Source: Dave Pilla

There are innumerable views of what well-being is and approaches to its cultivation. Here is my understanding of what it means to be well, based on what I have found to be in common and resonant across a variety of spiritual teachings and perspectives from psychology and psychotherapy.

The Meaning of Well-Being

Well-being comes from feeling connected to, or one with, the here-and-now, people, and the world. Conversely, being unwell comes from feeling disconnected or isolated from the here-and-now, people, and the world. The following is an attempt to describe the experience of feeling connected and disconnected across these three dimensions.

Feeling connected to, or one with, the here-and-now may be experienced as an aware presence, aliveness, or merging of awareness and immediate sensory experience. This includes a felt connection to the sensations of our physical body and emotions. When connected to the here-and-now and engaged in some activity, our awareness is immersed in the sensory experience of that activity.

In contrast, feeling disconnected from the here-and-now may be experienced as awareness being divided, narrowed, fragmented, or cut off from the whole or parts of immediate sensory experience. When disconnected from the here-and-now, our awareness tends to be confined to or caught up in some form of thinking or cognitive activity: We’re in our heads. The experience of disconnectedness from the here-and-now may also involve involuntary mental processes that block or shift our awareness away from painful or unsettling emotions.

Feeling connected to people refers to the interpersonal bonds, the affection and care felt for and from the people in our lives. When with people, this may be experienced as an open meeting of awareness, as well as an underlying sense of trust, safety, or belonging. When alone or in unfamiliar social situations, this felt connection is maintained through our psyche containing subconscious mental representations or images of our relationships with the people we feel bonded to. The mental images of loving parents or partners, for example, as well as the emotional valence of one’s relationships with them (e.g., affection, care, trust), remains in the background of our minds, providing a sense of security and of living in a world together with them.

When disconnected or isolated from people, interpersonal contact is blocked or obstructed by some mental-emotional activity or behaviors. The experience of feeling interpersonally disconnected can vary widely, but may involve preoccupations with personal desires (e.g., to be liked or to be seen in some positive way), fears (e.g., of disapproval, criticism, rejection, or conflict), perceptions of inadequacy, inferiority, or differentness, or a sense of inauthenticity (filtering what we say and do through a facade). Interpersonal disconnectedness is maintained by a lacking or disrupted sense of bondedness in our psyche’s subconscious mental representations of our significant relationships.

When feeling connected to the world, which may be termed spiritual connectedness, the sense of division or separateness between self and world (me and not me; experiencer and experience; internal and external, etc.) is seen as a mental construction within undivided awareness. This may be experienced as a sense of being in the world, and naturally involves feeling connected to the here-and-now and to other people.

When disconnected or isolated from the world, there is a sense of division or separateness between self and world (me and not me, experiencer and experience, internal and external, etc.). The sense of self and world as separate entities, which exists in the psyche as a mental construct, is unconscious (we are unaware of it). In this state, we perceive experience unknowingly through the lens of that division or duality. This assumed separateness may be experienced as an underlying sense of insecurity or incompleteness, and may manifest emotionally (and situationally) as fear or desire in numerous forms, as well as in feelings of inadequacy.

How These Three Dimensions Relate

Feeling connected to, or one with, the here-and-now, people, and the world are very much interrelated. When connected to people, for example, we naturally feel more present with them, and when alone our internalized (mentally represented) social bonds act as a bridge that maintains a sense of connection with the world. Similarly, when feeling connected to the here-and-now, including the emotional dimension of our experience, we can more openly perceive others' emotions and experience the positivity involved in feeling connected with them.

The degree to which we feel connected to the here-and-now, people, and the world, is subject to both change and continuity, as is our whole experience of life. Our felt connectedness may fluctuate as we move through the activities, interactions, and situations of our daily lives. At the same time, the mental-emotional activity and behaviors that influence our sense of connection are reflected in biological activity — specifically, brain activity, which is organized or structured by neural connections (networks of electrochemical linkages of the brain’s nerve cells). This means that the mental-behavioral (and neural) patterns involved in our sense of connectedness tend to change only gradually. However, there is always the potential to feel connected in any given moment, in the here-and-now.

The Cultivation of Well-Being

Having defined well-being as feeling connected to, or one with, the here-and-now, people, and the world, cultivating well-being can be viewed as the process of being aware of our sense of connection across these three dimensions, learning what promotes and what impedes feeling connected for us, and adjusting our behavior accordingly.

What is your experience of feeling connected to or disconnected from the here-and-now, people, and the world? What promotes or contributes to feeling connected for you? What impedes or gets in the way of your sense of connectedness?

It may be useful to contemplate these questions to reflect on your life experience as a means of identifying certain patterns of thinking, feeling, doing, relating, etc. that may be involved in feeling connected or disconnected. However, if we really want to know rather than just conceptualize what contributes to and what gets in the way of our sense of connection, we must look to our experience of feeling connected and disconnected in our daily lives. This means observing and noticing, as it is happening, when we feel more or less connected across these dimensions.

In moments of felt connectedness or disconnectedness, if we can be aware of and recognize this quality of our experience, we can then learn directly about aspects of our experience that are promoting or impeding feeling connected. This may be most effective when approached with a spirit of openness and non-judgment: setting aside preconceived notions of what is involved in feeling connected and letting go of abstract labels of what is noticed (e.g., “good and bad”; “right and wrong”). As we experience with awareness that which contributes to and gets in the way of our sense of connection, we then may choose to orient our lives in accordance with this understanding, shifting our behaviors away from that which we know to impede feeling connected and toward that which we know to promote it.