Self-care and The One

When you structure self-care for the fulfillment of your intentions, your actions must align with your truest self. These are bound to be bold actions; they bring you outside your box/mind toward unprecedented accomplishments—accomplishments you’ve only dreamed of till now. The most important self-care is the care of your core quality (your life’s sustained purpose); the most important self-care is the care of your connection to all of creation, and of your 100 percent responsibility for your experience. Self-care goes far beyond taking are of the individual mind and body.

If you take care of your highest self first, then you can consult the highest self for insight into how to best care for your mind and body. (Notice how I moved from “your highest self” to “the highest self,” in that last sentence; that’s because your highest self partakes in the highest self.) Because it is based in the lasting truth (versus temporal thoughts or moods), taking care of your highest self supports the long-term realization and maintenance of your best intentions. This is a perennial teaching (from the Vedas 6,000 years ago, the Greeks 2,500 years ago, Jesus 2021 years ago, and indigenous peoples throughout the planet today). 

If someone you respect tells you something like “Whatever you do, just don’t rock the boat,” “Never go over budget,” or “Always pay yourself first”—and you take this (perhaps unconsciously) as the truth—then there are certain ways in which you will never challenge yourself or others. At best, you’ll always have the life you’ve already got. At times, it is indeed better not to rock the boat, or not to go over budget, or to make sure you pay yourself first. 

And, by the same token, there are some times when these rules do not apply. A system of self-care that consists solely in prescriptions and proscriptions (“Just do this; never do that.”) does not work ultimately, because when it comes to developing oneself, enriching your life, and stretching toward goals, it’s all about living outside the quote unquote rules. Furthermore, despite generic similarities, each of us has a unique history, situation, and set of goals that make our minds and bodies distinct. 

How wonderful—when you hear others share experiences or see and hear how different their bodily experience are from your own—to imagine what it must feel like for that person to move around the planet in that body or with those beliefs!

Universal principles that are meant to tell us how to take care of the self anywhere and any time for everyone, just don’t stand up. The LISTEN techne suggests that we listen deeply within for “the point of view of the universe,” the implicate order, as it is revealed in the quiet, deep within you; it tells you what is needed. 

The drawback—by the way—with utilitarianism is that its standards are based on the extremely variable conditions in which we live, including our cultural, familial, and personal backgrounds and our physiological and psychological diversity, which is good in itself. However, union, unity and unanimity live in the heart of hearts, the soul of souls.

We access universal guidance (not rules) when we get quiet, explore, and listen to the vast space of the heart. Here we find that there are three sentiments*–faith, hope, and love—common to all people, regardless of belief system. These noble sentiments shed tremendous light on how to take care of the highest self.

Faith in the highest self is the source of all true self-care. Hope is the key to structuring the care of the mind. Love goes to the heart of structuring care for the body. In this chapter on self-care, we will proceed from loving the body, through hope in and of the mind, to the care of the infinite aspect of the self you are. The LISTEN techne does not tell you what to think or believe; it is not a faith or belief system. Rather, it observes that gaining access to the infinite by going within, is something all faiths have in common.

(Excerpted from Chapter 11 “Self-care” of LISTEN…Till You Disappear; https://tinyurl.com/c7xwyujg)

*Cp. Ch.S.Peirce, Collected Papers, edited by Charles Harshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge Mass: Belknap Press, 1931-6), Vol. 2, paragraph 655.

Yours, 

Martin Kettelhut, PhD
ListeningIsTheKey.com
303 747 4449