We call the system we all engage in, “Health Care.” I hope each of us is interested in our health. I hope that each of us makes a sincere effort to continually nurture and improve our health. Remember that health is not the lack of symptoms, and the presence of symptoms shouldn’t be the focus of our efforts in health care.
Often we are interested in our pain, discomfort, distress, dis-ease, dysfunction, depression, anxiety, indigestion, or weakness. It would be wise if we focused, instead, on the lesson we can learn from our symptoms. From our pain, we can learn to be more present, from our distress we can learn to be more creative in our view of our circumstances. Each of our symptoms brings lessons.
I find that almost all people want what they want. Of course, why wouldn’t we? We all want abundance, ease, comfort, indulgences in food and entertainment. We want easy relationships, co-operative children and spouses. A peaceful work environment, a job that entertains us, challenges us in only the ways we like, and pays us abundantly for our contribution of time, not necessarily value.
We want life to fall in line with our views. When it doesn’t, we try to fix it. We try to make it fit our image of what we think it is suppose to be like. We try to get others to behave the way we think they should, to preserve our comfort.
Life is not designed to preserve our comforts. Indeed, the very nature of life is to challenge our capacity, our ability to grow and adapt and to transcend the mundane cycles of our comfort zones. The more we resent the interruption of our comfort, the less likely we are to transcend the spiritual malaise that led to the dis-eased state in the first place.
I believe that our diseases are an attempt of life to create a state of growth and transcendence within us, rather than a punishment or a state of discomfort that we should try to conquer and beat into submission so we can once again get what we want.
Health is not the byproduct of a behavior or a set of behaviors. It is the byproduct of a becoming, not a doing. We don’t find health by eating a certain way. We don’t find health by exercising. We don’t find health through meditation, contemplation, rumination or elimination.
We find all of those things by choosing a healthy intention and purpose and then pursuing it with vigor.
So what is your intention? What is your purpose?
What is a healthy intention? What constitutes a healthy purpose?
This will get deep quickly. Read on at your own peril.
A healthy intention is one that creates optimal health, in you and in your environment (that means other people in your environment as well). It is an intention that looks outward, rather than inward.
I remember talking to a patient who said her purpose in life was to take care of her dogs. Was that looking outward, or inward? It could be either, so how can we know which it was? By looking at her health. It was failing. If she continued on her existing health trajectory, she was going to pass on from this life about the same time as her dogs did, around the age of 50. In this case, her purpose was not enhancing her health, it was detracting from it. So, it would seem her desire to take care of her dogs was a self-serving desire—possibly because they were safe for her. They would never reject her nor traumatize her, unless they left her, and they would only do that by dying. So her desire to care for her dogs was possibly an attempt at self-protection.
Another patient said she wanted to see more of the world before she passed on. I suggested to her that the world didn’t need to be seen by her, that her intention was self-centered. We then discussed the notion of a purpose that would be other-centered instead of self-centered. She came up with a beautiful other-centered purpose: To learn how to heal cancer from within—and this was her 5th time having breast cancer—so she could teach others how to live so they could transcend cancer.
So, what is your purpose? Is it self-centered or is it other-centered? If it is other-centered, how pure is that intention? A wise prophet once stated, “When [you] are in the service of your fellow beings, [you] are only in the service of your God.”
Any self-centered intention or purpose lacks the power necessary to attract the ingredients of good health into your life.
Next month we will talk about the mechanics of how we attract things into our life.
Have a blessed holiday season,
Dr. O.
