(1/3) NATURAL WELL-BEING: a curious, mildly joyful, watching.
It’s our nature to be happy!
As the name suggests, well-being is natural – that is, it’s a normal condition (if not an average one for most of humanity) and not just in the domain of some sages and saints. Our shared nature is one of balance and harmony, where suffering is not imagined or dwelt upon. In truth, in nature, there is no such thing as “suffering”. There is of course, pain, when an injury is inflicted, and grief when a loved-one passes, but there is no need of the attachment of more suffering to that pain. So it’s important when we look at natural well-being to understand the minds’ role in interpreting life and the events in it. Albert Camus once said: “Naming an object inaccurately means adding to the unhappiness of the world”. We could add here:”Naming obscures the happiness of seeing things as they actually are.”
Truth, Reality and Love.
Our natural well-being finds its foundation in truth, reality and love. Taken together, they form the ground of all our human and divine experience of life. And this grace of living in peace and contentment is what it means to be naturally “happy”. By “contentment” we mean contentment with the content of now – whatever that might be in the moment –confusion, anger, pain, fear…bills! And while all the major religions and philosophies contain an atrophied and desiccated resemblance to, and remembrance of, this truth, reality and love, our natural well-being is found in all of us only in the freshness of this living now. Natural well-Being is love; it flows- now gently, now firmly – from itself to itself…from spirit to spirit in thoughtless silence. Here’s how J.Krishnamurti puts it:
“Thought, always being old, cannot possibly enter into that silence which is always new.”
This aware silence is not a state that comes and goes – it is our unborn and undying native habitat AND it affectionately embraces all that comes and goes.
