Wellness

Do you remember the feeling that you get after a sickness when you first realize that you are well?  Perhaps your experience differs from mine, but for me it is a really wonderful experience.  I notice things to a very large extent based on how they differ from the things around them. When contrasted with sickness simply not being sick is great.

I feel a pervasive good feeling, a pleasure in my own body's ability to walk, or see.  This pervasive good feeling extends to my senses, so that the world around me appears more beautiful.  The pervasive good feeling extends into my attitude because it is based on my experience right now, and a good feeling about right now removes anxiety.

Buddhists talk about the natural state of people being ego-less bliss, achievable through years of dedicated practice.  It seems to me that the second part of the previous sentence defeats the claim of the first, but it may well be that the natural state of humanity is something akin to bliss, and that the Buddhists are right that the goal is recognition of our situation rather than a change in it.

What would be a natural state?  I'll assume that we can get passed the absolutely true objection that everything is natural and so the question is foolish.  However, we can derive some meaning from the question and answer.  A natural state is one that has not been affected by humankind, which makes the question doubly problematic, but let us assume that the natural state of humankind is one unaffected by other people.  Another definition of "natural" is being in keeping with the environment around us.

The natural state of humanity would therefore be one of a person fitting with the environment they are in without thinking one way or another about other people, stresses,plans, hopes etc.. I would say part of fitting in with the environment is an absence of extra descriptors of the experience, e.g. hunger, cold/hot, and sick.  The natural state is wellness, in accord with the environment in which we are, unconcerned about the cares of the world. This is as Taoist as it gets, which is why I'm a big fan of Taoism.

This may seem to be a stupendous feat, achieving a natural state of unconcerned mindfulness, but  is only difficult because we habituate ourselves to non-natural states.  The achievement of the natural state requires, as the name would suggest, the doing of nothing.  The hardest part of doing not-doing (a favorite term of Taoism, which seems mysterious until you get how simple and direct it is) is doing not-thinking.  A method that works for some people is to notice what their brain is thinking (I hope my children are happy in school), label that thought (a worry), and then let that thought drift away.

On this blog I spend much of my time, too much of my time, concerning myself with problems and worries.  That's alright with me because only saints shouldn't worry less and I am a long way away from being a saint.  Still, I think I give somewhat of the wrong impression as a result.  Today I felt well and it was, is, wonderful.  Today I looked at sunshine glinting on the water without a thought for being anywhere else.  I felt a very quiet, calm sense of bliss.  I realized, without words, that it is a wonderful thing to be alive.

Such moments are difficult to describe in any way other than very prosaically, such as above, and tend to be repetitive.  I was somewhere when I noticed something and realized that life is good.  As a result I talk much more about external problems and worries than is actually representative of my life.  Most days I have at least one moment similar to the one I have described and I do try to have more.  All it takes is noticing, which becomes easier if you practice, but much easier if your natural state is made constantly apparent by experiencing non-natural states.  It is easier to notice how great it is to be well when you have just been sick.

I would say that the great secret of life is finding our wellness, getting to the place where we notice what we are, where we are.  It is no coincidence that so many spiritual teachers implore us to, "wake up!"

We evolved to be essentially hunter-gatherers in a relatively simple environment.  Such a life was greatly subject to the sudden calamity of death and disease, but it also led to long nights of restful sleep, little work, a focus on a time scale of days rather than years, and much less stimulus than at present.  Why do people on vacation go to a beautiful, quiet place, where you can get food and drink without effort, sleep whenever you want for as long as you want, and try to get away from their worries?  Because we want to get back to the best parts of our natural selves and we don't know how to do that at home.

I have some hope that as a global society we will move back towards greater recognition of our natural selves as various forces align themselves in this direction.  The medical profession is slowly managing to shift from the goal of "health" to "wellbeing" where the experience of the patient is more important than whether all the bits work perfectly.  Psychology has rather recently become quite excited about studying happiness.  There are the first sprouts of moral and political systems being designed around maximizing happiness.  The future of employment is that fewer and fewer people will work, and yet we will still get richer.  As we learn that hard work, stress, lack of sleep, etc. cause both ill health and unhappiness, and we learn that meditation, relaxation, sleep, etc. promote both health and happiness, and societal systems move towards a happiness-based system from economic-based systems, and most people will not be able to productively work much, I see a movement towards the natural state of humanity without the lions and tigers and bears, oh my.