Imagine yourself in the Scottish Highlands, on the banks of a loch, surrounded by purple heather and craggy mountains. You start your day with yoga and meditation, breathing in the pure air, connecting with the nature surrounding you, feeling the energy of the place. Afterwards you enjoy some natural food to nourish your body, while listening to beautiful music. You feel peaceful, relaxed and inspired, and this allows you to connect with yourself as well as the magical landscape around you.
The ancient peoples, like the Celts, knew how to have holistic wellness through connecting with nature. They understood that they could balance their body and mind with the help of the elements of nature – earth, air, water and fire – and have complete harmony with themselves and their environment.
We, on the other hand, find ourselves living in towns and cities, trapped like hamsters on a wheel of daily routines and problems. Constantly trying to get on top of an endless ‘to do’ list, with never enough time to fit in all our obligations and responsibilities, leads to stress, frustration, even despair, and inner peace seems an impossible dream.What can we do to find peace and harmony? Do we need to leave city life and return to living in remote places, away from the hustle and bustle? Or is there another way we can achieve holistic wellness?
What is ‘holistic wellness’?
The word holistic comes from the Greek holos, which means ‘whole’ or ‘complete’. So, holistic wellness means achieving a state of balance in all dimensions of your life, with no divisions between them.
This goes beyond simply not being ill. It means that your body, mind and soul are in harmony. It implies integrating everything into one whole for complete wellness.
We might be taking care of ourselves in some areas, but it’s worth asking ourselves if we are really taking care of all areas so that we can achieve holistic wellness.
While it’s true that meditation and yoga are important to help us relax, we can go further. For true wellness, we need deep (holistic) self-knowledge. This means that we need to understand ourselves fully, connecting with every part of our Essence.
Knowing ourselves fully and totally
Do we really know ourselves? Do we know who we are, where we came from and where we will go? Are we unwavering in our decisions, our feelings, our plans? Or does this sound familiar: one day we vow we are going to get fit and healthy; the next day we can’t be bothered and our resolutions evaporate. One day we swear we are in love for ever and ever with someone; a day later we feel resentful towards the same person and don’t even like them.
Such contradictions are more than common. It’s as if we are puppets and our string are being pulled by different puppet masters.
But who are these puppet master?
The Gnostic teachings explain that all our inner contradictions come from a collection of ‘I’s or ‘egos’ – our psychological defects – which have been called by other names in other times and cultures.
Self-Knowledge as the beginning of holistic wellness
The good news is that we can all achieve holistic wellness. The path to reach it lies within each of us. It is a path of deep, inner change, for those who seek genuine transformation. Knowing ourselves holistically will lead us to a harmonious inner state, to a real happiness. To achieve self-knowledge, we need to connect with our Essence and awaken our consciousness.
The Essence is what makes a newborn child so beautiful, it is what is innate, it is what is true, it is what we really are. But this beauty is lost as we grow and develop our personality. Happiness and true Love emanate from our Essence but, unfortunately, this Essence does not develop with time.
For the Essence to grow, conscious inner work is necessary because our Essence is trapped, bottled up in the ego.
This conscious inner work, which is necessary for our Essence to grow, involves close self-observation. This technique allows us to become aware of our ‘egos’, to see them at work and thus begin the process of their dissolution
Dissolving the ego is absolutely necessary to achieve true holistic wellness, because disintegrating the ego releases the Essence and the Essence is what gives us authentic happiness, freedom and peace.
The Path to Self-Knowledge
Just as the rising sun dispels the mist on a Scottish loch, so our consciousness shines through our interior mist. This mist represents the ego, which is why the path to Gnostic self-knowledge is an exploration of our interior world that leads us to the connection with the divine within us through direct experience. As the ancient Greek maxim says: “Man, know thyself and thou shalt know the universe and the gods”.
Ignorance of the inner treasure that we possess is what keeps our Essence imprisoned, trapped within the ego, preventing us from reaching our true potential.
The Path to Holistic Wellness
To achieve holistic wellness we must eliminate what causes division (the ego) within us. When we dissolve the ego the precious senses and powers of our Essence flow naturally. The free Essence gives us inner beauty, true happiness, which leads us to feel authentic Love.
To reach this state, full intimate self-observation is needed. This technique is key to discovering our wrong psychological states.
Since inner life is the magnet that attracts outer events, we urgently need to eliminate the wrong psychological states from our psyche.
When someone begins to observe themselves seriously, from the point of view that they are not one but many, the work really begins.
If we really and sincerely begin to observe ourselves inwardly, we become divided into two: the Observer and the Observed.
If this division did not take place, it is evident that we would never take a step forward on the marvellous path of self-knowledge.
By means of intimate self-observation we can see the different ‘egos’ that we have inside us, that are responsible for our sadness, problems, painful situations and mistaken ways of relating with ourselves and others.
Then, by invoking the superior or divine force that is part of our Being we can eliminate these psychological aggregates. This happens when there is a real conviction and longing for change, which is what enables us to walk on the path to holistic wellness.
You can choose to follow the path of true fulfilment, and to let the light of your consciousness dispel the inner mists to discover the happiness, love and holistic wellness that are at your fingertips.
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