Holistic Living

For most of us life reveals itself one layer at a time.  Despite all the wisdom that is out there you may still wonder about the life you are living.  So you search for guideposts and insights to understand yourself at a deeper level.  You look to each other for suggestions on how to best get through life.  And if you are lucky, you have a personal relationship with your God and yourself on a holistic level.  So how can you live holistically and relate to that source of wisdom out there in the universe. 

 At times you may have experienced fleeting moments of sheer bliss when you felt a sense of oneness. At times you may have felt torn when parts of you was going in different directions.  You know life is meant to be happy but when you feel your life is fractured it becomes stressful.  So in going to that place of original wholeness you may need guidelines to help you to get there and live there.  So you search for how you can pull yourself together.

You may look towards religion, philosophy or psychology for messages to get to the depths of who you want to be. You learn to break yourself apart into bits and pieces.  Some of those pieces are the truth about you and some of those pieces are shields that you put up to stop people or yourself from knowing the truth.  Remember the time you called in sick at work when in fact you were going to a footy game.  What about when you lied about a previous social obligation to avoid going to a boring party.

 So you learn to be dishonest hopefully not about terribly important or really big things but sometimes once in a while even about those.  The plan is not to be honest or dishonest but to get through the moment.  It is your survival instinct that kicks in and it is that instinct that drives the engine of your human experience.  You learn to be honest if and when it helps you to survive and to be dishonest if precisely for that same reason to protect yourself.  What would happen if you could tell the truth all the time. 

 Remember a time when you were aware of something negative or hurtful that was said or done.  Explore your memories from a spiritual level to see if there was any way that you could have been responsible for that circumstance.  What does that exploration bring to your awareness.  In all honesty can you truthfully say that the hurtfulness you feel cannot be overcome by yourself. 

 Look at holistic living as taking in the whole of the present moment of every moment in which you find yourself.  Listening not only to what people are saying but what they are feeling.  Watch not only what you are saying but what you are feeling.  Know that you cannot hide your feelings from anyone.  This takes courage, determination and willingness because there are many aspects of your life you may rather ignore.  It may make you uncomfortable to reveal too much about yourself or reveal too much about others. 

 Allow yourself to be open to all the data and know with honesty that you do not claim to live that way all the time but know that it may be the way to go.  With honesty there is much more to awareness than meets the eye.  The more that you know, the more you are aware of and the more you are responsible for what is going on around you. To what extent do you delude yourself about someone you feel close to.  Do you find yourself in an on-again off-again relationship that you have difficulty telling the truth to yourself. How much courage do you have to tell your truth to another person and to reveal yourself mentally and emotionally in your relationship. 

 Can you have an open and honest exchange with another, that you can share what you are thinking and experiencing. Are you willing to risk being rejected.  What good is it for you to be accepted by another if the other does not know what is being accepted.  When you are free of the need to hide your feelings, you may feel more free to proceed with your life.  At this level of transparency are you willing to tell the truth to everyone about everything. 

 There are no victims and no villains.  From a spiritual viewpoint we are all responsible for everything that is happening to us in the past, present and future.  Metaphysically we are co-creating with other souls every event, situation, circumstance and outcome. That partnership does no relieve us of the responsibility for the role that we play in every event and condition.  Plus, the drawing to ourselves the people, places and circumstances that allow us to create ourselves as to who we are and who we want to be.

Look at honesty, awareness and your responsibility to yourself as ingredients to move into the richness of the expression of life for which you want to experience. Ask yourself who is responsible for what you are now reading and doing and what brings it to your attention.  The truth about yourself is that you are constantly recreating because you are constantly changing.  So from this point of view all truth is temporary.  So what is true for you right here and now.  No one else except yourself needs to know.  But you should know and be aware of your truth to know how that is impacting your experiences. 

It isn’t where we come from, it’s where we’re going that counts.
— Ella Fitzgerald
Nothing is as frightening as ignorance in action.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There can be no success or happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.
— Mary Waldrin