Let me begin by talking about what health is the root. Meaning of health is homeless, but I think many of us don’t really have a good sense of what it means to be whole, Why is this such an important idea? By the way, that same root that gives us health?
Also gives us the word holy so you know one of the characteristics their holes that make them so important. Well I can think of two characteristics that seem to be do very special. The first is that holes are complete, they’re perfect. There’s nothing left out. So something that’s whole represents a perfection and therefore is an image of our perfect ideal.
I think this is the connection of wholeness with religion, as well as with physical health and the second characteristic of holes is that not only is everything there, not only is everything present but everything is in balance. It’s in just the right order to allow the magic of wholeness to express itself.
So I think those two characteristics perfection and balance are key aspects of health. Now if you ask many people to define health for you and unfortunately this is true as many doctors as well. The common answer you get is that health is the absence of disease. I think that’s a very unhelpful way of thinking about health.
First of all disease itself comes from an old French word, that means the absence of ease. So to say that health is the absence of the absence of ease is just not very helpful, But I think especially the defined health and a negative sense. Something that’s so important to us.
Doesn’t get us very far to me. It’s much more interesting and much more important to focus on the positive attributes of health that have to do with perfection. And balance, really give you a visual picture of health that I think is useful, If you think of one of those child knockdown toys with a weighted bottom, you push it over and it bounces back up.
You may hold it down for a period of time and it’ll stay down. But as soon as you let go, it bounces back up. That kind of resilience that we turn to center, seems to be to be an image of health. If you’ve got that quality, if you have that internal quality of resilience and balance seeking, you can move through the world with all of its dangers, and not get hurt.
Because a lot of out here, that’s dangerous. We live in a world that’s full of toxins. Germs agents of disease. Carcinogens stress, Emotional turmoil. I mean there’s so much out there that has a potential to knock us off balance, But if you have that internal resilience, if that’s well developed you’re not going to get knocked down very far or for very long so that if you are healthy, if you have this quality let’s get to a doctor, you can interact with jurors and not get infections, you can interact with carcinogens and not develop cancer.
You can interact with allergens and not have allergic responses. This is a positive amount of the toxins that don’t get harm. So it seems to me that this is what you want to work on. You want to cultivate this quality of balance.