Towards stress-free life

One of his friends came and asked him: “Mullah, how are you doing?”  He said: “I am fine. Only it hurts when I laugh.” The friend then asked Mullah: “How can you laugh being in this condition?” Mullah then replied: “If I don’t laugh now I have never laughed in my life.”

Undying enthusiasm is one aspect of being in perfect health. The word ‘Swasthi’ means one who is established in self. What are the signs of being in oneself? First is enthusiasm - one who can laugh and say “today nothing wor­ked.” To be able to say that you need a state of mind that is stress-free and tension-proof.

There are two conditions of the mind. One is body and mind together. And the other is body and the mind looking in different directions. Whe­ther it is schools or in hospitals, attention deficiency syndrome is so prevalent today. So mindfulness, being alert and aware is the second sign of good health. You need to be alert as well as relaxed and that is what you call enlightenment.

There are seven layers to our existence- body, breath, mind, intellect, memory, ego and self.  It is the breath that connects the body and the mind.  Self is the subtlest aspect of our being, our existence. Everything goes on to change, the body undergoes a change and so does our mind. Mind is thoughts and the sense of perception in your consciousness that changes all the time; intellect, understanding, judgements, intellect changes, memory, ego.

But there is something that doesn’t change within you. And that is called self .

We are encapsuled in a cloud of energy which is called consciousness. You have a candle and a wick. When you light, put a match stick to the candle, what happens? The wick gets the glow around that. The same hydrocarbon is there in the candle, wick is also there. But once it is ignited the glow comes on top of the wick. Same way body is like the wick of the candle and what is around the body is the consciousness, which makes you alive, which keeps you alive.

All the yoga postures, exercises are made by nature. If you observe a baby, from the time it is born to the age of three, he or she does all the yoga asanas. You need to observe their breathing patterns too. The way a baby breathes is much different from the way an adult does. It is stress that causes the breathing pattern in adults to change.

Never mind if some failure happens here and there, so what? If you have the skill can turn any situation around and induce little humour in it. Avoid getting stressed. And you can do avoid getting by meditating. Meditation is not concentration.For meditation we have three golden rules.  I want nothing, I do nothing and I am nothing.