Words From The Master: 13 Feb 2008

Entering into Meditation
(continuation from earlier post)

Not only suppressed emotions, but our poor habits also cause disturbances in our body. The body is a purely physical mechanism. Naturally, it will be affected by how you eat, sleep, exercise and rest. As I always say, all your diseases are your guests! You invite them upon your head with your careless treatment of your body.

For example, when you eat something spicy, your eyes begin to water. Your body is protesting, I can’t handle this! But do you listen? NO!

When you watch TV till midnight, your whole system is screaming, I need rest! But as usual, you ignore the body. Be very clear: your body has its own wisdom. You are completely out of tune with your ‘body intelligence’. Your body is continuously giving you signals, but you don’t have the sense to understand these signals.

Why do we eat?

The simplest explanation would be, To get energy.

But does your food actually energize you? After a meal, do you feel energetic or sleepy? Most of us feel sleepy!

Because our choice of food is poor, and because we continue to eat long after our stomach tells us it is full. We throw anything and everything into our stomachs. We simply throw food into our system as if it were a garbage bin! We treat our stomachs like garbage bins. With every meal, we are taxing our digestive system. No wonder we don’t feel energetic after eating!

When you eat excessively, when you don’t exercise enough – these lead to lethargy. A lethargic body is completely unfit for meditation. Not only that, diseases attack the body easily when our energy levels are low.

Exercise can help you expand. When you exercise, every living cell of your body expands. When your lungs are filled with oxygen, along with the carbon-dioxide that is expelled, the impurities are also thrown out.

In our lifestyle, we don’t have time for either exercise or rest. What we call rest is not restful. How many of us wake up feeling energetic and joyful? If you have rested properly, you should dance your way to the bathroom every morning!
Instead, when the alarm goes off in the morning, what do you do? Switch it off and go back to sleep!

Real sleep is when the body is totally at rest, when all its stress is released, when your systems can take care of all repair and maintenance work. How often do we enjoy deep, undisturbed, dreamless sleep? Very rarely! But be very clear, only on those days have you actually slept!

You may be wondering, what does all this have to do with meditation? There are two reasons we are discussing this subject. The first thing is, a physically fit body helps you enter deeply into meditation. But more importantly, practising meditation itself can help you rest better. We will be looking at techniques which will enhance the quality of your sleep. When the quality of your sleep improves, the quality and productivity of your waking hours increases naturally.

(to be continued)
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This excerpt has been taken from the book: "Meditation is for You" -- an introduction to the science and art of meditation