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.
How come that many of us, (in fact, more of us) occasionally have a hollow feeling in our life? It is like the pangs of hunger. When we eat, the hunger is appeased and then we are not as much interested in food. But after a while, we become hungry again. Then, surprisingly we feel again enticed by the flavour and vision of food. We also experience some sort of a pining when we are not even actually hungry – just after we had some food. Some of us are perpetually hungry.
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 simple: just live our lives as a whole. The word ‘whole’ holds the meaning of completion. Then the secret to live a complete life is simply to live it as a whole.
Let us commence by looking at a sample of this ‘fullness’ with something very close to our heart – our stomach.
Whole Food VS Half 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 whole grain for example has a life. So, if you soak the whole grain in water, drain the next day and leave for a few days, it sprouts. It has a life of its own. When we eat such food, our body absorbs the full live nutrients. It has all the properties to cleanse, heal and nurture different body cells.
And exactly like the example of a grain, much of customary eating includes consuming whole edible creatures as well. Eating full fresh fish used to be more prevalent than having a half of it and casting the rest away. It was exactly so for meat and every edible plant product.
‘Part food’ sometimes tastes better and smells better but does not have much nutrition. We may enjoy its taste, but we could have some lasting illness if we only ate ‘part food’ all days 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.
Half Life-’Sweetness’ of Life
So, if we perceive our life now, much of what we are doing can be similar to eating the ‘part food.’ Just enjoying the sugariness of life but jettisoning the real nutritious part. And if we put our ‘part life’ in water with other pieces and left it in the sunlight, could it germinate and grow into a beautiful complete 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 the same. When we only appreciate the ‘sweetness’, and throw away the rest in rubbish bins because we don’t see its value, we may be wasting the most important part. And the part we throw away could have the greatest power for the sustainability of our life and our economy. It also takes more energy and resources to discard it. Better yet, the part we throw away is free.
So, what is it that we do not perceive?
Picture a life where we didn’t in fact believe that we were lacking anything there.
The secret is right here. The secret of a full life.
Entire Life-The Complete Life
When it is ‘full’, it does not matter how big the full is. It can spread out all at once. It can still have within it all the components to uphold itself as a complete living thing. Once it develops to a given size, it can continue to live without some portions of it. Like plants can remain alive after birds feed on a little of it or trees survive even after losing their leaves. But if we ignore the equilibrium for a pretty long time, finally it can lead to a deadly disproportion. Then it might become too difficult to revert to normalcy.
We don’t have to go back to the Stone Age to find the wholeness. Wholeness exists right now. All we need do is look closely; look closely enough to really see.
When we start seeing our life as a whole and stop throwing away what nourishes our life the most, we start feeling more and more fulfilled without looking for ‘things’ to fill holes and dents of our life. Everything finally falls into place. We now understand the mechanism of our world in a very different way.
Yes, it is now time to find out how we can create (and see) this balance, continuously and sustainably.
The actual sustaining element of our life is what makes us feel joyful deep down. It is like that component of food that makes our body strong in the long-term. Emotions we feel in our everyday life are the real solution to our permanent happiness. And there are emotions that make us feel more absolute.
The smiles we see when we give acknowledgements to others. The joy we feel when we give gifts to others. The love we feel when we see our children being happy. The inspirations we receive when we feel our life is full of meaning
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 initiate taking actions based on this knowledge, we can have real control over the balance creation – enduring health, prosperity, enriching connection and delight.
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