated, afraid, angry, in pain, and sick. We are like sleepwalkers, going through life oblivious of our real state. We carry a mound of tension throughout our being, but we are unaware of it.
To restore the flow of consciousness is to free up our blocked energy and thereby restore health. In other words health arises whenever we remove our dis-ease. It’s like a rock that’s blocking a spring, which when removed, allows the water to once again run effortlessly.
Only when we bring awareness to an unfinished experience and accept it unconditionally can it be completed. In the light of our awareness, the tension it generates will evaporate and we will become healthy.
Having said this, it’s important to point out that bringing awareness to an unfinished experience is fundamentally different from what society calls “positive thinking” or “having a positive attitude.”
Consciousness isn’t a matter of positive thoughts versus negative thoughts because there is nothing either positive or negative in consciousness. Rather, consciousness is an experience of our wholeness and oneness, which we enter into through clarity of perception.
I want to emphasize that we need to be wary of “positive” thinking versus “negative” thinking because to attempt to think positively is merely to force anything we consider “negative” into the background, which doesn’t dispense with it at all. Instead it becomes part of our unconscious, which means it will find some way of expressing itself in a destructive manner. Unconsciousness is far more powerful than any positive thinking. So-called “positive” thoughts are merely what are left when we suppress so-called “negative” thoughts. In both cases the egoic mind is in control, not consciousness.
For example, if we don’t like a situation we are experiencing, our dislike of it doesn’t cause it to go away. On the contrary it collects in our unconsciousness. So while on the surface we put on a smile because we believe that “positive thinking is the key,” we are actually splitting our well-being into fragments, conditioning ourselves to block the flow of our One-Self. In contrast, when we allow any experience or situation to just be what it is, without regarding it as either positive or negative—with no analysis of, attachment to, or suppression of what we are experiencing—we move into wellness, which is a process of conscious being.
The egoic mind, once useful in our evolution, now acts against us. However, we are not our egoic mind, which was imparted to us by our family, religion, politicians, and society in general. By dropping our attachment to the egoic mind and its thoughts, whether positive or negative, we become conscious. Then, wherever we are and whatever we do is simply a blissful experience of being. The mind functions as it ought to—as a space for our One-Self to come to the fore and express itself as consciousness.
To have a thought is essentially different from being aware. Thought—even “positive” thought—comes from the egoic mind. Because of this it tends to be conditioned, repetitive, and unproductive. When the mind is in thought mode instead of functioning as a creative instrument of consciousness, it actually obstructs the natural flow of consciousness. It behaves as a world unto itself instead of as a tool consciousness uses to create.
Most people’s thoughts come so rapidly on the heels of one another that the individual can’t feel the interval, the gap, between their thoughts. In this way thought can be seen to cast a shadow or a screen over consciousness, which lies behind thought and can in fact be experienced directly once we learn to access the interval between our thoughts. The interval is always there but we have to pay attention to it. Behind thought lies who we really are, our true being.
To Be Our One-Self Is to Experience Health
Health is a natural process that flows from consciousness, whereas illness is unnatural and results from unconsciousness.
Illness is an indication we are in some measure separated from our essential nature. The separation is always in the egoic mind. The healing process is one of cleansing our egoic mind as the only source of all misery, illness, disease, and suffering.
We all hold the potential to recover our well-being so we can again live fully. This is because, despite the constricted, fractured condition we have manifested, our essential being is still grounded in the wholeness of the infinite oneness, the true One-Self of each of us.
Once we recognize the truth of our fundamental being, it becomes apparent that it’s a mistake to imagine we somehow need to make ourselves healthy. The issue is simply one of freeing ourselves from the ignorance of the egoic mind which blocks our experience of the wholeness at our center. Simply put, it’s a matter of learning how to allow the health that has always been our true nature to stream forth into every aspect of our life.
Once we rid ourselves of mental projections, anxiety, delusions, belief in separation from our One-Self source, and our sense of limitation, the health that’s intrinsic to our One-Self spontaneously floods our life.
From the tiniest subatomic particle to the largest star in our galaxy, matter is undergoing an unceasing process of evolutionary transformation, all of it taking place entirely in the Now as one moment of the Now births the next moment of the Now. This limitless process is an expression of the free movement of the infinite energy of the universal oneness. It flows through the one portal, the ever-present moment of the Now. Consequently when we are mentally in any moment other than the Now, we automatically generate dis-ease because we have moved into a mental concept instead of experiencing the flow of consciousness.
Because health is an ongoing process of being, and disease is merely a temporary blockage of the flow, it’s quite mistaken to say we “have” an illness, as if sickness were a “thing” over which we have no control. Illness isn’t “having” something but is a blockage of the moment-by-moment unimpeded flow of consciousness from our One-Self. Consequently we can only be healthy in each moment because consciousness can only be experienced in the Now. This means that to be healthy is a choice we make from moment to moment. It’s the choice simply to be, instead of living our life based on all kinds of learned concepts.
To be part of the flow of consciousness involves an ongoing evolutionary unfolding of potential that invites our continual transformation. But as long as we are trapped in a mentality that sees ourselves as separate, limited individuals whose afflictions hold us back, we cannot even mount the first rung of the ladder of the unlimited potential the universal One-Self seeks to express through us. Our evolution demands we realize our true nature, which alone can empower our development. For this to happen requires us to be well. We cannot evolve to our potential as long as we are limited by our attachment to ill health.
If we are ill, it’s vital to realize there is no true healing “out there.” In fact we don’t have to do anything to find healing. Health is in us, in our essential being. Only one thing is required for healing and that is for us to be, in the fullest sense of what being means.