If one is fortunate there is a time in life when we will look beyond our ordinary view of health and life in favor of a perspective that is more in accord with our capacities and possibilities as humans. This higher aspiration is usually motivated by a dramatic occurance in life - ranging from disease to loss to the recognition of our own mortality. Such moments in life force the fortunate individual to ask himself: Am I really happy? Is my life meaningful? Do I feel fully alive? Am I living my deepest truth and possibilities?"

For some these breaks in life, these transitional moments, are lost in fear, despair, denial and a grasping on to what was. But others are blessed in that they can find the proper support to guide them in using these challenging moments as transitions to a larger health, happiness, and wholeness. They ask the question that the poet Mary Oliver asks each of us: "What is there that I wish to do with this one precious and wild life of mine?"

In his Divine Comedy Dante, at age 35 says it another way:

When I had journeyed half my life's way,
I found myself in a dark forest,
For I had lost the path that does not stray.

And what is the path that was lost - the path that doesn't stray? That path is the direction that we are pointed towards by the great truths of our life. It is the path of our humanity. It is the path of a meaningful life of a vast and profound health, happiness, and wholeness. This accords with our human capacity for language, creativity, intellect, love, compassion and our ability through contemplative practice to know and re-unite with the ground of our being. This is the great truth of our precious and wild life that is lost in the forest of confused conventionality.

If living a life of our fullest potential is the most meaningful life isn't that also the pinnacle or perfection of health? Our current view of health - conventional and alternative - is largely focused on the alleviation and treatment of disease and the extension of life. This vision of medical science has given rise to many signficant accomplishments. Our lives are easier, more confortable, and extended in length. These accomplishments must be embraced by a larger view of health, but this limited biological focus - which cannot bring us a vast and profound health, happiness, and wholeness - must also be transcended by a more integral, comprehensive, and inspiring vision suitable to the human possibility.

The integral vision aims at the alleviation of all suffering - including the suffering of disease, aging and death - and a life of human flourishing. This is the most meaningful definition of health for humanity, one that embraces what we are and goes beyond our ordinary views of life and health. This lofty vision can be realized in each of our lives. First we need to personally renounce as inadequate to human life a limited and partial biological approach to health and healing. We are then free to look towards a more expansive well being, genuine happiness and sustained wholeness. At this point the proper vision and motivation will allow for the proper resources - teachings and teachers - to arise. As individuals and as a species humans will then again find the path that doesnt stray- the path to the truth of our lives, to the truth of our possibilities. The path to the perfection of health.