SELF HELP?

I’ve read (and used) a lot of “self help” books and resources through the years. Yes, there’s a lot of trite stuff in that section of the bookstore. At the same time, I’ve found some of it to be very inspiring and helpful. Using this line of thinking one could even look at the Bible (or the sacred writings of any religion or philosophy) as the greatest self help book ever written!

But there’s a fundamental problem here.

“Self help” implies that from the getgo we need help. In other words, humanity’s starting point is not one of health, but unhealth, not completeness but incompleteness, not wholeness but neediness. I find this to be neither true nor helpful but rather, negative, depressing and encouraging of codependent behavior. Worse, starting out with this flawed premise alters everything down the line.

But what if, like the universe and every piece and process in it, each of us is in a constant state of evolution and expansion? What if, from the cellular level on up, we are meant to increase and advance in every healthy way possible? Science says it’s our nature--on both the biological/personal and communal/global levels. The moment we stop doing so we begin dying--individually and collectively. The speed of these deaths may be imperceptibly slow (or not!), but we’re still on the downhill. Further, I think this applies to our minds as much as to our bodies.

Vis-a-vis the universe, we are each a microcosm of this much greater, grander whole--each an infinitesimally small but nevertheless essential fractal of it--and each of us, like the universe itself, is living in a constant state of becoming.

Seems to me it’s how we’re meant to be. . . and see.

TODAY.

LET’S GIVE OURSELVES AND THE WORLD A GIFT.

LET’S TAKE TIME TO THINK ABOUT HOW WE THINK.