By James LeGrand -

Healthcare Reform in the United States has been getting a lot of press lately, and one thing seems certain; we continue to place a monetary value on life. Something that should be a right is being used for extreme profit and individuals all across the world pay the price. No matter where you are in the world, you cannot count on a government or privatized healthcare system. It’s time to depend on yourself for the best care in the world.

There are 4 areas of health that should be focused on and they exist in the following hierarchy: Spiritual Health, Intellectual Health, Emotional Health & Physical Health.

Think of each level as including the levels below it. When we address our spiritual health, we are in effect including the other areas. What most of us do is address only our physical health, and we only do that when we want physical pain to go away or to be more visually pleasing. This article will take you through all 4 levels, beginning with the lowest level and moving towards the highest.

Physical Health
The physical health level is really where we see the results of our view of the world. It is where symptoms of problems show themselves when we do not pay attention to the other signs we receive from the other levels. As an example, a person that went through a bitter divorce 25 years ago, but still holds on to the anger associated with that relationship may later develop cancer, ulcers, or asthma. These are all conditions associated with holding on to anger, or feelings of being trapped by anger. We will treat the physical symptom of the much deeper issue, but we very rarely look for the source of the problem, which lies in our thinking. Caroline Myss publishes wonderful material about this phenomenon, if you are interested in understanding this point further.

The other side to physical health is understanding that while you are not your body, you as soul experience the physical realm through your body. Your body is a container. Actually, it’s more like a vehicle. So as a visualization, your body is the car that gets you from here to there and back again, and you (soul) are the driver. Your senses are like the indicators on a car dashboard. They collect and communicate data about the environment around you, about the status of the vehicle, and they can alert you to potential physical issues.

When your car breaks down, you are stuck without transportation. The same is true of your body. When it is severely damaged, it will limit your mobility. When the damage is taken to the extreme, it can no longer hold the driver. Also, you can have small issues that mount up to cause a major breakdown. Most of us actually take better care of our cars and homes than we do ourselves. We’ll spend the extra dollars on our cars for top-notch oil, regular car maintenance appointments, and carefully watch the miles we put on it. However, we will not pay extra money for more healthy and natural foods, regular doctor and dentist appointments, and ensure that we are receiving enough water and rest.

Emotional Health
The emotional health level deals with our ups and our downs, and the lack of balance we feel emotionally. We have poor emotional health when we allow our emotions to run back and forth between extremes, or when we give our ability to control our emotions over to someone else. The extremes we run may be between depression and high points of temporary happiness. It may be between anger and indifference. It may be between cockiness and insecurity. Poor emotional health also results when we allow others to “push our buttons.” In reality, we are simply reacting to them in the way that we always react to a similar situation. We have an emotional trigger that someone has figured out how to set off. Our conditioned response kicks in, and we feel as if we are out of control of the results.

Good emotional health lies within a middle approach to our emotions and within taking responsibility for how we respond emotionally. For example, between cockiness and insecurity lies a healthy confidence and courage. Between anger and indifference lies blamelessness and forgiveness. Between depression and temporary happiness lies healthy self-esteem and bliss. The key to stopping the emotional extremes is to center oneself in the middle of situations. In learning how not to take things so personally or to ignore them completely is the key to seriously looking at and taking responsibility for your emotions. Your emotional response is always your decision, regardless of whether or not you consciously make that decision. And when our emotional health is poor, we can feel the effects physically.

The other side to good emotional health is taking responsibility for your emotional responses. Eleanor Roosevelt once stated, “No one can hurt your feelings without your permission.” In other words, people do and say what they will, and you choose how you will respond to it. We are so used to playing the victim role in our lives to escape responsibility that we habitually respond the same way in like situations over and over again. To us it feels as if someone else always controls how we feel. In actuality, you decide how you will feel each and every time. When you choose to take on that responsibility, you take away the emotional remote control you previously gave away to anyone that wanted to push your buttons.

Intellectual Health
Our intellectual health deals with how we think about ourselves, other people, and the world around us. This is the level of our thoughts, beliefs, and judgments. Poor intellectual health consists of self-limiting beliefs and the trafficking of judgments. Self-limiting beliefs are those beliefs we invest our energy into that prevents us from being all that we can be. Examples may be, “I’m not deserving of a lot of money,” “I’ll never find love,” “They will never promote me,” “Beautiful women aren’t attracted to me,” “There are no good single men out there,” and “I don’t deserve the very best.”

What happens is that we create and believe these self-limiting beliefs, and then our actions flow from them. So, when we believe that we don’t deserve a lot of money, we don’t seek, and are not open to, opportunities to create wealth. When we believe that we will never find love, we simply stop trying, and we may even reject what appears to be love because we can’t believe it is possible for us. When we believe that beautiful women or handsome and good single men are not available or interested in us, we don’t see them when they are right in front of us, and we don’t believe they can be really attracted to us, even when they show us all the signs. When you don’t believe that you deserve the best, ask yourself what you are willing to accept.

Judgments create mental barriers between the truth and us. When you believe that someone is ugly based on whatever criteria you use, you fail to see the beauty they also possess. When you judge someone as bad, you may have caught them in a rare moment, but will never know what value they can add to your life because of how you decided to now see them. Your judgment prevents you from seeing anything other than your judgment. In essence, you’ve made a decision about how you will see that person going forward. The phrase, “the first impression is a lasting one,” testifies to the affect our judgments have on people. With little to no information about a person or situation, we quickly judge it and see it in that light for a very long time or even until our death. Even when all subsequent behavior and situations run counter to your judgment, you hold onto it as if it were the most valuable thing on earth.

Good intellectual health is clear of mental blocks and free of judgments. Instead of having self-limiting beliefs, you see that all is possible. Rather than judgments, you observe the truth about this moment. When you free yourself of self-limiting beliefs, you stop asking why something isn’t possible for you and begin asking how you can bring what you desire to fruition. You no longer search for reasons why you can’t have something, and instead search for how to make it possible.

Many millionaires failed at several different businesses before they found success. They knew they could do it. They just needed to find the right combination of planning, materials, and process to make it possible. Success was never in question. Finding a way to that success was what they focused on. Regardless of what it is you would like in your life, you must first believe that it is possible. By doing so, you release the creative genius that is trapped in your subconscious mind, and you allow your soul to provide some direction through intuition towards what you seek.

Next, you must believe that you deserve it. In truth, there is no such thing as deserving or not deserving something. That is something that we made up in society as a way of controlling the behaviors of others. If you do this, then you are deserving, but if you don’t, or you do that, you are not deserving. Spiritual truth is significantly higher than societal truth, and the spiritual truth is that abundance is available for everyone. You need only realize that it is yours for the taking. To believe that you are not deserving is to create another self-limiting belief. It is only true if you believe it to be.

Lastly, remain observant to the opportunities that will come pouring into your life. They may have always been there, but you may not have been able to see them. Or, because of your change in thought, you are now attracting opportunity to you. Either way, look for the opportunities that can lead you where you want to go, and then pursue them with the confidence that you can do it.

Freedom from judgment is the other side of good intellectual health. When you observe the truth of the moment, you aren’t making a declaration as to what someone or something is. Rather, you are stating what that person or situation is expressing now. So, when you see a guy slam a door in anger, you don’t label him an angry person. Instead, you understand that right now, he is angry.

The judgment that he is an angry person will have you see him that way regardless of how pleasant he is. However, the observation that he is angry right now allows for him to not be angry in the next moment. Rather than putting a label on him to wear for all eternity, you are allowing yourself to see what else is to this individual. You can observe what he is expressing in every moment you are in his presence, which will give you much stronger indications as to the type of person he is. Just as no one knows everything there is to know about you, you cannot know everything there is to know about him. So by observing instead of judging, you are allowing for that which you do not know about him to become known.

Spiritual health is the understanding of who you really are. Good spiritual health allows you to see that you are a part of spiritual energy and that same energy of creation is a part of you. In essence you are it and it is you. Everything is of spiritual energy. Therefore, everything is connected through spiritual energy. When you understand this truth, you begin to see that you can understand other people by seeking internally to understand yourself. Rather than searching for God out there in the heavens somewhere, you know that you only need to look internally to see that the energy of God has been inside of you all along. You carry within you the answer to every question ever asked or that has yet to be asked. You are infinity extended in all directions. Everyone and everything is simply an individual expression of that oneness.

To see this oneness in all things will change how you interact with the world. You will see yourself inside of each and every person you encounter. You will see the world in multiple dimensions, and not just the one dimension (surface) that we rely on today. You will understand that energy is all there is, and that everything is energy. Rather than seeing the permanence of everything, you will see that everything is transitioning into something else. Everything is a process. Change is the only constant. When you meditate or pray for something to manifest in your life, that prayer is extended inwardly, and you know that it must be created, because you and the creative energy are one.

Poor spiritual health is seeing everything as separate and seeing who we are as the body we inhabit. Just in seeing that everything is separate, competition and indifference to the suffering of others is automatically born. You will not see yourself in other people because to you, who they are is separate and distinct from you. The mantra here is, “every man for himself.” When someone is having a difficulty, you think, “better him than me.” When you have a struggle, you ask, “why me.” When you pray, it is more of a hope that this being you call God will choose to not victimize you anymore and bring you what you request. Friends are people that don’t cause you pain and that bring you pleasure. Enemies are people you see as standing in the way of your happiness or ushering pain into your life. You see yourself as either victimizer or victim depending on the circumstances.

Good spiritual health dictates that you need no one’s approval, because everything is an expression of the same source. Poor spiritual health produces good and bad, benevolent and evil, and right and wrong. Good spiritual health teaches that you are born to express the spiritual energy that lies at your center. Poor spiritual health teaches that you were born evil from day one, and that you must be delivered from that evil through organized religious rituals by those that are “appointed” to speak with God on your behalf. Good spiritual health will show you that every moment of your life is a spiritual expression. Poor spiritual health ensures that certain moments, locations, and clothing are sacred, while others are of the devil.

Good spiritual health says that everything is one. Poor spiritual health shows us a battle between God and Satan (or whatever the comparable gladiators are in your way of thinking), which will determine our fates. Good spiritual health says that heaven exists in every moment of life, and that we can experience it if we allow ourselves to. Poor spiritual health says that the God that loves you will send you to hell if you don’t do what He says through your “free will” and will send you to heaven if you do. Good spiritual health promotes unconditional love at all times. Poor spiritual health promotes conditional love based on the good or evil that you do in life.

Of the four areas of health, spiritual health is the most powerful. It is up to you to see that by taking a spiritual approach to the various areas of your life, you can have health in all areas of your life. To see yourself as separate and distinct, to give your power to communicate with divinity away to someone else, and to live as both victim and victimizer is the life you live today, which is not working towards your bliss and internal peace. Good spiritual health is to live within heaven on earth, while poor spiritual health is to live a hellish existence on earth. Both are here and now, and both are within your choice to experience and express.

James LeGrand is an Author, Life Strategist, and the publisher of http://www.SpiritualIndividual.com, a free weekly newsletter that presents solutions to life’s issues through the lens of self-help, wisdom, philosophy and spirituality. He is the author of an Amazon.com best seller in Religion and Spirituality titled Evolve!, and an Expert Author with EzineArticles.com & SelfGrowth.com. James LeGrand is also  former Radio Personality, and a Sifu in Shaolin Kungfu, which has been known for centuries as a pathway to spiritual enlightenment.

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