Wholeness

Leave anything out and you are not whole (as in healthy, complete, undivided). Of course I don't mean running around acting out your worst impulses. It's more like acknowledging that those impulses exist and are part of you. Humility, I have realized, is a very healthy trait - I don't mean thinking that I have bad thoughts so I'm not really a very good person, this is just an inverse kind of pride, but realizing I am human and I have thoughts I don't like having, but they are there, just as they are there for others, and I don't have to choose to act on them.

Which brings up another dimension of wholeness. Suppose my hand believed it didn't really need my arm, or any of the rest of the body, but could just do its own thing? I would suffer the loss of my hand, and my hand would be in really deep trouble! The same goes for any ideas I may have that I am separate from the rest of the world. Just as parts of myself all go to make up who I am, so this part which is myself does go into making up the human race, the planet Earth, all that is.

Our cultural myth of separateness is not only incomplete, it's dangerous. People are constantly trying to destroy aspects of themselves they judge "bad" and must therefore project onto others, while thinking of those others as separate and therefore not really important to themselves. Imagine what could happen if we managed to understand the interconnectedess of all things. Perhaps we could:

* see the need for including all perspectives and honoring diversity
* see that what we do to any other we do to ourselves
* learn compassion
* overcome fear

Imagine such a thing! We could then begin to create a healthier, more wholesome world.

Comments

[Franis Engel]

Isn't it interesting that you don't have to do anything special to get wholeness but to remove whatever was in the way of it?

Thanks for pointing me to your blog from the David Bohm dialogue group.

Are you aware of Barbara Sher's forum? It's one of the most wonderful places to hang out with people who are becoming more of all of who they are.

When you get some time again, come and check out my blogs that you can get to from the first page of my website. Especially interesting to you might be the one that compares Dialogue with Alexander Technique -more targeted, but the other blog is more personal.

http://www.franis.org
an8el(at)yahoo.com (for my correct email) Did this because posting on blog comments invites so much spam from automated harvesters.