When a person experiences a health issue or symptom, it is natural to look for causes in their lifestyle.
To observe:
What and how one eats
What one does in the hours before sleep
What one does first thing in the morning
How active one is
Which beverages one consumes
What one's occupational situation is like
What the childhood situation was like
etc...
A review of one's outer life can be mapped out and brought into focus this way.
One can even do measurements of blood, shit, spit, hair and other bodily functions.
This is a natural course: to observe the life this person has lived so far.
Based on that data, protocols can be described, vitamins added and hormetic stimuli proposed.
When man* is only taken as a natural phenomenon - "that's just how it goes..." a rather mechanistic-natural view of course - this seems to be the ultimate way to go about health.
And what health can be defined as...
This picture, however, as you can see all around you in our current world-mind construct that is crumbling, is incomplete.
Reality is that which resists it. It's a half truth (probably a lot less).
Lived life can for sure influence health and be harmful, without a doubt.
Just as well can unlived life be harmful and influence health.
Think of:
Impulses, chances one has missed
Life plans that are desired but not fulfilled
Directions one wants to explore that are left in the mist
A deep longing that is not heard
Inner intention that one is not loyal to or is hard to unfold in one's current way of living
When all the protocols, special exercises, cold and hot therapies, and all the gadgets that measure physical parameters are applied to man's outer life and have stopped having a beneficial effect...
the realization can grow that "man" goes beyond what we consider natural. A deeper inquiry is demanded.
One has arrived at the abyss of protocol-application and building oneself.
A time for self-honest inquiry arrives that as a reward opens doors to inner needs, possibilities, potentials that demand presence - sometimes urgent, obvious presence.
Symptoms, from this point of arrival in one's inner life, are not only to be treated but to be given one's whole soul-presence.
To fully be allowed to show us in front of our mind's eye what is going on and what needs to be attended to.
This does not mean one must rush towards what one realizes to bring it into forced existence.
Rather, feeding one's intention with what one sees and asking oneself if one's actions are given appropriately to it can already bring about a change in inner mood and at-peaceness with oneself.
Able to "stand oneself."
In this sense the unlived life informs. Its seeming harm is not punishment but a signaling function that orients.
This is not natural of course, unless one suspends one's belief that Nature itself does not Live.
What is your unlived life trying to tell you?
What is it, through you, that wants to move?
In Search Of ...
*Man in its etymological sense means thinker (Sanskrit, manas = thinking principle)
John Barnwell on the healing Grail question:
“Brother, what ails you?”
Steven Pressfield in his War of Art:
Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.
A couple of lines from Ibn Al Arabi's poem Alone with the Alone:
I have called you so often and you have not heard Me. I have shown Myself to you so often and you have not seen Me.
Karl Jaspers:
Man becomes what he becomes through the thing he makes his own.
Some have asked if I sell these small-sized wooden balls (500gr-2kg): yes, I have a handful for sale. Only for pick-up in Antwerp - just reply on this mail.
PS: Join an upcoming event?
Urban Reheat Antwerp: March 28, 2026, 9:00–12:00, Studio Carwash, Antwerp – Book Your Spot
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Spring Reheat Weekend: May 14-17, 2026, Galicia, Spain – 3-day deep practice Last spot with accommodation. – Join our intimate group
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