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Health is the natural result of simply being.

Just as health is grounded in being, this essence of who we are is itself grounded in a universal oneness I will call our One-Self. This One-Self is the divine essence of the cosmos that people often refer to as God. It is our true being, the divine love that birthed the universe.

As the source of everything that exists––and as the heart and core of our individual being––this One-Self knows nothing but well-being. This is because, as a oneness, there is no fracturing within the source. Rather, it is whole, or holy. The words “holy,” “holism,” “holistic” and “healing” all carry this root meaning.

This wholeness of the universal oneness in which we are all grounded is the source of health. Hence to be healed means to be made whole––to be made holy––which is to experience reconnection with our multidimensionality and interconnectedness. It is to know our One-Self––that is, to experience ourselves as a manifestation of the whole. In contrast, to be unhealthy is to experience ourselves as disconnected and separate from the whole.

Just as health is a process of being, disease is also a process, as is obvious when we examine the word. Dis-ease is a condition of uneasiness, which creates an imbalance in the body. For instance we speak of being “ill at ease.” This is in contrast to our natural process which is to enjoy a flowing aliveness and vibrancy. Disease is a state in which there is no longer an easiness about us, no longer an unimpeded flow of energy, no longer a suppleness.

Whenever we find ourselves diseased, it means we are doing something to create an energy blockage. Our energy has been diverted from its natural flow and consequently the balance within the whole has been lost.

Health is a natural process that flows from consciousness, whereas illness is unnatural and results from unconsciousness.

Illness is an indication we are in some measure separated from our essential nature. The separation is always in the egoic mind. The healing process is one of cleansing our egoic mind as the only source of all misery, illness, disease, and suffering.

We all hold the potential to recover our well-being so we can again live fully. This is because, despite the constricted, fractured condition we have manifested, our essential being is still grounded in the wholeness of the infinite oneness, the true One-Self of each of us.

Once we recognize the truth of our fundamental being, it becomes apparent that it’s a mistake to imagine we somehow need to make ourselves healthy. The issue is simply one of freeing ourselves from the ignorance of the egoic mind which blocks our experience of the wholeness at our center. Simply put, it’s a matter of learning how to allow the health that has always been our true nature to stream forth into every aspect of our life.

Once we rid ourselves of mental projections, anxiety, delusions, belief in separation from our One-Self source, and our sense of limitation, the health that’s intrinsic to our One-Self spontaneously floods our life.

Many of us have an intention to improve our health, but intentions don’t get us far when it comes to healing.

It’s no good merely having an intention to be well. Perhaps we intended to go to the gym today, but instead we worked late or got hooked by a show on television. Having an intention doesn’t means something is going to come about. Hence the saying, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

The word intention means we are stretched between two things. Just listen to the sound of the word: in-tension. In fact any intention will create tension because it is going against where we are at this moment. Intention is a form of resistance to what is.

There can be a positive meaning to intention, but this isn’t how it tends to be used. It can mean we attend to something, placing our full focus on it. When our attention is wholly in the Now, there is no tension––we are completely relaxed. We are not in need of anything, not going after anything, not trying to make something happen. Immersed in the flow of the moment, we are in what I call “non-intentional intent,” which, unlike what most people mean by intent, isn’t a goal but simply the process of giving our full attention to the moment. This process involves no mental tension. There’s no tension in the mind because we aren’t thinking about something, aren’t wishing for something, aren’t even hoping for something. When we aren’t engaged in thought, we’re simply conscious. There’s no sense of separation from the whole, no dis-ease, and consequently no suffering or illness.

Attention involves bringing our awareness to our being. It’s allowing our creativity to flow in this moment, now. We’re completely present in the flow of each moment.

When we flow with the Now, we’re open to all directions, without any expectations, and without forcing anything. In other words, attention allows the infinite intelligence within us to flow through us unintentionally, just as it wishes to, without us intending it to go someplace specific. It’s free to take us wherever it wants to take us, which means we’re open to the exploration of all possibilities!

When we draw on the infinite intelligence at our center, we have unlimited ability to envision, coupled with the ability to be creative. When we couple our vision with our creativity, being itself becomes creative through us. It functions with no agenda or goal, but rather from total surrender to the divine.

One who doesn’t have an intention lives from moment to moment. There’s no dwelling on the past and no projection into the future, but simply a spontaneity that reflects a complete openness to the Now. Everything required for a full life emerges as needed from the “no-thing-ness” of the divine, which means the entire process of unfolding is free of tension.

When the essence of All That Is flows through us, it has the effect of harmonizing and thereby healing. This opens the way for the expansion of our being as our One-Self expresses itself ever more fully in us. When we allow the whole, with our “non-intentioned intent”––which is just being attentive to the present moment––to fulfill itself through us, we become a vehicle for the unlimited expression of the energy of the oneness that’s the source of everything. We are simply saying “yes,” without any reluctance, holding nothing back––just like a flower blooms naturally, effortlessly expressing its beauty and releasing its fragrance.

To be healthy, we can’t entertain thoughts that feed illness and we can’t see our body as a victim of sickness. We have to be aware of those thoughts that support the very idea of sickness, because every such thought impacts us, blocking the flow of consciousness.

Energy follows our attention. We tend to dwell on what we perceive as missing as well as on the opinions of others. For instance, notice how many of your thoughts and how much of your self-talk focuses on either the failings of the past or worry about the future. By shifting our attention to consciousness rather than our thoughts, we raise the vibrational frequency of our energy.

We do this by observing our thoughts, witnessing them, without becoming embroiled in them. As we simply observe, the more we become aware of just how much we talk to ourselves and the more our self-talk dies down. The more space we create for our One-Self to breathe, the more it can manifest itself as consciousness. As consciousness increases, our useless self-chatter is replaced by a flow of creativity. In this way the One-Self in which we are grounded becomes our direct source of energy, which is both vitalizing and healing.

Health flows from being innocent and simple.

Society believes in the power of the egoic mind as the source of knowledge instead of in enlightenment as our means of knowing. Consequently society says, “Don’t show your real self, in all your innocence. Only pretend to let people know you. Openly innocent people get crushed, exploited, abused, and even killed.”

In order to be healthy there’s no need to use our mind, no need to “think healthy thoughts.” In fact it’s important not to think about health or believe in health because thinking and believing immediately put us either in the past or in the future. We are either regretting or wishing, dreaming of what happened or what might happen, instead of simply being present. Then we become tense. As long as we’re moving back and forth between thoughts of the past and the future, we’re going to be tense—and this creates illness because it blocks the natural flow of health in the body.

A mind plagued by thought cannot be present in the moment since its content is made up of accumulated memories, information, theories, and experiences from the past, together with future dreams, imaginations, and projections. Consequently we can’t know our essential being through thought.

Dropping our attachment to the past doesn’t mean we abandon our factual memory or our remembrances. We simply distance One-Self from any attachment to these things in terms of our identity. There’s nothing wrong with memory when it’s factual and not churning with meaning we attribute to the facts. On the contrary, we need factual memory in order to remember our name, address, or who our family are. We need it to get to a destination on time, earn a living, and for countless other purposes. However, we don’t do well when we are psychologically attached to memory.

We aren’t our memories, nor our past, and identifying with them as if they were who we are only creates tension. For instance, if our family was dysfunctional during our childhood and we still carry bitterness and anger about this at age sixty-five, or if our partner left us ten years ago and we still can’t let it go, we have moved from simple memory to being haunted by attachment to the past. Such attachment will rob us of our aliveness and destroy our health.

Creativity arises from openness and is hampered by attachment. By giving up our tendency to dwell on thoughts of the past, we’re not destroying our memory. Rather, we’re allowing it to serve as a seed plot for creative imagination. However, “creative” means new, original, fresh––either a further development of what’s been before or a break with the past. In contrast, the content of the average mind is mostly old, worn, and tired. This is why letting go of attachment is so important.

To know our essential being, we must first unlearn, which is to empty our mind of accumulated psychological attachment to our memories and what we think we know.

Learning isn’t the same as gathering information, which all too often clutters up the mind. Gathering an immense amount of knowledge belongs to the dimension of having, or possessing. Having is the habitual motivator for accumulating more. We call this gathering of information “learning.” We think we know something because we have a knowledge of it, but all we’re really doing is freezing the Now of a given moment, then storing it in memory. Information gained in this way is mostly borrowed from others and therefore isn’t real learning. Real learning is an independent experience, not a borrowing.

Unlearning is required for real learning to occur. Unlearning means dying to whatever we have an attachment to. It’s a process that removes those experiences that no longer serve our being. They may have been valuable at one time but not now. Unlearning is a way of expanding true knowing.

When we try to live our life based on knowledge, we require evidence, proof. We also seek the validation of others. We want other people’s confirmation we’re doing the right thing. In contrast, real knowing requires giving up the idea we can base our path on accumulated knowledge––a step that’s suicide for the egoic mind and consequently meets with resistance.

In fact, because unlearning involves letting go of attachments, many of us experience it as a most difficult process. This is why even people who meditate tend to make unlearning a thing they do, instead of a way of being.

Learning may be achieved by doing, but unlearning involves not doing. It’s about dying to our beliefs and repetitive thought, then opening up to explore the infinite truth of our essential being. Real learning is the process of being open and ready to explore in the moment. Real learning is what I would call living. It’s allowing the Now to yield its richness.

Did you ever think of enlightenment as a process of unlearning, so that what has always been at our center can shine through? Enlightenment is about knowing our inner truth, which can be accessed only in the Now. It requires awareness of the present moment, uncontaminated by the stored knowledge of the mind. We can’t learn to “do” awareness, and knowledge isn’t required for awareness. Awareness isn’t something that can be added to us. It can only grow out of us, out of being completely in the present moment.

In the present moment there is silence and infinite peace, out of which creativity is born. In our natural state we are in harmony with this moment, which means we are at peace and our mind is silent.

In practice, for most of us this state of peace and silence is obscured by the content of our egoic mind. But when the turbulent thought associated with ego disappears, our fundamental peace and silence reappear. In this state there’s no tension––nothing to obstruct the flow of well-being.

A still mind is the meeting place of the inner and the outer worlds. It exists beyond duality and is the point at which infinite consciousness celebrates One-Self. Perhaps we might imagine it as a flute on which the divine plays the harmonious music of stillness. This stillness contains the freshness of the Now in every moment.

When stillness appears, illness disappears.

To enter into this stillness, it’s important not to try to stop the mind. To try to stop the mind is doing. It’s pitting one state against another, which produces conflict. Said differently, resisting the mind just leads to the mind fighting with itself, which generates tension, anguish, turmoil––a state of dis-ease.

For this reason we can’t think our way into health. No amount of thinking will produce health, at best accomplishing only a shifting around of blocked energy. It’s when we separate ourselves from thought that we become healthy, and we do this simply by witnessing our thoughts.

Now is the right moment for health. Here is the right place. Don’t wait for the next moment. We are alive in this moment, and in its peaceful stillness it contains great power. When we are present in this moment, accepting this moment fully, health wells up from within.

Each future moment is born out of the present moment. Embracing the totality of each moment leads to increasing joy and bliss, which is reflected in our health. If we feel alive and healthy in this moment, we’ll feel even more alive and healthier in the next moment. Well-being leads to increasing wellness.