Our Human Condition

Today I paid over 50% more for Tupelo Honey at the farmers market. When I was told the price, which had gone up, to what I at first thought was a ridiculous increase, instead of reacting, I paused, and then asked, why is there such a big price jump? What happened since the last time I bought this? What’s the world coming to with this? When she explained the rarity and difficulty they were having in harvesting this plant in Tallahasse and all that went into being able to bring it to the market, I was moved by their commitment to do it anyway, and I also thought, if we don’t support it and buy it, it will no longer be available, and for the relatively small amount of additional cost, we will all lose out on having a superior, health promoting product available. 

I see superior products being squeezed out of the market and inferior cheaper variations being accepted by the mainstream masses, and some of these are not health promoting and even health depleting.

As a small business owner in a small town I hear people repeatedly squawk at the price of things, without understanding the cost of delivering it and if you don’t value and support it, it will at some point, not be sustainable or available for you. If you are inclined to squawk at a price for something valuable and the money you spend on cheap, insignificant things that you prioritize instead, by doing so, they continue to make more of that. What you spend money on, is what will be available and next time you squawk, perhaps ask some different types of questions about what went into making that service available to you and how it can be beneficial to have around and are you coming into right relationship with it, to use it properly in order for it to have the best outcome for you, since you may also not realize the true purpose and how it all works without de-conditioning yourself, investing, surrendering and realizing you are on the outside looking in, rather than going in. You may be coming into relationship with something, using it in a wrong way due to conditioned ways of thinking and being that got you sick in the first place.

Ultimately, healing is an inside job, and when people are sick or not balanced, it’s hard for them to see clearly the way to healing. I often see them start searching outside of themselves, even to strangers on facebook and google, non educated, impersonal, mixing and matching and drawing their own conclusions from their conditioned mind and body. This is like the blind leading the blind and for many people they wander this way for years, if not their whole life, since getting skillful and truly supportive healing is beyond what they are ready to understand and embrace, often due to their conditioning, which is what got them in the state they are in, in the first place, how can it get them out of it?

Realize, Human nature is, people don’t like being told what to do and don’t like being told who they are and so then the ego will go out of its way to take a stand and block the relationship needed for healing. Many people are sick because they have not accepted themselves for who they are. They don’t accept their human condition and are looking to healers or others to make them beyond human, and so they go to healers who don’t heal humans, but treat diseases. They identify with and become their disease and want someone to get rid of it. This is an illusion, when the root cause of the disease is coming from not accepting ones human condition, so they become like an animal in over running, we have to run like a deer, rather than like a human who is not designed to run like a deer, over exercising, over efforting to become something that they’re not, they over work, over achieve, over exercise, over spend, over drink, over eat, over think, over spiritualize, over analyze, etc, and become imbalanced and lost to what it is to be a human being. 

Realize, the true nature of a Human being is not wanting to be a human being, and we are rebellious, not content with our identity and think just being a human being is a waste of time. 

That’s how we get into trouble, valuing things that we think will improve us, though that pattern is the actual problem, and not valuing those who recognize the root cause of disease and try to help others decondtion and get well by creating the opportunities for them to wake up, for their self realization of their own self sabotage and free them to reach their potential by realizing who they truly are and that the trendy diets, exercise programs, fads, trends, medications and hoopla are often making you all worse off by hiding the truth until you  just can’t avoid it any longer! But even then, people keep looking in the wrong places, even valuing doctors who may offer a form of relaxation practice, but don’t actually believe self realization is possible, when the goal of contempletive practices is not relaxation, that is the side benefit, with the goal being self realization, to know who you are is important to come into right relationships with life, healing and knowing anything valuable, and this is part of the definition of health and why contemplative work with someone who has reached that state, which is available to everyone, is part of a holistic healing program, along with the physical work.

Humans are the only species that don’t accept themselves as they are and life as it is. That’s how people organize into groups, running groups, exercise groups, cults and pseudo spiritual communities, and join all sorts of things that give them something to aspire to, since they aren’t happy with who they are. 

We have to be doing and achieving 24/7 and in the process are making a mess of ourselves and our planet, but that’s what most people think we are here to do. Start asking some new questions, shift your relationship to life, learn how to shift yourself and gain new awareness at the cellular level through deep relaxation and focus, and put your energy and your attention on higher values than you ever did before or we all are going to suffer from the loss of superior, health promoting resources and what it really means to live an extraordinary life that comes from knowing life beyond ordinary perception.

Getting started requires some faith in the fact that you will heal and the right person or wisdom to help you see where to be willful and where to surrender. We often get this backwards, and to continue on, in order to make an impact, requires conviction and conviction comes w hen you are convinced of something or someone's value, so taking a hard look at your values, which is sometimes difficult to see through conditioned values, beliefs and perceptions, and that is why the first limb of yoga focuses on them. They provide the foundation of integrity that most practitioners slosh over if even address at all and are important for any physical and energetic practices to help you to know who you are and to keep you focused to continue with the appropriate effort, attitude, relationships and faith, even when you don't see what the next step may be yet.

To get there, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, " Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the stair case." and "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that."