Use your Power Wisely
What is the holistic approach to health
Someone told me once, or I read somewhere, that Westerners take too sentimental a view of the life of monks in Zen monasteries.
Visiting for silent retreats or other events, Westerners stand in awe of the ordered world within the monastery, admiring the single bowl of rice served on the plain, clean bamboo mat, and envisioning a life of perfect harmony spent raking stones each day in the garden.
But when the visitors share their joyful observations with the monks, and ask what is it like to live on this beautiful path, the monks respond, “We’re bored. Its boring.” For them the daily meditation which is their life path is repetitive, monotonous. This is not to say they wish escape, just that beneath the surface appearance it is work, deep work on the self that is made no easier by the absence of distractions.
For Brahman in India, an absence of distractions is not an option. At one stage on their path they are instructed to do their meditations at the busy train station in Delhi. The purpose of this is to enter the pulsing heart of the fray and remain unmoved. It is not in the ordered perfection of ashram life where the greatest test of the spiritual life comes, but out there in the world, remaining on the path no matter what is going on around.
The point of these two anecdotes is that there’s no more perfect time than now, and no more perfect place for one’s practice to be realized, one’s perfection to be known, for consciousness to awaken to itself, than where we are at any given moment.
No matter the place, the times, the conditions, the mood or whatever other variable or apparent obstacle, the moment of transformation is wherever you are right now. And no one and no thing is keeping that from you, including formidable forces like corporatism, chaos, modernity, pollution, oppressors or any other seemingly negative or pervasive aspect. Nothing else has to happen first in order to get there.
Sustaining the delicate profundity of this available NOW becomes most acute when we go beyond ourselves to send a message out into the world about the benefits we find on our various paths, or the challenges we face on the same. The act of “spreading the news” calls for a particularly conscious attitude.
In the Bible we learn that, “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God” (John 1:1). Surely there are many scholarly and doctrinal interpretations of this, but what I see is the power of the word as original creation, or original aware creation, and all the inherent divinity this implies at it arises from conscious connection to the Source.
This interpretation is not too different from the informing language of manifestation elucidated by thinkers like Dr. Wayne W. Dyer in his book, The Power of Intention. Another way this is often stated is, “How you think it, so it is.” That’s a pretty powerful view of our relationship to creation and manifestation, ultimately seating the responsibility for reality squarely on each of our shoulders.
My own path and call to teaching has included repeated attention to the mind-body realm through exercise, nutrition and spiritual/physical practices, such as yoga. Through this I’ve come to care deeply about how messages are spread concerning what we need to do to “get better,” to “heal,” to “cope with a toxic world,” and so on. Two things concern me most in this regard.
The first is any implication that we must first “improve” in order to be/feel our connection to Source. And the second is positing the world “out there” as ultimately a toxic world, and therefore one to be fought with anger, suffered with victimization, or at best, coped with resentfully.
The first case is somewhat nebulous. Certainly many of us feel impulses from time to time calling us to clear our mind and our body, energetically, spiritually, and physically. This is the impulse behind everything from exercising more to fasting, from eating “right” to overcoming addictions. Though a connection to Source exists whether we are purified and cleansed or not is not the issue, but that we feel it more when we feel ourselves to be clear is, and that’s valid–to a point. Loving ourselves at our apparent worst is the real task, though it may take any of us a while to get there.
But affirmation of that inherent connection sometimes dissipates in the language of the alternative care field, where everyone from Reiki masters to supplement manufacturers promise that their treatment or course of action is sure to clear you and cleanse you and turn it all around.
The fact is that, when you’re done with any given elixir or laying on of hands, like the Zen monk raking stones, there you are. The work has not ceased. It may actually have only just begun. Over-the-top promises of cures, or that this or that substance is the last one you’ll ever need, separates rather than unifies, setting consumers up for possibly damaging disappointments when they wake up to find there is more work to be done.
The second case is more problematic still. When the world is seen first as toxic, when news is spread that the world is toxic, then that world, according to the principles listed above, is the world that is, the world that is strengthened, a more toxic world grown worse.
When we want people to get riled up in anger about a toxic world, we have to admit that what we want to do is spread anger. We can rationalize that this is a righteous anger, anger with the purpose to “raise consciousness” and get folks moving in productive ways to mitigate that toxicity, but anyway you cut it its a game of Russian Roulette. There’s no guarantee that people will use resulting anger, fear, sadness, victimization or other toxic emotions to act positively. They just as well may amplify the toxicity and probably do. The power of the word is phenomenal.
Now don’t get me wrong. Facts exist, and responsibly gaining and sharing knowledge of those facts helps us to live a responsible, safe productive life. We do share a world with some corporations that do not act responsibly, with governments that are often more beholden to corporate power than the common good, and with a mass media that is often deluded in its approach and narcotic in its effect.
We have also come to a place where the majority of us use energy and resources in ways which, even with the greatest caution, leaves a trail of use-impact and outright pollution in our wake. We are all one in this, in it together. But these are facts. How we respond to them is another issue.
If we feel helpless because of a big, bad world, we will be helpless. If we feel that we are victims because of a big, bad world, we will be victims, and the world will be big and bad. If we adopt the posture of anger and rail against the so-called machine we will have taken the anger we found in toxic corporations and toxic government and toxic pollution and we will have amplified it, mirrored it, become it. The risks are not worth it. And there is always another choice.
In the 1960s, when Martin Luther King Jr. led the American civil rights movement, there were many dark moments, many “midnights of the soul,” as he would have called them. One of the worst for King’s leadership was the burgeoning of the Black Panther party.
While King, an ardent devotee of the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, had successfully sustained commitment among his followers to the power of faith, love, non-violence, passive resistance and forgiveness, all while refusing to see such as an Uncle Tom kind of coping mechanism, the Black Panthers and other militant blacks felt that King was calling for a destructive passivity.
Any of Kings words at the time, his sermons or his writings, would surely dispute this. He repeatedly called for persistent, active, unstinting, concrete work against evil, but would never give in to the corrupting power of hatred, the corroding language of negativity, or capitulating messages of helplessness. The sublime depth of his understanding of Christ’s love, of love as a universal, informing principle even when disguised under bigotry, hatred or evil offers a guide for us all in spreading messages of hope while addressing concerns in health and nutrition and in society, economy, policy, politics and more.
We get the world we want. We get the world we imagine. We get the world we think. We get the world we describe. That’s a lot of power. The power of the word. Let’s use it wisely.
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