Imagine you are a huge bodybuilder who can lift 1000 lb weights. A little 4-year-old boy is watching this and gets fascinated. He comes to you and says,” I want to be like you. Can you give me weights like yours. I will lift them too”.
Of course, you are not going to hand over your weights to the little boy!! They will crush him in a second!
You will start him off with maybe a 1 lb. weight. You will tell him to practice daily. You will say to him he can use anything around him as a weight to lift and carry as he goes about his daily business. Right?
As the boy keeps practicing, his stamina will increase, and he will be able to move on to bigger weights little by little. It is a step-by-step process; otherwise, he can injure himself badly.
If so much daily practice is needed to build the body at the gross level, imagine the training it takes to build our stamina to get through all the subtle layers to let our Spirit-self shine through?
So what is this Spiritual Practice? There are millions of methods and techniques! We all differ as to which technique or method is best suited for us. (You may want to read my earlier article – There is no one like you!)
Regardless of the methods or paths, the purpose is to remember that I am the Spirit/Soul, not the body. We have to separate our identity from Body Self and Spirit Self.
When you put clothes on your body, do you say, “I am my clothes”? Do you become your clothes? Do you say I’m purple because my clothes are purple? You know the clothes on your body are temporary. You know you are separate from your clothes. You are ‘aware ‘that your clothes are different from your body.
So it is with Soul and Body. The body is temporary. We are not our bodies. We are a Soul (ATMA in Sanskrit) that has taken on a body, just like we put clothes on our body.
But we all can practice ‘remembering’ in our daily lives as we go about our daily activities. This ‘remembering,’ this ‘awareness’ is called Witness Consciousness (Sakshi Bhaav in Sanskrit), also known as Krishna Consciousness or Christ Consciousness.
This awareness is a direct result of Meditation. It doesn’t have to be and shouldn’t be just some practice we do for a few minutes or an hour sitting down somewhere. We can make our whole day a meditation.
Here are some of the ways:
1. Stop a few times, or even when waiting in the grocery line or at a long traffic stop, during the day to take 2-3 slow deep breaths each time, not from the chest but the belly. Put all your attention on inhalation and exhalation and feel it completely.
Here is an interesting experiment: Hold your breath for a few seconds. What do you notice? Did you see there are No Thoughts while you are holding your breath? !!!
Breathing is connected to the mind with all its thoughts and chatter. When the soul leaves the body, there is no breath and no Mind. Breath and mind are characteristics of the body, not the Spirit.
2. Be aware, be conscious of what you are thinking, saying, doing, feeling. It is like watching yourself as a person outside of you would watch you.
3. For 20 minutes or so, sit without interruptions and write down anything and everything you are thinking and feeling, without censoring any part of it, exactly how it is flowing. Don’t stop to finish a sentence if another thought interrupts; write the next thought. ( Later, you can discard the writing if you don’t want anyone to read any of your ramblings ;-))
This practice has so many benefits! e.g.-
- You will feel lighter, mentally and emotionally!
- You will notice how repetitive your thoughts can be and how they contribute to the mind’s constant chatter.
- After a few times of this practice, you will notice that you are getting solutions to any nagging issues you might have.
- You will develop more clarity of thought
- It will help you become more conscious of your thought process
More tips and tricks will follow in future posts.
Practice, practice, practice these daily anywhere, everywhere….it is free!
God gave us free air to breathe, and Thank God our breathing system is all automatic and effortless!! Imagine if we could only breathe if we focused on it? Sometimes we take for granted what is freely given to us!
Our heart is pumping, and our body is digesting food automatically. Imagine if we had to pump the heart and digest the food manually by our effort? How many of us would survive that?
For every single step we take, how many muscles, bones, nerves, organs work together to make each step possible? Imagine if we had to coordinate all that ourselves for our every single movement!! Gosh, we’d last maybe 5 minutes. Our brains would explode trying to coordinate and keep up with all that effort!!
All we have to do is put in the effort to control and manage our minds! Mind is the only self-created, self-perpetuated, self-maintained aspect that makes us run and run in circles like crazy; delusional of its grandiosity; controlling our lives!
We are Divine Love; it is all around us; it’s pouring on us and through us, but when mindless chatter and unconscious emotions interfere, we cannot experience our True Nature. Once the mind settles and Witness Consciousness flowers, our hearts open up to feel and enjoy the Divine Love.
Blessed Be!
Ritu
