WELL: Getting real with physical and mental health

Getting 'real' with mental and physical health is a very big subject. It means exploring what is true and what this means for physical and mental health. In her sixth book in the 'Getting REAL series', Clare Dimond, explores how a misunderstanding about what we are confuses the way physical and mental sensations are interpreted. Believing that we are what we think we are and that we are (or should be) in control of the the body, thoughts, beliefs, moods, feelings, state and experience is the source of all suffering.

It sets up a battle with what is and a personal story of self that has nothing to do with actual reality. It sets up a search to secure the self identity that can last a lifetime and that can play out in the body and mind in the form of stress, hopelessness, resistance and exhaustion. But if there is readiness, the search ends here in the realisation that what is being looked for in that search can never be found. And when the rising up of symptoms and sensations prompts curiosity instead of the need to immediately retreat back into the 'comfortable torture' of the identity, then there is the possibility of something else. There is the possibility of that search losing its life-and-death urgency and being seen for the beautiful, innocent misunderstanding it really is.

There is the possibility that all those symptoms and sensations tied into the attempt to secure the self, will find their home. There is the possibility, finally, of the living in the freedom, peace and wellness that we really are.