Wisdom Of Wellness: Perpetuity Of Poise Of Purpose
By Santosh Jha
Copyright 2013 Santosh Jha
Smashwords Edition
**
Other Titles By Santosh Jha
Onlyness (Fiction)
Back To Bliss: A Journey To Zero (Fiction)
Autobiography Of A Duffer (Fiction)
Naked Solutions Of Dressed Up Life Woes (Non-fiction)
Habitual Hero: The Art Of Winning (Non-fiction)
Maya And Leela: Utility In Life’s Futility (Non-fiction)
Why We Flop In Love (Non-fiction)
Decipher Destiny: Decode God’s Will (Non-fiction)
Youth Sanity In Crazy Culture (Non-fiction)
Redeem & Reinvent The Art Of Lost Wellness
India Beyond Stampede Of Stupidities (Non-fiction)
Karta: Life Inspiring Essays Of Cognition, Consciousness & Causality (Essays)
**
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
**
Disclaimer:
This is purely an illustration of alternative spiritual positioning for an individual, for enhancement of overall wellness, based on holistic, assimilative and integrative ideas. This surely is no comment on religion and faith systems, as prevalent and practiced. The talks are restricted to the core idea of wellness and personalized and subjective consciousness choices, one can accept in the fast evolving worldview.
**
Let Us Talk Like Friends: Welcome Note
Why Religion Is Misrepresented
A Truly Scientific Value-System
Create Your Own Model Of Spiritualism
Reverting To God’s ‘Original’ Design
**
I feel truly happy to tell you that this, I do not intend to be a book. Rather, it is like friends chatting up, sharing whatever we can together to enhance the wellness space.
It is my humble belief that any person, in whatever state of consciousness and positioning, is in some special ways, better than a wisdom-book, for the purpose of life & living learning. I must tell you, I have learnt and more importantly, unlearnt, primarily from people. Books somehow are people-material in text-format.
Wellness is a function of wider poise of person and personality, which includes factors not only material but also emotional. A person is in complete wellness when there is an overall poise between the cognitive factors such as income, wealth, comfort, leisure and health as well as emotional factors such as trust, security, integration with family-friends-colleagues, connectivity, communication, stability, sense of desirability and spiritual purpose, etc. We live in a modern complex world, where cognitive elements of good life are improving considerably; however, as emotional elements of life and living are largely unsettled and conflicted, most of us fail to hit the road of the perpetuity of poise for larger wellness.
Wellness involves a large spectrum of poise in multidimensional domains – the spiritual, physical, mental, social and emotional. Moreover, the emotional and spiritual aspect of wellness is far more complex than the cognitive ones, as they are the intangibles of life. Wellness is a dynamic idea. It is a goal of life, for which we all need to strive every day. Wellness is not a static state. It is not like wealth, which we acquire once and keep it for long. It requires ongoing attention and timely intervention to the details of evolving social, spiritual and physical life.
Wellness as a holistic notion of physical, emotional as well as ideational prosperity does not mean only lack of impediments to good life, but also having loads of ingredients of good life. For wellness, positivity is far more crucial than simple lack of negativity. Wellness is well within the reach of all of us, yet we all need to constantly redefine ourselves as well our notion of wellness, as our minds and bodies evolve to optimize capacities and excellence.
Wellness is essentially a consciousness positioning. It is not an external or tangible entity, which one can create like wealth. Wellness is a ‘poise’ of consciousness, which is engendered when we have all elements of our life – physical, emotional, ideational and material, in perfect harmony and symmetry with each other. We are ourselves a very complex mechanism. The world we live in has also become hugely complicated and conflicted. The cosmic realism is awesomely complex. Wellness poise needs to connect with all these and then strike a lasting poise. This poise is not static but dynamic, constantly evolving and changing. Only that person can attain perfect wellness and remain in perpetuity of it, who understands all the mechanisms in details and then, uses the wisdom to create a wellness model for himself or herself.
This is not possible for everyone. That is why, there always has been a ‘model’ of wellness for average person to follow. Not everyone can create his or her own model of wellness. In the past, religion was one huge ‘support system’ and a ‘for-all-wisdom’ for our larger wellness as it had a prescribed ‘action-behavior’ model to guide the emotional as well as physical aspects of larger wellness, accepted by large majority.
Religion happened to be the facility for body-mind wellness, which prescribed a common wellness model for all, explainable in terms of set benchmarks of action-behavior. However, this space is growingly being taken over by spiritualism, as religion seems to be losing ground among young, especially in urban space. The fact remains that be it religion or spiritualism, any larger ideational support system for humanity needs to have a secular and contemporary ‘common sense’ for larger humanity as only then, it can be of use for attaining overall wellness poise.
Traditional religion as well as spiritualism is proving out as insufficient facilities for wellness needs of average person as both fail to conform to modern and liberal ideas of prevailing culture. The popular complaint is that both facilities are no more in sync with contemporary common sense as much of their wisdom is now in conflict and contradiction to modernist liberal realisms. However, it is a dire need of humanity as, wellness is something most affected in modern times. We just need to revisit and redefine the old wisdoms of religion and spiritualism and realign the old wisdom to modern contemporary knowledge.
We shall talk in details here, how the old wisdom still has lot to offer to our wellness needs and how we all can create our own personalized and subjective model of spiritualism and religion, taking wellness ideas from old as well as new wisdoms of humanity. We just have to come out of our popular mindset, which considers religion and spiritualism as some sort of external behavior-action rule. It just has to be our common sense of wellness, which is an internalized conscious positioning of mind. This alone can make all of us to be the ‘master of mechanism’.
We talk here about spiritualism and religion, which most people accept as a serious, complex and mystifying idea, something, which is approachable only by an external intellectualism and is beyond popular and temporal common sense. As your friend, I humbly and very affectionately request you to please, drop the guard. Spiritualism, as we shall talk in details here, as against the popular notion, is beautifully simple, innately internal, innocently explicable, highly amusing and smoothly part of our contemporary and modern common sense. That is why, each of us can create a subjective and personalized ‘wellness model’, which is a better situation than accepting an old model, which has been proving not so useful in modern world.
The very mechanism we have – our consciousness, the cosmic realism and our juxtapositioning in it, engenders an associated plexus of logical questions on wellness needs. The popular belief is; spiritualism must have all answers and the right ones. You already know that the two notions – ‘answer’ and ‘right’ are very subjective emotions. Still, the expectations are the same with all wisdoms – religion, philosophy as well as sciences. This pop-belief is calamitous. We are always sure, if a wisdom does not have all ‘answers’, especially the ‘right’ ones, it cannot be wisdom.
The paradox is – all wisdoms somehow ‘claim’ to have all ‘answers’ and the ‘right’ ones, still, no wisdom could ever be one singular and all-acceptable wisdom of humanity. For an innocent mind, not given to the narcissism of intellectualism, it is clear that if there could be problems with the ‘answers’ of all the wisdoms, there can also be something wrong with our ‘questions’, or the way we accept ‘answers’. After all, what is the ‘right answer’ of ‘right questions’ is finally what ‘we’ accept as the ‘right one’.
The first thing, which we all need to ‘unlearn’ with absolute innocence, is this popular belief. In contemporary times, when we have a reasonably sound understanding of how our consciousness works and how this cosmic realism operates, we need to first question; how we create our questions and why. We also need to revisit the popular notions about religion, mysticism and spiritualism. We shall talk here about how we all are a mystic (spiritualist) in some ‘special’ way and how we can personalize our own model of spiritualism to enhance our ‘wellness quotient’.
We shall talk about completely new dimensions and facets of a new spiritual within us, who redefines all prevailing aspects of spiritualism with a holistic, assimilative and integrative perspective. This shall talk of personalized and subjective ‘wellness wisdom’, which shall engender a ‘perpetuity of poise, peace, purpose and prosperity’ not only with the ‘self’ but also with the cosmic realism. This ‘model’ shall not only have the right answers but also the right questions!
We shall talk in details about all these. However, first, we have to come down to one common premise, which shall help us is the fruition of the issue at hand – To Be In Perpetuity Of Wellness, Peace and Excellence.
There has to be a humble admittance – Any word, however well meant and well spelt, is a possible suspect of ‘misrepresentation’. There is a simple reason.
Do you remember when your flight is about to land, the pilot aborts the landing, jolting your peace, just because something as insignificant as a ‘stray dog’ happens to be on the runway?
You already know, how similar is the fate of human words, which we all accept as the best and worthy carriers of human ‘intentions’. This airplane of human words, carrying good and noble intentions need to make a good, smooth and safe landing on the runway of another human’s mind and consciousness, which again is worthy and hugely able.
Still, the good intentioned words sometimes fail to land on the mind of others, as there is some ‘insignificant’, yet potentially fatal obstacle standing midway the runway!
It is believed, “If the hypothesis is right, the idea is accepted as right”. If two people have an assimilative and integrative attitude, one can easily see that root trouble is in subjectivity of the hypotheses. This helps in resolution of conflict of ideas.
Friendship is one positioning, where assimilation and integration about divergent hypotheses has larger accommodative space. A seed is more objectively accommodative in space than a grown up tree. Friendship is seed positioning.
That is why, at the very start, I very affectionately requested you to be my friend and accept this all as one long conversation between friends. Kindly, accept this not as a book but a ‘confabulation’ between friends. This, I am confident, shall engender smoothness of navigation and fruition of the entire exercise. The confabulation over the sensitive issue of spiritualism can be fruitful only when you have an open mind about new thoughts and you know it, with a friend, you are most comfortable and opened-up.
As a friend, I must tell you, I have put up a ‘price tag’ on it to fund my charity endeavors. All proceeds from this and other works of mine shall go to charity.
With all humility and sincerity at my behest, I wish to tell you, it needs to be said that there is only one person on the earth, who can say that he has understood. Otherwise, this domain is reserved for a ‘metaphor’ called God. This is not available for humans.
It is also a heart-felt realization that our very worthy ancestors, who had the intelligence and courage to face the worst, life made them to, so that we inherit a better beautiful world, have already said almost all good things. What I can do is present them in new set of words with novelty of contemporary references.
The only justification of me telling them is that all goodness and wellness ideas and words need to be repeated and retold, to add to their all-pervasiveness.
At the age of 46, I can say with innocence that getting old is such a beautiful and satisfying experience. It makes the ‘self’ accept the ‘utility and fruition’ of holistic, assimilative and integrative consciousness. Getting old has probably pushed ‘me’ close to the ‘eligibility’ of perhaps beginning to understand as what essentially is there to be understood!
I chat up with you to share with you whatever is part of my consciousness. All wisdoms say, human is designed to live in state of ‘flux’, a state of instinctive semi consciousness. To jolt oneself out of this, one must challenge itself; something humanity has done since millions of years. What stays with you is what sinks in. Wisdom is what we internalize.
I share with you whatever I have internalized in my life.
**
We talk first in short about the contemporary trends in societies across the globe to understand why there is an express need for a completely updated and upgraded version of contemporary religion and spiritualism as a ‘wellness-support-system’ for all of us. This also helps you to evolve a personalized and subjective model of spiritualism and religion, as a platform for larger wellness wisdom.
As we talked earlier, every one of us has the innate need and positioning to be a spiritualist. However, modern contemporary societal trends engender the need to revisit and reinvent the traditional spiritual notions to realign and upgrade them as suiting to contemporary common sense.
Few years back, some visionaries came out with a researched report on the future trends that would prevail in the global society. This report suggested, traditional ideas of religion shall growingly wither and would be replaced by spiritualism. It suggested, the contemporary choice of liberalism and very powerful communication technologies shall help spread of modern scientific temper. This would make many in urbanized and educated societies reject the outdated tenets of classical religions all over the globe.
Recent surveys in United States of America and other developed societies have already confirmed that majority of young and urbanized liberal people have termed themselves ‘spiritual’, rather than ‘religious’. It was also predicted that though religion would lose out to spiritualism in future, for an intervening period, mysticism should rise, especially the ‘agnostic mysticism’ to fill up the void. This also has become true.
This clearly marks one crucial reality of humanity. Everyone needs a ‘wisdom of wellness’ and spiritualism, as one mega facility for defining and guiding wellness needs of humanity has to be there, in one form or other. The terminology can change. Once it was religion, now spiritualism and later it may be mysticism and any other term. However, most people would need a ‘guiding light’ in their lives to lead them to answers of larger and ever-present wellness questions.
Already, there are voices in United States of America and in other developed societies, which blames ‘rejection of religion’ as the prime reason for degeneration of societies and culture. This is debatable as making or unmaking of societies and culture are functions of multiple factors. One factor cannot be blamed. However, the fact remains that more people are now falling in the grip of troubles, which are a result of diminishing wellness quotient in their lives. No doubt, traditional wisdom of religion-spirituality had been a huge platform of ‘wellness wisdom’ for majority of people for thousands of years and this platform is fast losing favors with new generations and urban educated and liberal people. We surely need an alternative ‘wellness wisdom’.
Here, it has to be understood; we live in an age of skepticism. This precarious energy of skepticism is the prime mover in downsizing and upgrading of many contemporary ideas and wisdoms of humanity. Everything is in for a redefinition, thanks to this energy of skepticism. However, it also has to be understood, from where comes this energy of skepticism. This comes from the subjectivity and dualism of ‘questions’ and ‘answers’, which the traditional wisdoms is now unable to address satisfactorily. The questions and the need for answers are transcendental and quintessential. However, with progression of time, the new intellectual milieu changes its association with a prevalent wisdom, as questions get new shades and acceptable common sense of answers too get updated.
The skepticism somehow creates a void, as its basic energy is to reject, rather than accept old things in new and improved light. It is only natural that rejection of old wisdom of religion would never be a solution. It has created a void and as is the natural mechanism, things in static state, from around the milieu, shall rush in to fill up the void. In addition, as is the innate mechanism with such ‘void-filling’, the rushed energies shall create a muddled up and ‘storm-like’ situation; for an intervening period. We all have seen such weather phenomenon around us.
The prevalent spiritualism, which has filled up the void of religion, is also not a ‘new one’, though many protagonists of this ‘new-age-spiritualism’ would insist to call it this way. This neo-spiritualism is in fact something already prevailing in the society since long and had been kept at the sidelines, as religion ruled supreme. In fact, as many of us already accept, this neo-spiritualism has a heady mixture of popular tit-bits from prevalent religions. There seems not much new in the neo-spiritualism; the thing new is its positioning – a shift from peripheral position to the mainstream.
Every now and then, some elements from some other religion are mixed to create a ‘product’ of neo-spiritualism for the convenience of pop layers of society and markets. As they say, only two things sell hugely in modern world – sex and spiritualism; both are in for huge experimentations, innovations and brand building. Like, you already have so many similar products in the market and suddenly a new product comes with almost same utility and value. The producer and the marketing team however, shall come up with a new ‘brand idea’ and ‘brand association tools’ to convince you that this product shall prove to be of larger and better value. Spiritualism also seems to be in for such inventiveness and branding.
The fact remains that emotional and spiritual wellness questions, which we all wish the modern and contemporary spiritualism to answer are still there and as, nothing new has been available, in terms of new value and utility, spiritualism also seems to be slated for the same fate, which religion is undergoing right now. Old wine in a new bottle can add some value and utility for a seasoned drinker for a while but in the long run, it shall lose its utility. One shall again look for something different, which essentially has a ‘new wine’, even if it is in the same old bottle!
We need to understand this conundrum. When we understand as why such a powerful and all-pervading influence on human life like religion, is fast losing its magical hold on our consciousness, we shall be in better position to understand, what a contemporary spiritualism must have to become a worthy successor of religion, as alternative wellness platform.
It is for anyone to understand. For centuries, religious principles satisfied our big questions of life. The questions have been there since thousands of years. They emanate from three broad domains of 3Cs: Consciousness-Cognition-Causality.
All major questions of humanity - life and living, purpose and utility, right and wrong, ends and means, etc, which essentially decide the broad culture we live in and personal/social goals of life, we set for ourselves, have so far been answered by three broad wings of human wisdom – Philosophy, Religion and Psychology. Science is a late entrant, still amenable only for a few.
The contemporary worldview/world-order and popular cultural edifices have undergone a major and even diametrically opposite paradigm shift and in the next three-four decades, as scientific temper spreads to larger layers of society, religion and even spiritualism, in its current form, is bound to lose favors with people.
Largely, the existing culture is based on archetypal human wisdom, provided by the trio of philosophy-religion-psychology, which accepted the cardinal parameters of 3Cs in a way, which is now declared either inappropriate/wrong or insufficient and based on instinctive observatory presumptions. Since long, when no civilization and culture was there on earth, humanity attempted to fix answers emerging from three domains (3Cs): -
· Consciousness – Who we are and why?
· Cognition – Why and how we see and accept what?
· Causality – what, why and how is our relationships with things around us?
Thousands of years back, humanity answered the questions on the basis of what they observed and accepted as true, as per their presumptive judgments and existing knowledge. These answers had almost no or little actual/objective/provable basis yet, they seemed true and right. Some greats however, picked up the right observations and made some real good judgments. They are still treasured and shall always be.
These ‘presumptive judgments’ based answers became the basis of human civilization and culture, which in time degenerated to good extent. We all have inherited and our mind consciousnesses have been trained since ages to accept them as true and right. The real wisdom however, gradually got lost and is now confined in some books only.
In modern contemporary times, most of the answers we once accepted about key questions of life and living, purpose and utility, right and wrong, ends and means, success and failures, etc. proved out to be insufficient to satisfy our contemporary common sense. This because the benchmarks and edifices of old wisdom stands to lose grounds as Consciousness, Cognition and Causality benchmarks and actuality for humanity have evolved hugely, thanks to a new liberal and scientific consciousness.
The trouble with modern contemporary spiritualism is – it has to be in complete sync with the new age common sense, which is marked by scientific and objective wisdom. On the other hand, it also has to accept the larger utility and value of good life of the modern and liberal culture, which the old wisdom of religion rejects and sermons against.
The 3Cs of humanity – Consciousness, Cognition and Causality have undergone a huge change as modern, liberal and scientific knowledge has evolved and upgraded all three. This evolved 3Cs are in major conflict and clash with the old wisdom, which fails to satisfy the modern contemporary common sense.
All this we need to talk about to come to the model of a modern, liberal and scientific spiritualism, as a