Wisdom Of Wellness: Perpetuity Of Poise Of Purpose, Santosh Jha [red white and royal blue hardcover txt] 📗

The only justification of me telling them is that all goodness and wellness ideas and words need to be repeated and retold, to add to their all-pervasiveness.

At the age of 54, I can say with innocence that getting old is such a beautiful and satisfying experience. It makes the ‘self’ accept the ‘utility and fruition’ of holistic, assimilative and integrative consciousness. Getting old has probably pushed ‘me’ close to the ‘eligibility’ of perhaps beginning to understand as what essentially is there to be understood!

I chat up with you to share with you whatever is part of my consciousness. All wisdoms say, human is designed to live in state of ‘flux’, a state of instinctive semi consciousness. To jolt oneself out of this, one must challenge itself; something humanity has done since millions of years. What stays with you is what sinks in. Wisdom is what we internalize.

I share with you whatever I have internalized in my life.

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Contemporary Trends

We talk first in short about the contemporary trends in societies across the globe to understand why there is an express need for a completely updated and upgraded version of contemporary religion and spiritualism as a ‘wellness-support-system’ for all of us. This also helps you to evolve a personalized and subjective model of spiritualism and religion, as a platform for larger wellness wisdom.

As we talked earlier, every one of us has the innate need and positioning to be a spiritualist. However, modern contemporary societal trends engender the need to revisit and reinvent the traditional spiritual notions to realign and upgrade them as suiting to contemporary common sense.

Few years back, some visionaries came out with a researched report on the future trends that would prevail in the global society. This report suggested, traditional ideas of religion shall growingly wither and would be replaced by spiritualism. It suggested, the contemporary choice of liberalism and very powerful communication technologies shall help spread of modern scientific temper. This would make many in urbanized and educated societies reject the outdated tenets of classical religions all over the globe.

Recent surveys in United States of America and other developed societies have already confirmed that majority of young and urbanized liberal people have termed themselves ‘spiritual’, rather than ‘religious’. It was also predicted that though religion would lose out to spiritualism in future, for an intervening period, mysticism should rise, especially the ‘agnostic mysticism’ to fill up the void. This also has become true.

This clearly marks one crucial reality of humanity. Everyone needs a ‘wisdom of wellness’ and spiritualism, as one mega facility for defining and guiding wellness needs of humanity has to be there, in one form or other. The terminology can change. Once it was religion, now spiritualism and later it may be mysticism and any other term. However, most people would need a ‘guiding light’ in their lives to lead them to answers of larger and ever-present wellness questions.

Already, there are voices in United States of America and in other developed societies, which blames ‘rejection of religion’ as the prime reason for degeneration of societies and culture. This is debatable as making or unmaking of societies and culture are functions of multiple factors. One factor cannot be blamed. However, the fact remains that more people are now falling in the grip of troubles, which are a result of diminishing wellness quotient in their lives. No doubt, traditional wisdom of religion-spirituality had been a huge platform of ‘wellness wisdom’ for majority of people for thousands of years and this platform is fast losing favors with new generations and urban educated and liberal people. We surely need an alternative ‘wellness wisdom’.

Here, it has to be understood; we live in an age of skepticism. This precarious energy of skepticism is the prime mover in downsizing and upgrading of many contemporary ideas and wisdoms of humanity. Everything is in for a redefinition, thanks to this energy of skepticism. However, it also has to be understood, from where comes this energy of skepticism. This comes from the subjectivity and dualism of ‘questions’ and ‘answers’, which the traditional wisdoms is now unable to address satisfactorily. The questions and the need for answers are transcendental and quintessential. However, with progression of time, the new intellectual milieu changes its association with a prevalent wisdom, as questions get new shades and acceptable common sense of answers too get updated.

The skepticism somehow creates a void, as its basic energy is to reject, rather than accept old things in new and improved light. It is only natural that rejection of old wisdom of religion would never be a solution. It has created a void and as is the natural mechanism, things in static state, from around the milieu, shall rush in to fill up the void. In addition, as is the innate mechanism with such ‘void-filling’, the rushed energies shall create a muddled up and ‘storm-like’ situation; for an intervening period. We all have seen such weather phenomenon around us.

The prevalent spiritualism, which has filled up the void of religion, is also not a ‘new one’, though many protagonists of this ‘new-age-spiritualism’ would insist to call it this way. This neo-spiritualism is in fact something already prevailing in the society since long and had been kept at the sidelines, as religion ruled supreme. In fact, as many of us already accept, this neo-spiritualism has a heady mixture of popular tit-bits from prevalent religions. There seems not much new in the neo-spiritualism; the thing new is its positioning – a shift from peripheral position to the mainstream.

Every now and then, some elements from some other religion are mixed to create a ‘product’ of neo-spiritualism for the convenience of pop layers of society and markets. As they say, only two things sell hugely in modern world – sex and spiritualism; both are in for huge experimentations, innovations and brand building. Like, you already have so many similar products in the market and suddenly a new product comes with almost same utility and value. The producer and the marketing team however, shall come up with a new ‘brand idea’ and ‘brand association tools’ to convince you that this product shall prove to be of larger and better value. Spiritualism also seems to be in for such inventiveness and branding.

The fact remains that emotional and spiritual wellness questions, which we all wish the modern and contemporary spiritualism to answer are still there and as, nothing new has been available, in terms of new value and utility, spiritualism also seems to be slated for the same fate, which religion is undergoing right now. Old wine in a new bottle can add some value and utility for a seasoned drinker for a while but in the long run, it shall lose its utility. One shall again look for something different, which essentially has a ‘new wine’, even if it is in the same old bottle!

We need to understand this conundrum. When we understand as why such a powerful and all-pervading influence on human life like religion, is fast losing its magical hold on our consciousness, we shall be in better position to understand, what a contemporary spiritualism must have to become a worthy successor of religion, as alternative wellness platform.

It is for anyone to understand. For centuries, religious principles satisfied our big questions of life. The questions have been there since thousands of years. They emanate from three broad domains of 3Cs: Consciousness-Cognition-Causality.

All major questions of humanity - life and living, purpose and utility, right and wrong, ends and means, etc, which essentially decide the broad culture we live in and personal/social goals of life, we set for ourselves, have so far been answered by three broad wings of human wisdom – Philosophy, Religion and Psychology. Science is a late entrant, still amenable only for a few.

The contemporary worldview/world-order and popular cultural edifices have undergone a major and even diametrically opposite paradigm shift and in the next three-four decades, as scientific temper spreads to larger layers of society, religion and even spiritualism, in its current form, is bound to lose favors with people.

Largely, the existing culture is based on archetypal human wisdom, provided by the trio of philosophy-religion-psychology, which accepted the cardinal parameters of 3Cs in a way, which is now declared either inappropriate/wrong or insufficient and based on instinctive observatory presumptions. Since long, when no civilization and culture was there on earth, humanity attempted to fix answers emerging from three domains (3Cs): -

Consciousness – Who we are and why?

Cognition – Why and how we see and accept what?

Causality – what, why and how is our relationships with things around us?

Thousands of years back, humanity answered the questions on the basis of what they observed and accepted as true, as per their presumptive judgments and existing knowledge. These answers had almost no or little actual/objective/provable basis yet, they seemed true and right. Some greats however, picked up the right observations and made some real good judgments. They are still treasured and shall always be.

These ‘presumptive judgments’ based answers became the basis of human civilization and culture, which in time degenerated to good extent. We all have inherited and our mind consciousnesses have been trained since ages to accept them as true and right. The real wisdom however, gradually got lost and is now confined in some books only.

In modern contemporary times, most of the answers we once accepted about key questions of life and living, purpose and utility, right and wrong, ends and means, success and failures, etc. proved out to be insufficient to satisfy our contemporary common sense. This because the benchmarks and edifices of old wisdom stands to lose grounds as Consciousness, Cognition and Causality benchmarks and actuality for humanity have evolved hugely, thanks to a new liberal and scientific consciousness.

The trouble with modern contemporary spiritualism is – it has to be in complete sync with the new age common sense, which is marked by scientific and objective wisdom. On the other hand, it also has to accept the larger utility and value of good life of the modern and liberal culture, which the old wisdom of religion rejects and sermons against.

The 3Cs of humanity – Consciousness, Cognition and Causality have undergone a huge change as modern, liberal and scientific knowledge has evolved and upgraded all three. This evolved 3Cs are in major conflict and clash with the old wisdom, which fails to satisfy the modern contemporary common sense.

All this we need to talk about to come to the model of a modern, liberal and scientific spiritualism, as an alternative ‘wellness wisdom’, which has completely novel and suitable elements and ideas, in sync with contemporary needs and times. It is only natural that such a new spiritualism has to be a holistic, assimilative and integrative common sense, which shall not reject anything, but assimilate all good things in all wisdoms, based on contemporary and updated benchmarks of evolved 3Cs of Consciousness, Cognition and Causality. We shall talk about all that in detail here.

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Why Religion Is Misrepresented

Before we talk about redesigning and realigning spiritualism, which could be a huge fit with the idea of contemporary common sense ‘wellness wisdom’, we must understand one big thing. This new wellness wisdom shall never reject the old wisdom of religion and philosophy. Rather, it would revisit the old wisdom and find out the core notions of the old wisdom of religions. That is why; it is important that we first talk about why religion lost grounds, even when it was once the ultimate utility for humanity as ‘wellness wisdom’. It still has utility. The big blame is on the way core religion was misrepresented and misinterpreted. We talk about it in short.

Humanity always had some evolved minds, who rose above the conflicts of life and to whom ‘the singular answers’ of critical questions of humanity as well as the cosmos were revealed. Important it is that the revelations to a handful get eventually transformed into a logical and patterned knowledge for