Integral Health at The Zoo Fence

HEALTH
It’s All About Consciousness
by Ivan Rados
(Namaste Publishing – http://www.namasterpublishing.com)

This highly readable, thought-provoking book is about health, what it is, how to achieve it, and how to maintain it. In that sense, this book is like a lot of other books on the market. But this book is not like other books about health. This book is not about some new medical discovery or a miracle diet. Neither is it about physicians or pharmacies, vitamins or exercise bikes. This book is about being, the direct and immediate association between being rightly and health.

The fundamental premise of this book is that health is the normal, natural, and appropriate condition of the human species, and that when we are being what we truly are in the way that we are naturally inclined to be, health manifests. In the book’s words, “Disease is the result of an energy blockage caused by experiences we haven’t fully worked through, allowed ourselves to feel, and really accepted. In contrast, healing is the result of an aware detachment from those past experiences that have created energy blockages in us”.

Thus, health is not a goal to be achieved, something we struggle for, or wish for, or even pray for. And certainly not pay for. Rather, health is a symptom or a by-product of being rightly. It is our normal state, but it depends upon our being open and receptive to it.

It sounds simple because it is. Simple, but not easy.

Here’s the thing. We understand the nature of reality wrongly, and accordingly we live our lives wrongly. We perceive ourselves and our lives and everyone and everything in our lives from a separative, egoic perspective. It is not surprising that we do so. Since our earliest childhood, the authorities in our lives – parents, physicians, teachers, even preachers – have been telling us that is the way it is. To be sure, with the advent of quantum physics and books about Eastern religions in every bookstore, that is changing, but for most of us only slowly. The problem is, the separative perspective interferes with, even contradicts, “the ongoing process” of being. It is that interference which creates blockages which impede the natural and normal flow of consciousness, upon which health depends, indeed which is the source of health.

So we need to unlearn. We need to release the paradigm of separation which has wrongly defined and misshaped every aspect of our lives. In its stead, we need to embrace the idea that reality really is a single, undivided whole, and that we are a true manifestation of it, of the One Thing which some call God and which Rados calls One Self or our One Self.

As seekers, we have explored these concepts, and we believe we understand them. But there is more to it than understanding or knowing. Here’s Rados: “Learning isn’t the same as gathering information, which all too often clutters up the mind. … Unlearning is required for real learning to occur. Unlearning means dying to whatever we have attachment to”.

And that naturally raises the question of beliefs. Rados has a nice take on that. “Beliefs are often a way of hiding our ignorance. We know we don’t know, but we hold onto beliefs that help us ignore the fact we don’t know, and act like we do know”. Thus, too often our beliefs are shields against having to unlearn.

Rados puts beliefs against trust. The former, he writes, are of the head, the latter of the heart. We lean on our beliefs when we do not feel sufficiently lifted by our trust. “Trust,” Rados says, “is embracing ourselves and our life as a manifestation of the whole – a manifestation of All That Is. With trust in our One Self, we automatically trust our experiences in the existential world”.

Just so, our sole function is simply to be. Not to be some one or achieve some thing. Just be. If we will allow ourselves simply to be, all the rest will follow. Including health. As the book puts it, “Our natural purpose is to live joyfully in harmony with our One Self”.

Rados has an interesting take on chakras, their function, and their relationship to the body’s endocrine system and to the restoration and maintenance of health. The material in these chapters is clearly presented. It is not a technical dissertation on chakras, but a useful expression of where and how they affect our lives. This stuff alone will profit anyone who perceives himself or herself to be diseased. In this discussion, Rados shares some exciting stories of healing which he has accomplished. Told anywhere else, they might be labeled miracles, but Rados refuses that temptation. He insists that all he does is help his patients identify and release blockages within themselves so that their normal flow of being can resume. That is, these are examples of how the application of his premise has benefited the lives of real people, and by extension how it can benefit his readers.

But, as I said at the outset, this book is about far more than just physical health, however important that may be for each of us. This book truly is about the nature of reality – who we are, where we are, and what we are. In my opinion, that is where the true import of this book lies, and what makes it a book for all seekers.

An afterthought: In a chapter about the nature of existence, Rados discusses how it happens that matter can seem to us to be solid while in fact it is not. I have read dozens, maybe even hundreds, of considerations of this truth, but nowhere has it been so clearly illuminated for me as Rados does in this simple image: “To get a handle on this, imagine the rotary blades on top of a helicopter. If the blades aren’t spinning, we can pass through them. However, once they start spinning, they’ll cut us to pieces if we try to pass through them. As the blades move faster and faster, they form what appears to be a solid disc – we no longer see a gap between the blades. Yet the disc is an illusion. Were the blades to spin at the velocity electrons move around the nucleus of an atom, we could stand on the disc – it would be as solid as a wall.”