Eudaimonia

Eudaimonia or eudemonia, /juːdɪˈmoʊniə/) is a Greek word commonly translated as ‘happiness’ or ‘welfare’; however, more accurate translations have been proposed to be ‘human flourishing, prosperity'[1] and ‘blessedness’.[2] eu (good) daimon (spirit)

Eros brings Eudaimonia.

Carl Jung said: “Thriving in the body leads to thriving in the mind. You have to have a thriving in the body before you have thriving in the mind.”

Eudaimonia, the state of human flourishing, is deeper than emotional happiness or physical vitality. It is the result of uncovering and expressing our unique genius. To live Eudaimonically is to be fully absorbed into experience, to quiet the unsettled mind and to know a quality of connection from within ourselves to the world around us that reveals our extraordinary human gifts.

We discover it when our attention is directed and super-charged by our biology. It is the marker of all great things from enlightenment to innovation, from inspiration to intimacy. This profound presence to life is what we seek. It is a faculty that can be trained and cultivated. From here it can be directed into what matters most to you. Whatever you do, you will do it better.

At some level we each know this. We have tasted moments when something broke through in our ordinary lives and we felt lit from within. Perhaps we were listening to a Mozart concerto or watching a break dancer on the street. Perhaps we were in a creative endeavor and genius struck like a bolt from the blue. These moments, almost otherworldly, change us and change what we believe possible.

These are the moments of Eudaimonia, moments that can become something more permanent: a way of living, an evolving stage in our lives. The shift comes from within. It takes time. It takes effort. It is possible.

We all want the same basic things: to create, to contribute, to connect and to feel intimacy. Eudaimonic happiness—quest for meaning and purpose.

The Romans named the energies of the calling on your life your “genius;” the Greeks, your “daimon;” and the Christians your “guardian angel.” The Romantics, like the poet Keats, said the call came from the heart, and Michelangelo’s intuitive eye saw an image in the heart of the person he was sculpting. The Neoplatonists referred to an imaginal body, the “ochema,” that carried you like a chariot or a boat. It was your personal bearer or support. For some, it is Lady Luck or Fortuna; for others a genie or jinn. In Egypt, it might have been the “ka,” or the “ba” with whom you could converse. Among the people we refer to as Eskimos and others who follow shamanistic practices, it is your spirit, your free-soul, your animal-soul, your breath. American psychologist James Hillman said, “This genius belongs to everyone. No person is a genius or can be a genius, because the genius or daimon or angel is an invisible nonhuman escort, not the person with whom the genius lives.” The music of a Miles Davis or a Kendrick comes through them, lived or lives in them, that is their genius and it, if we are lucky, is given to the world to experience.

This genius, or “daimon” as Hillman called it, shows up when we are in a state of Eudaimonia (pronounced you-die-mo-NEE-uh), the ultimate end or goal of all human life as described by Aristotle in Ancient Greece long before the birth of Christ. Eudaimonia is Aristotle’s word for the concept of an ultimate end or goal in human life; the reason we do everything else. You can’t really define it as happiness because it is so much bigger and more important than that. Eudaemonia is human flourishing, and it implies a reaching toward goals, ends, and values.

Your daimon = your internal blueprint from the James Hillman idea that an acorn has a blueprint to become an oak tree and that we have that within us. We activate our natural evolution with more Eros. We dissolve programs in the rational mind. We change locked somatic patterns. When the cortex is relaxed we can see the deeper truth or the daimon.

OM is a practice that produces the much researched state of peak consciousness in an optimal way. More accelerated than mindfulness or yoga and less volatile than psychedelics or life/death extreme sport flow states: Om exists in the middle with repeatable predictable contained results of a quality nature while offering safety protocols that make it scalable without medical mediation. In itself this is exceptional, but OM positively reinforces human connection. OM as a paired practice that produces peak consciousness as the result of human connection is iterative in its fundamental healing potential.