The core wellness is also endless

One of the concepts I most appreciate in this work is the core paradox (also sometimes known as the core wound/wellness paradox). It describes an aspect of reality clearly and in a way that I had not read about or experienced when I started this spiritual path.

When exploring the core paradox as students and teachers in this work, I think there is a lot of well-deserved focus on deepening in feeling the core wound. This can show up as increasingly deeply feeling/experiencing the ways in which it’s really hard to be here and the (at times) excruciating discomfort and confusion from being finite and infinite simultaneously.

What I think is less often focused on and explored are the benefits of deepening realization and experiencing of core wellness. I get this may not resonate for people at some stages of the work, such as in the rot when nothing seems to work or you feel like some kind of spiritual failure. Overall though, I think there is so much that could be missed out on by not allowing ourselves to experience the gifts that are part of the core wellness.

The way I usually discuss and talk about the core wellness is a subtle sense of wellness at the core of everything. It is not that things are amazing or really great at the core (it is called the core wellness after all and not the core greatness), but instead they can feel a good bit better than average in a grounded way. To put it another way, there can be a feeling-sense that in Being there is this positive sense whether it is that the universe is fundamentally okay, you are fundamentally okay, or something along these lines.

In addition to this dimension of the core wellness, I think there are also dimensions of the All that can be experienced as being just as blissful, loving, strong, and resilient as the experiences that the core wound can feel uncomfortable. I would postulate this as being more of a “both/and” than an “either/or” type of situation. It can feel deeply true that both “it is really (!) hard to be here” and, for example, “the universe is this truly benevolent place infused with Love that stretches beyond limits.” It has been a gradual, yet profound, shift for me both within myself and in my work with my students to explore these dimensions of wellness and let in a fuller range of the infinite, both the discomforts and the blessings.

Perhaps it would be better to distinguish these positive transpersonal dimensions of reality from the subtle, yet all-pervading wellness that is often called the core wellness, or perhaps this is a dimension of the core wellness that is just often not discussed in my experience. I do think a fuller integration of the All would need to include the endlessness of both the feeling of being limited and the endlessness of the transpersonal blessings.

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