Healing

“As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.” 

― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.” 

― Alan Wilson Watts

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What does it mean to be healthy?

Health is a state where an organism is functioning in accordance with its template for living such that it displays vigor and wellbeing. 

It is a state of inconceivable synchrony, as myriad systems and independent lifeforms within it cooperate without formal planning or structure to produce that miraculous thing that no scientist, physician, philosopher or religious leader has ever been able to fully explain... living vitality.

One can be alive and not be healthy.  Most humans fall into this category.

People don't think about health until they feel they are losing it.  When they have gone far enough out of balance... when their icy sense of dis-ease has progressed to the point they realize they may be in decline, in a state of decay... health becomes a topic of interest.  Worse still, when they are in the throes of agony... or facing death itself, health finally becomes the primary focus.

Nothing else matters.

It is upon losing health that people begin to think about what it is.  And, inevitably, a journey is conceived.  Whether one walks it or not--to say nothing of achieving its goal--the path back to health and wholeness... is healing.

While health feels like a wellspring... healing is more of an endless quest. One may achieve health at many points along the journey, but if one sits to enjoy it, it stealthily recedes towards the horizon.  

Fountain of Youth

It seems to be something that must be maintained, rather than being a singular achievement.  It is not a fight.  Nor is it a sprint... even when it feels urgent. The chase is non-linear. 

It is more often about letting go of things rather than finding them. Despite the myth of the magic pill, a fountain of youth, or some special treatment... most healing involves stopping an activity that has become toxic.

As you let go of inferior habits, emotions... relationships... locations... you come to understand what things in your life are supportive and life giving.  You develop a new respect for fresh air & clean water... and recognize that you need far more of both than you imagined.  Rest, peace of mind and quality sleep also take their place in the hierarchy of needs... and, learning... copious research into all things that make the mind & body tick.

Another thing that happens, a little further on in time, is that you also realize you need a foundation. (assuming you have stayed with the quest and made it past the earlier stages). 

And so, the journey leads you to establish a new sacred ground where you are amply supplied with fertile and life giving soil... both metaphorically & literally.  A place where your template can unfold.  You must create this new space in order to stop chasing health.

While this post on healing I put up a couple years back might seem to contradict some of what I am saying now: Of Vortexes, Healing & Self-Reinvention, if you read both, what I am getting to now, and what that post addressed, is the part of the healing journey where you abandon healing.
  

You've already begun to let go of all the non-essentials, and this eventually includes your identity as a broken person in need of healing... Suddenly, as your crisis of healing abates, the solution becomes clear... you reinvent yourself as a whole and healthy person, in harmony with your environment.

You create a new, non-broken, version of your life to step into, while laying your sickness, your pain, your fear--your entire former self--onto the bonfire.  Your requiem for your inferior self (selves) clears the way for you to build a healthy life from the ground up.

In this space you can cultivate health.  In case you don't know what that looks like, roots, branches, flowers and fruit are the indications that life is being affirmed.  Vibrancy and vivaciousness are the benchmarks of wellness.

While you can DO healing, you can't do health.  Health is a state of being.  You must decide to be a healthy person.  

And then you must be that person.  That person does many things, but doing those things alone does not make you that person.  Be the person who keeps the flame of vitality going... who clears the great waters, and cultivates peace... loving oneself, and expanding the concept of what that self even is. 

If you pay attention, and are fluid enough, you can modulate with the feedback your life gives you, and continuously recreate yourself in harmony.  

Feeding the primal fire and listening in rapture to its myriad crackles and pops.  This is health... regained. 

It is not the unconscious health of youth (that of a party balloon imperceptibly, but surely, leaking its air).  It is the far more intentional, continual refilling of a great hot air balloon... the kind that can take you over seas... and even over the rainbow.