WELL: Getting real with physical and mental health

By Clare Dimond

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clare Dimond
• Release date: May 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781805174950

Book preview

Part I

Introduction

You are here.

However you imagine yourself to be, you are here. Imagine yourself as a body, you are here.

Imagine yourself as God, you are here.

Imagine yourself as worthless, superior, nothing at all, you are still here.

My suggestion is that you stop all imagining, here.

Gangaji

A warning

The dilemma for the individual is not that the individual can’t get what it wants — the dilemma is apparent individuality.

Tony Parsons

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This book must come with a warning.

It is a warning based on what people embarking on courses or conversations or books about the nature of the self can find themselves saying:

‘I came here to feel better. But actually I feel worse: my sleep is terrible / my anxiety is increasing / I’m more depressed than ever / my physical complaint is intensifying / the suffering is worsening.’

And that, of course, looks like a failure of the course provider or author. The participant might even feel that they themselves are the failure. Because surely the only goal must be to feel better and to get rid of symptoms and negative emotions, states and experiences.

And this is where, right off the bat, we have to come out with something that sounds absolutely ridiculous - particularly in a book about physical and mental health.

What if it was that - the identification with, personalisation of and resistance to certain emotions, symptoms, states and experiences - which is the only cause of suffering - and the only reason the suffering is prolonged?

And yes that sounds stupid doesn’t it? Because it seems to fly in the face of humanity and reason.

And patronising. Like it’s said by someone in some ivory tower of mental or physical health who doesn’t understand how bad things are for us.

And dangerous. Because it sounds like it could lead to ignoring important signals or not getting treatment when required.

And confusing. Because why wouldn’t we want to get rid of anything that causes us pain or discomfort? How can we possibly stop the resistance to it?

But how about, before we dismiss it out-right, we take just one moment to question what is going on here.

How could it be that a few spoken words, or a page in a book (or a facebook post, a google result or a headline for that matter) can intensify physical, mental or emotional symptoms and suffering?

What is causing that?

What is the link between some lines and dots on a page and the increasing of sensation?

What is the link?

This is the only question to ever ask.

If there is space to look at that, if there is a genuine readiness to explore what is going on there, then the portal to freedom (and to the understanding of true health) opens.

Without that space or readiness, the course is left, the conversation is closed down, the book is tossed away. And whatever is being protected by the turning away continues to be protected.

The link between trigger and suffering goes unexplored.

The causal relationship between what is believed and what is experienced stays unquestioned.

The physical, mental, emotional symptoms and sufferings will continue to change according to some hidden, uninvestigated factor.

Is it time for that factor to be looked at?

Is there readiness now to enquire…?

Let’s see.

A welcome

When you're believing a thought or concept and you question it - you realise that it changes things. Every cell in your body is awake with enquiry.

Byron Katie

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Welcome to WELL.

Getting ‘real’ with mental and physical health is a very big subject.

It means exploring what is actually true in the concepts of who we are and in what is required for us to be secure, healthy and happy.

And this can be extremely confronting.

It confronts all assumptions and beliefs.

And in particular, it confronts three aspects of our identity that seem absolutely fundamental:

I am this body, its appearance, its health, its symptoms.

I am these thoughts and beliefs.

I am these moods, these feelings, this state, this experience.

Three huge areas that apparently make up this self of ours and which tell the story, not just of our mental and physical health, but of our lives, of who we really are and of what we want to be.

Which is why the quest to feel better, secure or happy would logically and automatically lead to:

trying to make the body more how it should be

trying to make the thoughts and beliefs more positive and self-affirming,

trying to make the feelings, state and experience more enjoyable.

That makes total sense.

But what we are going to explore in this book is that who we really are is…

NOT the body

NOT the thoughts and beliefs

NOT the moods, feelings, state and experience.

We are going to explore how nothing will make the idea of self secure.

Nothing can do that, because the idea of self is only that - an idea, made of thought and belief. And believing that it is a fixed, objective, independent entity that is (or should be) in control of the body, thoughts, beliefs, moods, feelings, state and experience is the source of all suffering.

This is the fundamental misunderstanding: we are continually trying to make the self secure, not realising that the identity is a creation of thought and belief and cannot be secured.

And this continued, exhausting and unfulfillable quest to secure the self plays out in the attempt to ‘fix’ what the