Innate Health? Innate Neutrality!

Growing up in the Christian faith I am well aware of the belief that humans are born of a "sin nature." By this I mean that if you go to the core of an individual that you will find...essentially...SIN or bad stuff. When I was first exposed to Health Realization I became acquainted with something called Innate Health. Innate Health takes the idea of a sin nature for humans and turns it on it's head. The idea of innate health made sense to me. I could understand mans inhumanity to man and nature much more easily if I saw human beings as basically good (innately healthy) who, at times became lost in insecure thinking rather than being basically bad (sin nature) who through forgiveness or salvation through belief in god were able to do good things. The mindset of innate health made sense for quite a number of years. However, my understanding of thought or thinking as of late has not been able to help me out of some unhappiness in which I have found myself even with my knowledge of innate health.

Luckily, I was able to go deeper in my understanding of my experience of life. I will spare you the details of my insight other than to say that I now see that a deeper way to experience life is to find a place of being which is outside of good or bad. One word I might use to describe that place is neutral. From a place of neutral it is possible for me to fully embrace my experience of the moment. Whether it be good or bad, if I come from a neutral place then I am fully present and can appreciate whatever feelings and emotions are in the moment without being captive to them.

Clinical Article on Stress and Health Realization

This is the first time I have seen the clinical aspects of Health Realization discussed in the context of stress. Interesting.

www.medscimonit.com/fulltxt.php?IDMAN=8224

Perhaps I will update this with a hot link at a later date. It would be even better if someone who knows how to do so would leave me a comment on how to help me out.

Beyond Typical

I spent an hour at a local school recently volunteering my time. The school I visited was one which you would not want your kids to attend. It was run down. The paint was peeling. There were no school books. The building was in disrepair. The teachers were doing the best they could to educate the next generation. At this school, just getting the kids to attend is an accomplishment. Discipline is a constant challenge. Learning is a bonus. However, I showed up to contribute what I could.
The teacher selected a few students for me to work with. I was to tutor them during class and give them some individual attention. I met with these students in the hallway and we started working together. I was pleasantly surprised that these kids appeared genuinely interested in learning. They paid attention. They asked questions. They listened. They learned.
Midway through class I heard a clamoring inside of the classroom. The students from inside the class filed outside and walked downstairs. You see, the school was holding a pep rally for the basketball team and class was dismissed for all to attend. My students had a choice to make. They could join their classmates at the pep rally, or stay with me and study. You can imagine my surprise when they chose to stay with me and study. All of us worked hard. I was tutoring them in French class, a language I had not spoken since High School. They were working hard to learn vocabulary and pronunciation for a language they might never use outside of class. In what seemed like minutes, the hour was over. At the end of our time together, one of the students asked if I would be back tomorrow. I said that I wouldn’t, but that I would be back next week.
You may think that I wrote this to highlight the need for tutors in our schools or to encourage you to be a mentor to a young person. Even though there is a critical need for both tutors and mentors, that is not the point of this article because the story doesn’t end there. After class, I spoke with the teacher. She shared her observation that things seemed to have gone well for me, which of course was correct. She then went on to say that the kids I worked with weren’t “typical”. I think she meant that the kids that I worked with were interested and motivated which she did not consider typical for other kids.
I thought to myself, how sad. How sad that this teacher saw less potential in some kids than others. True, some kids may appear to be more distracted and disruptive than others. However, I see that as a limitation of our ability to reach them rather than a lack of willingness on their part. I began to wonder whether we do the same thing when we look at people.
Do we tend to see young people, factory workers, Hispanics, police officers, or other groups of people in a certain way and have a hard time seeing individuals as individuals? We watch TV, read newspapers and generally live our lives. We decide that a group is a certain way. If we see kids as being lazy, trouble makers, uncaring or mischievous we give up the opportunity to see a child as enthusiastic, motivated and creative. When we get a picture of a group as being a certain way we give up the ability to see the human being. It is unfortunately true that when we see people as typical we lose the individual. It is only when we look beyond the typical that we find the individual.