The road back to Self demands discipline. Ego’s not going to take being stood up lying down. It will likely use all the tricks in the book to take power back. We need discipline in body and mind to stay on course.
Physical discipline
If we don’t take care of our body, where are we going to live? – Unknown
With regards to food, if you’re wanting to get places, you’re going to have to stop putting junk into your means of getting there. It’s a simple case of garbage in – garbage out. By over-eating and eating the wrong foods, we get lethargic and our senses become dulled. An over-heavy body limits movement and well-being. As we practice good eating habits, our body’s nutritional needs become clearer. If we pay attention to its messages, we become our own healers. As an ex-bulimic, I know how long and hard this journey can be. Furthermore, besides enough rest and sleep, we need exercise to keep our bodies oxygenated, strong and flexible.
Our energy body looking after too. Eating fresh foods still alive with energy is best, since we take in the vibrational frequency of what we eat. Energy levels are highest in fruit and vegetables which we have grown ourselves. The physical body is a product of the energy body. All imbalance starts in the aura and can be dealt with there before it enters the body. With techniques such as Reiki, we can clear and heal anything amiss before it becomes a physical dis-ease.
As much as we want to blame circumstances beyond our control, deterioration and sickness remain our choice.
Mental discipline
Make sure that your worst enemy is not living between your own two ears – Laird Hamilton
Before I learnt a measure of mental discipline, I lived in fear of my own mind. Here are some tricks I use to tame it, so it works for me and not against me:
Just as I don’t put junk into my body, I don’t put junk into my mind.
I set aside regular periods of solitude to quieten my mind. I make relaxing there a conscious, directed activity. I retreat in order to engage constructively with the world again. In this way, I keep a balance between going within and venturing out.
In silence and peace, we grow. We do our work in the world, but inwardly we keep quiet. Then answers come to us. Realized people are very quiet – Nisargadatta Maharaj
I meditate. Meditation is mental exercise. It builds our capacity to focus. We learn to centre ourselves, empty the mind of thought, hold a thought and let go of a thought at will. These basic skills are crucial. By slowing down thought, we slow down the world. This means we deepen our experience of it and it becomes more satisfying. We allow Self to lead. Self doesn’t clamour for attention, it waits until the mind is silent enough so we can hear it. Meditation is time in Self without mind and body. We return to expanded consciousness, which is our natural state of being.
The more I want to avoid quiet and meditation, the more I actually need it. If I escape into busy-ness, I am affirming that the world of matter is more important than the world of spirit. Yet spirit creates matter.
We should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day unless we’re too busy. Then we should sit for an hour – Sukhraj S. Dhillon
During meditation, I take my attention away from issues I may have been stewing in. I give myself a break from the emotional grip of unwelcome thoughts. As I let go of the cramp of the mind, my whole body relaxes. I feel myself softening and love returns. As the grip of mind loosens, my whole Being can step in to find constructive solutions. The tug of war, the emotion around the issue, dissolves. Then, quietly and almost as an afterthought, the solution appears, or the issue resolves itself.
We cannot solve a problem with the same level of consciousness that created it – Einstein
In meditation, we are not abdicating and escaping reality although it may seem like it. We actually enter into it. We have merely let go of our mental fixation on it. We have let mind subside and we are back in reality in Self. Perfect peace and harmony everywhere, any time, becomes possible.
Meditation makes us more deliberate in all our activities whether retreating from – or engaging with – life. If we stay in the moment in mindful appreciation, life is a constant meditation.
The Heavy Artillery
Discipline in body and mind are all good and well if you’re dealing with a tameable mind of moderate strength. For my anxiety tangents though, I needed something much stronger. After so many years of living in a state of fight or flight, my body was addicted to the chemical cocktail my hormones released as a result and craved its regular fix.
Now, I don’t drink, and I don’t do drugs, but in those moments, I have full understanding for anyone resorting to a stiff whiskey or a joint. It feels like you’re in a vice grip of one-track-mind, completely at its mercy, no matter how hard you try to ‘think of something nice instead’.
I remember waking up in the middle of the night shortly after my divorce and working my way into a complete state of panic about how I was going to carry on with very little money, no job and no emotional support system. That night, my third eye came to my rescue. Not in the way that you might expect – I didn’t go sailing off into another reality, nor did I receive pearls of wisdom from a wise sage. I instantly and firmly grounded in this reality, in the moment and was simultaneously freed from the vice grip – all the tension left me, and I drifted off to sleep soon after. Next morning, I woke up with new hope.
If you’re struggling with mental tangents and would like to learn more about this tool, get in touch with me at www.freetoflylifecoaching.com.