Rediscovering Wholeness

Remembering Who We Really Are

Author: Esther Sarlo, BA | Founder and Visionary ~ Mynd Myself

It’s easy to think of your life as separate pieces. Your physical health. Your mynd. Your emotions. Your spirituality. Your relationships. Your work. Your purpose.

As humans, we often examine them separately. We treat them separately. We even measure our progress separately. We have come to expect healing to happen separately.

But what if you’ve been spending all this time trying to understand yourself by looking at the pieces instead of looking at the whole?

Imagine standing just inches away from a magnificent stained-glass window. All you can see is a fragment of blue. A sliver of gold. A curve of green. A splash of red. Each piece is beautiful in its own right, but impossible to understand in isolation. It is only when you step back that the whole picture begins to emerge.

Perhaps your life is like that too.

What if wholeness has never been about finding missing pieces? What if it’s about recognizing the wholeness that has been waiting beneath the layers all along?

I don’t believe wholeness is something we create. I believe it’s something we remember.

Seeing the Bigger Picture

One of the greatest gifts of complementary and integrative health is that it invites you to take a wider view. Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with this one part of me?”, it gently asks a different question:

“What might the whole of me be trying to say?”

That shift changes everything.

Symptoms still matter. Diagnoses still matter. Treatments still matter. But they become part of a much larger conversation.

Your body is not an isolated machine made up of unrelated systems. It is a living network, constantly communicating within itself and with the world around it.

Your thoughts influence your biology. Your beliefs influence your choices. Your environment shapes your resilience. Your relationships affect your nervous system. Your purpose often affects your vitality.

Nothing exists in isolation…and neither do you. As Albert Einstein observed, we often experience ourselves as separate from the rest of the universe. He suggested that our task is to widen our circle of compassion.

Perhaps this is one of the greatest invitations of our time—not simply to gather more information, but to begin seeing more connections within and without.

More Than the Sum of Our Parts

For generations, we’ve become increasingly skilled at understanding individual parts. We’ve learned to specialize, measure, diagnose, and categorize. Those advances have given us many benefits. But somewhere along the way, have we begun believing that if we understood every individual piece, we would automatically understand the whole?

I believe life rarely works that way.

A symphony is more than a collection of notes and instruments. A forest is more than a gathering of trees. A family is more than a group of people who share the same name. And a human being is far more than a collection of organs, emotions, thoughts, memories, experiences, and beliefs.

Something extraordinary emerges through the relationship among the parts.

Perhaps that’s what wholeness really is. Not perfection. Not having every area of your life neatly organized. Not the absence of illness or struggle. But living with an increasing awareness that every part of your life influences every other part.

Perhaps we’ve spent so much time looking at the pieces that we’ve forgotten to step back. Have we become so accustomed to asking, “What’s wrong?” that we’ve stopped asking, “What is this trying to show me?”

And that doesn’t necessarily mean every illness has a deeper meaning, that every challenge has an obvious lesson. Sometimes a broken bone is simply a broken bone. An infection needs treatment. A diagnosis deserves thoughtful care.

Wholeness isn’t about replacing good medicine with a different philosophy. It’s about recognizing that healing often happens when we care for our whole selves, not just the ‘condition.’

Perhaps that’s why the most meaningful conversations about health are changing. They’re no longer asking only, “What do you have?”

They’re also asking…

• How are you living?
• What nourishes you?
• What drains you?
• What brings you joy?
• What relationships support you?
• What gives your life meaning?

Not to replace medical care…but to simply expand the conversation.

And sometimes, that changes everything. Because looking at the whole picture is where remembering begins.

Something particularly meaningful to me is going outside to our small garden each day. Standing on the earth—even for a few minutes—tending to the bright flowers, aromatic herbs, and flowing greens gives me breathing space from the constant pull of my to-do lists.

When I intentionally ground myself, it helps me remember who I am…and then return to my routines more refreshed and vital.

Remembering Who You Are

If you’ve spent years looking at life through separate pieces, you may be feeling separate too. Separate from your body. Separate from nature. Separate from others. Sometimes even separate from your ‘self.’

Have you become so busy managing life that you’ve forgotten to experience it? Have you become so focused on fixing yourself that you’ve overlooked everything that is already working beautifully?

Your heart continues beating. Your lungs continue breathing. Your cells continually repair, replace, and renew. Your body works tirelessly on your behalf, often without a single conscious thought from you.

Your body has never been your enemy. It has really been your most faithful messenger. Your body has been communicating with you your entire life.

Not only through pain…but through energy. Through fatigue. Through calm. Through tension. Through joy. Through intuition. Through the unmistakable feeling that something just ‘isn’t right.’

The question isn’t whether your body has been speaking. The question is whether you’ve been able to listen.

Not because your body has all the answers. But because it has always been a significant part of the conversation. As Mary Oliver said,

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

What if your first step toward wholeness isn’t adding something new? What if it’s noticing what has been there all along?

Maybe that’s why moments in nature feel so restorative. Why meaningful conversations feel so nourishing. Why music can suddenly move you to tears. Why a hug from someone you love can calm your nervous system in ways words never could.

For those few exquisite moments, you stop living as a collection of separate pieces. You are simply present…and dare I say, whole.

And perhaps that’s what remembering really is. Not remembering facts. Not remembering the past. But remembering the deep truth of who you are.

Perhaps you’ve simply been standing too close to that stained glass window to see the breathtaking design.

Living in Relationship with the Universe

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
     ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Across cultures and throughout history, humans have searched for meaning. We’ve searched for why we’re here and where we belong. And perhaps, above all, we’ve searched for how we fit into something larger than ourselves.

Many wisdom traditions have suggested that we are part of something far greater than ourselves. Whether through ancient wisdom, spiritual traditions, or emerging scientific models, the invitation is similar—to remember that we are far more interconnected than we have been led to believe, and perhaps have never been separate in the first place.

More recently, some scientists have begun exploring these ideas through entirely different language. One contemporary perspective I find fascinating comes from physicist, Nassim Haramein’s unified physics model. It proposes that we exist in a continuous relationship with the universe around us—the “unified field.” Every breath becomes an exchange. Every moment becomes part of an ongoing conversation between ourselves and the larger field of life.

Whether you see this as science, philosophy, spirituality, metaphor, or simply an invitation to wonder isn’t really the point. What matters is the question to consider:

What if life isn’t happening to you?

What if, in countless seen and unseen ways, life is happening with you?

What if living in relationship with the universe isn’t about understanding everything?

What if it’s about participating more consciously and intentionally?

About remembering that every choice, thought, act of kindness, moment of gratitude, and expression of love becomes part of something much larger than just yourself.

And maybe, just maybe, that wholeness has been there all along…waiting for you to notice it.

“The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.
And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice,
there is little we can do to change;
until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”
     ~ R.D. Laing, Scottish Psychiatrist, author

“May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.”
     ~ John O’Donohue, Irish Poet, philosopher, author, and former Catholic priest

An Invitation

The invitation isn’t to become someone new.

It’s simply to pause. To step back from the stained-glass window.

To notice the colours you hadn’t seen before.

To recognize that what once appeared to be scattered pieces may have been part of something beautiful all along.

I believe healing is not about fixing ourselves…it’s about remembering ourselves.

Remembering that:

• Your body is not separate from your mind.
• Your thoughts influence your choices.
• Your relationships shape your wellbeing.
• Your connection with nature, with others, and perhaps even with something greater than yourself, is not incidental. It is part of what makes you whole.

Wholeness has never been about perfection.

It has never required having every answer, making every right decision, or living without challenge.

It simply invites you to become a little more aware. A little more present. A little more connected.

To yourself.
To others.
To life.

Wholeness isn’t the destination…
it’s the journey of remembering.

Not to become someone or something else.
But to remember who you already are…

Whole.