NATURAL WELL-BEING: A curious, mildly joyful watching.
As the name suggests, well-being is natural – that is, it’s a normal and essential 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 that which one is: 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 a vague 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 J.Krishnamurti:
“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 in daily living – if one alertly attends. J K again:
“So in attention there is freedom. A free mind is only capable of attention in which there is no achievement or gaining or losing or fear. And that is necessary because it is only a quiet attentive mind that can understand this immense problem of living. And it is only the quiet meditative mind that can come upon what is called love.”
Sounds like, looks like, feels like, that which one easefully is like, in daily, simply, being, yes. 🙂
