The Way Toward Health, Session January 9, 1984

January 9, 1984

Exuberance and a sense of vitality are always present to some degree or another.

Some people are always aware of their own joy regardless of circumstances.  They feel safe and protected even when the events of their lives do not seem favorable.  Regardless of their own doubts and worries, such people feel themselves supported, and feel that in the end everything will work to their advantage.  Many other people, however, lose this sense of safety and abundance, and it may seem as if joy in living was an attribute only of the young.

Exuberance and joy, however, basically have nothing to do with time or age.  They may be expressed as vividly and beautifully at the age of 80 as at the age of 8.  For whole segments of the population, however, it seems as if joy and health are fleeting attributes expressed briefly in childhood, and then lost forever.

There are innumerable ways of reclaiming joy in living, however, and in so doing physical health may be reclaimed by those who have found it lacking in their experience.

The quality of life is intensely important, and is to a large extent dependent upon a sense of well-being and self-confidence.  While these attributes are expressed in the body, they also exist in the mind, and there are some cumbersome mental beliefs that may severely impede mental and physical well-being.

We will not concentrate upon these, but we will indeed discuss them, so that each person can understand the relationship between poor beliefs and poor health, for through understanding these connections the individual can re-experience the great mental variety that is possible.  No individual is helpless, for example, in the face of negative beliefs.  He or she can learn to make choices once again, and thus to choose positive concepts, so that they become as natural as negative beliefs once did.

One of the greatest detriments to mental and physical well-being is the unfortunate belief that any unfavorable situation is bound to get worse instead of better.  That concept holds that any illness will worsen, any war will lead to destruction, that any and all known dangers will be encountered, and basically that the end result of mankind’s existence is extinction.  All of those beliefs impede mental and physical health, erode the individual’s sense of joy and natural safety, and force the individual to feel like an unfortunate victim of exterior events that seem to happen despite his own will or intent.

The ideas I have just mentioned are all prominent in your society, and now and then they return to darken your senses of joy and expectation.

Today Ruburt experienced a small-enough, but still potent enough, recurrence of those ideas.  It is very important that they be recognized when they appear.  For now, often that recognition alone can clear your thoughts and mind.

You (Rob) had your own experiences last evening: your foreknowledge of your friend’s phone call, and the unorthodox knowledge about the money – and those two events happened because you did indeed want another small assurance of the mind’s capabilities despite the official concepts of the mind, by which you are so often surrounded.

Such experiences let you taste, again, the feeling of your own greater abilities and freedom.  Tell Ruburt to remind himself again that he is free to move and to walk normally.

(“You’re saying that to some extent at least, he still feels that he isn’t free to move and walk?  I’ve thought of this several times myself lately.”)

I am saying that to varying degrees those concepts sometimes return, that it should be obvious that this happens less and less.  Remind him also to remember that he does not have any particular disease.  Society would be much better off if man labeled multitudinous levels of physical health rather than dignifying negative concepts by giving them names and designations.

Now, I may or may not return, again according to those rhythms of which I speak – but know that I am present and approachable.