The Missing Holistic Link

Spirit, mind, body. That’s the Holy Trinity of Holism.

But something is missing. In our Cherokee way, we talk about the four directions. The East represents our spirit. The North, our mind, and the West our Body. Well, that’s three out of four…

What’s Missing? Well, the South, of course, duh! The South represents the Universe, all creation, all that is. The South acknowledges our place in the web of life, in essence, our relationships.

Interestingly, a secondary meaning associated with the South is happiness. Coincidence….? Nah!

Too often in holistic thinking we tend to treat spirit, mind and body as parts to be assembled. Once we have all the parts assembled correctly, we can turn the key and the thing runs!

But hold on a second – what if there’s no place to go? No roads for our whatever it is to navigate, no destinations for it, no infrastructure, just a smooth running machine. We can look at it and say “what a great machine” but what does it actually do except sit there idling?

It’s the same with us. Humans are part of a vast web of life, affected by everything else and affecting everything else. John Donne said “no man is an island, entire of itself.” He meant that we humans are all connected, but the Native American phrase “all my relations” carries a deeper meaning: we are not only connected, but intimately connected with everything that exists.

It is in our relationships that our life has meaning. In Christian theology, the Holy Trinity itself is a community of individuals that are inseparable, one yet several. Expand the concept to everything that is, and one comes closer to the Native concept.

Whether we live with other humans or apart, we are nevertheless part of a vast community of life in the broadest sense, joined in respect, through love, affected by and affecting everything else. We are never alone. We are always in community.

As Chief Seattle said, “Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”

Remember that the next time you go shopping. For anything.

And that’s today’s holistic health tip.

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