Gurudeva’s Toolbox for a Spiritual Life

WEAR THE BODY LIKE A SANDAL

Feeling sick? Working to be healthy?

Many wonder about physical pain, how to keep reminded that we are a spiritual being, when we have a period of our life going through physical pain, illness and unhappiness. Well, we must remember one basic thing. We are not our physical body, not our emotions, not our minds nor our intellect. We are the beautiful soul that is shrouded by external mind, or covered up by emotions. We live in a physical body, live in an astral body. The real you is living inside, whatever your physical body is going through, whatever the emotions you are going through or whatever your intellect is dealing with.§

Siva’s devotees know wellness is balance. If the imbalance called illness occurs, they apply self-healing, then resort as needed to such arts as ayurveda, acupuncture, chiropractic, allopathy, pranic healing or massage. §

Siva’s devotees do not indulge in inordinate concerns about food, undue physical worries or extensive personal health studies other than ayurveda. They avoid extreme diets, except under medical supervision. §

According to ayurveda, not eating too much is the greatest thing you can do for health if you want a long life, ease in meditation and a balanced, happy mind. That is why, for thousands of years, yogis, sadhus and meditators have eaten moderately. There is almost nothing, apart from smoking and drugs, that hurts the body more than excessive eating, and excessive eating has to be defined in both the amount of food and the quality of food. If you are regularly eating rich, processed, dead foods, then you are not following mitahara, which is moderateness in appetites, and you will have rich, finely processed, dead, dredged-up-from-the-past karmic experiences that will ruin your marriage, wreak havoc on your children and send you early to the funeral pyre. The body knows no wisdom as to shoulds and should-nots. It would eat and drink itself to death if it had its way, given its own instinctive intelligence. It is the mind that controls the body and emotions and must effect this restraint for its own preservation, health and wellness of being, to avoid the emptiness of “sick-being.”

§

image

§

MORE TOOLS FOR
PHYSICAL WELL-BEING
§

  • Don’t dwell on physical ailments overmuch. Most resolve themselves, given time.

  • Follow an ayurvedic diet and lifestyle.

  • Learn ways of self-healing and apply them promptly, not letting illnesses become chronic.