There is a moment. Each of us arrives at it in our own unique way, if at all. Some of us arrive tranquilly , others circuitously, but many of us show up exasperated dragging a barge of collateral baggage in our wake before we just stop and declare, “ENOUGH! This can’t be ALL that life is about…cause this sucks and there has to be something else.” Even if we are not able to say it out loud, the question lives in us as a gnawing feeling like a knot in the gut or an itch at the back of the throat. Even if we fecklessly rationalize, reconcile and weave complex stories to explain away what is happening to us, there is the nagging discontent, inner disbelief that hopefully breaks us. Eventually, we reach our limit and hit a rock bottom of sorts. In the deafening thud of enough arrives surrender. We wave a white flag to the possibility of an unknown.
Life compresses us. It shows up as: a crappy childhood orchestrated by crappy parents; a tragic loss of a loved one, home, way of life; an opportunity for a better life that never arrives; an injustice; a financial hardship; or a medical illness to name a few. They all feel like random assaults on our well being conspiring against our happiness, sense of security, and will to be true to ourselves. Yet all those rough bumps, those trying circumstances that strangle us in the vice grip of suffering turn out to be nudges . A catalyst for curiosity to emerge. To ask, “What is this life about? Who am I? Why am I struggling?” Some of us need more nudging than others. Life has a way of upping the ante on hardship like your least favorite song on repeat until it gets loud enough to grab your attention. Some of us do not take the hint. We grow numb and a life that is hard continues to get harder. There is no escape to leaning into the pain.
Welcome to the unease of standing in between the crosshairs of leaning in or numbing away. I remember arriving at this exasperated moment of surrender in 2012 when I returned to the US after working as a doctor in East Africa where I thought I was living my life’s purpose to find out the contrary. I returned in a state of confusion and conflict. I was Neo in the Matrix. The blue pill slumber was no longer an option. The red pill was all I had and when I took it, I found myself in the middle of an existential nowhere without a map or sense of where I was going. I discovered that I had no understanding of how I was wired, what made me, ME. I was arriving into the dawn of middle age, but I did not really know how I ticked and how this was affecting my beliefs and actions as I experienced and reacted to what was occurring in my life. Furthermore, I realized that most of the people around me were floating in their own misguided boat along the same sea of clueless discontent. In fact, we were just reacting to each other in this fog and further degrading our collective reality together. The inquiry began, the questions were multiplying exponentially and despite feeling more disoriented than ever, there was an inkling of relief that I was finally moving in the right direction towards understanding this life I was in. There was hope for peace of mind after all.
Unveiling being is about my findings along this inquiry. It’s the beginning of the deconstruction of who we are and what governs the anatomy and physiology of our well-being. Our well being as we define it through our sense of happiness, health, the experience of equilibrium and harmony within ourselves, each other and our environment. It is an exploration of the architecture of being human and the alchemy of healing. It is based on the belief that science, medicine, psychology, the humanitarian arts, and spirituality are facets of understanding our humanity. Be.ology is my understanding of how these facets and their collective teachings are rendered together to form us. By evolving our understanding in this way, we can truly realize the truth of our being as the diamond that it is. There is more going on here than we have been taught and there is an altruistic purpose to the struggle we endure. It’s not all in vain.
