As the age old adage says, health is wealth. Here we are speaking about soul’s wealth. Nutritious food is good for one’s health because body can absorb its essence – it is ditto with our life. When we espouse life in its entirety, enjoying all the impressions and sensations in it, our soul will be able to take in its ‘quintessence’, coming to terms with the core of our existence, and helping us to live our lives to the highest. Masami Sato shares the mystery of living a complete life in this excerpt from her latest book, ONE.
Why is it many of us (in fact, most of us) occasionally experience some kind of empty feeling in our life? It is like being hungry. When we eat, we feel satisfied and become less interested in food. But as some time passes, we get hungry again. Then all of a sudden we feel so attracted to the smell and thought of food. We can also feel some kind of hunger when we are not even physically hungry-just after eating something. Some of us stay being hungry all the time.
Constant emotional hunger is not the most pleasant thing to have. Then, how can we live our lives to the fullest? How can we be more satisfied permanently?
Maybe the answer is straightforward: just live our lives fully. The word ‘full’ holds the meaning of entirety. Then the secret to live a life in entirety is only to live it fully.
Let us begin by looking at an example of this ‘completion’ with something very close to our mind – our stomach.
Whole Food VS Semi Food
We are familiar with the word ‘whole food.’ It is said that consuming whole food is the secret to the health and fitness we need. What has whole food got more than ‘part food?’
A full grain throbs with a life of its own. If you put the full grain in water, drain the next day and keep for a few days, it shoots. It has its own life. When we dine on such food, our body takes in the entire live nutrients. It has all the qualities required to purify, remedy and foster different body cells.
As in the example of a grain, most conventional dining includes having whole creatures as well. Having entire fresh fish used to be more popular than taking a portion of fish and throwing the balance away. It was ditto for poultry and also for vegetables.
‘Half food’ sometimes has more sweetness and flavour but not much other nutrition. We like its taste, but we could develop a long-term illness if we only ate ‘half food’ every day of our life.
So, to balance the missing part, we started to take dietary supplements. We have been studying and researching for a long time to find the perfect balance. It gets more and more complicated as we chop the food up, preserve and transport, and even try to balance with other parts coming from different sources, regions and seasons. Some of the nutrients even come from non-food items. They are chemically generated. After analysis and testing, we approve it for human consumption. But no matter how hard we try; we cannot put all the ‘bits’ together to make it come alive.
Part Life-’Sweetness’ of Life
So, if we looked at our life now, part of what we are doing can be like eating the ‘half food’. Just savouring the sweetness of life but throwing away the real nourishing part. And if we soaked our ‘half life’ in water with other bits and left it in the sunlight, could it shoot and grow into a beautiful whole life?
Whole food is not (as some people seem to believe) of a bland taste. In fact it tastes better if cooked properly. But as requirement is low, it is more costly. It is in reality more cost-effective in the long term though, as we will have to pay less as medical costs later on. When more people will start having it, it would automatically become less expensive as it is a simple food with less processing cost and waste.
Our life is very similar. When we only value the ‘sugariness’, and cast out the rest as litter because we don’t perceive its value, we may be throwing out the most important portion. And what we jettison could have the biggest power for the endorsement of our life and our financial health. It also takes more strength and resources to cast it out. Better still, that which is thrown away comes free.
So, what is that we are not looking at?
Imagine a life where we didn’t really feel we were missing anything there.
The secret is right here. The secret of a complete life.
Whole Life-The Complete Life
When it is ‘entire’, it does not matter how large the entire is. It can swell concurrently. It can still hold within it all the parts to support itself as a full living being. Once it matures into a specific size, it can manage to live even without some of its components. Like plants can survive even after being consumed a bit by birds or trees can flourish even after they lose their leaves. But if we disregard the proportion for a very long time, ultimately it can begin creating a critical inequity. Then it could become too problematical to come back to normality.
We do not have to revert to Stone Age to find entirety. Entirety exists in the current. All we should do is watch intimately; watch intimately enough to actually see.
When we begin seeing our life in its fullness and stop casting out what nurtures our life the most, we start experiencing more and more satisfaction without looking for ‘things’ to fill the gaps and hollows of our life. Things finally fit into place. We now grasp the intricacies of our world in a completely different manner.
Yes, it is now time to discover how we can fashion (and perceive) this equation consistently and affordably.
The actual enriching part of our life is what makes us feel fine deep inside. It is like that portion of food that makes us hale and hearty in the final tally. Sensations we experience in our daily life are the real answer to our lasting joy. And there are sensations that make us feel more full.
The smiling visages we see when we acknowledge the merit of others. The happiness we feel when we give others gifts. The tenderness we feel when we see our children being happy. The motivation we get when we sense that our life is full of substance ..
Let’s experience these moments of our life fully and enjoy the flavour of our whole life. Then we will see how it is not so necessary to continuously fill our mind (and stomach!) with temporal gratifications-those types of things that make us even hungrier afterwards.
We can actually feel this joy, gratitude and love in order to experience the life as a whole at any moment regardless of the situations. It is not about what we see, what we hear or what we do that complete our life as a whole. It is about what we ‘choose to’ feel about our life.
Yes, our life in fact is already whole.
When we start taking actions based on this understanding, we can become true masters of the balance creation-long-term health, wealth, nurturing relationship and happiness.
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