Health

Identifications

"The Pillar of Health deals with both your mental health and your physical health, both of which must be effective enough and sustained enough to enable you to seek for a greater experience in life. If you are crippled emotionally or psychologically, then that must be corrected, or you will not have the focus and the energy to recognize and to pursue your greater purpose for being here."

“Health is vitality. It is the vitality born of living a genuine life—a life that is full of meaning and purpose, a life that has direction and a life that is meaningfully engaged with others and with the world. This produces a vitality, a will to live and a desire to contribute—a certain zest for life.”

Directives

“Eat well. Get enough sleep. Have daily exercise. Engage with the right people. Follow what you know. And keep asking for Knowledge. If you engage with the wrong people, it will undermine your health and well-being and will bring you back into confusion and disorientation. Follow what is simple and understood. Perhaps you have said to yourself, 'I know I shouldn't do this,' or 'I know I should do that.' Go do it. Do what you know. Why hesitate? What are you waiting for? Do not wait until a crisis occurs. Do not wait until a little problem has become a big problem. There is much you know already that you need to do to maintain your body and to have greater health mentally. Do those things. Do not ask for more. For you cannot use more until you use what you have today."

"Develop a high degree of health."

"You are not here to work on a body.You are simply asked not to damage it so that you can accomplish something of importance here."

"If your body is weak, if your body is out of shape, then it may not be able to sustain you as a vehicle in this world. Many promising people have fallen because their physical health was inadequate to sustain the life that they had assumed. Here again you must assess your strengths and your weaknesses. Everyone physically has weak links in their health. What are those weak links? Where is your body strong and where is it fragile? What must you eat that is proper for maintaining a strong constitution? You must exercise every day and find the time to do this."

"If your health is weak or has been neglected or faces serious problems, you must deal with this on both a mental and a physical level. This constitutes a great deal of the work of preparing yourself for a greater purpose in life. People who do not do this work will fail, and their failure will be very consequential for them and for others who are meant to be with them."

Excerpts

"If you do not have good mental health and strong relationships, you can fall into despair. If you do not have the resident wisdom that is necessary about living in the world, then you can be influenced by other powers in the mental environment, seduced into thinking things that are not true, or following things that have nowhere to go. Here your promise will be wasted because you did not have the clarity of mind and the sobriety about your life to see the deception."

"Your mental health and your physical health are important.... They represent vehicles of expression in the world, vehicles through which you can participate in the world, have an influence in the world and express yourself and communicate to others in the world."

"If your health is broken down, either mentally or physically, you will not be able to follow a greater purpose, and, in most cases, it will never be revealed to you because you are not ready to follow it."

"Getting your life in order, then, involves also addressing the needs for your health—your mental health and your physical health. The mind requires some structure; it requires enjoyment; it requires companionship; it requires relief and rest."

See also

• Living The Way of Knowledge, Chapter 4: The Pillar of Health
• Wisdom from the Greater Community Volume I, Chapter 6: Health