Turning spiritual

I crossed middle age and reminders about my health started getting stronger.Death is an inevitable event in everyone’s life and the only certain happening.  However, keeping the time and way of its happening a mystery, nature ensures that life on this planet goes on smoothly.

As a child, when I heard or witnessed some death, I would be disturbed just for a few days and thereafter carry on with my life, as though I was a permanent part of this planet.

As I grew up and realised more truths about life and death, I tried to seek solace in philosophy – soul is eternal and body is just a temporary carrier.  But it is an irony that the more we want to give least importance to the body, the more we are dragged into this world of illusion or Maya and forced to think only of our body and nothing else!  Let me explain!  As teenagers and youth, we wanted to look beautiful or handsome to attract the opposite sex.

  That’s all was our focus. As we enter middle age, our attention is drawn towards health and fitness, whether we like it or not.

 Just observe a group of middle aged men and woman conversing. Eighty per cent of their talk will be about maintaining good health, exercise, Yoga, gym, walks, diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol, nutrition, diet, hospitals, doctors and labs.

I crossed middle age and the reminders about my health started getting stronger.  I started observing more diseases, pain and death from close quarters. 
All religions try to justify the pain and suffering in different ways and try to discipline our lives by talking about the pain that may be inflicted upon us in the hell after death for all the sins that we commit on this planet.

However, these days after seeing more hospitals, labs and patients, I strongly believe that heaven and hell are here, right here on this earth.  And is there any relation between the deeds and rewards?

I don’t find any!  Nature’s law is simply not understandable.  People who have meant no harm to anybody and been very useful to the community they live in are also not spared of the hellish diseases and treatment!  Great souls like Ramakrishna Paramahamsa also suffered for months before shedding this mortal body.  Then where is justice?

As I witness more and more people dying after suffering of dreadful diseases like cancer for years, the fear of death is haunting me more and more.  I have to die for sure.  But how is it going to come?  Can I please have a sudden death without undergoing torturous tests and treatments?  Am I so blessed? 

So, just when I have to be thinking philosophically of my body and death and become spiritual, I spend more time thinking of keeping this body fit and healthy, so that I can die painlessly!  Isn’t this an irony? 

What food should I eat, how much should I exercise, how often should I get myself tested, which doctor should I consult, which lab should I visit, how much should I sleep, how much should I weigh and Oh!  There is no end!
 Where is the time for me to sit, pray and meditate peacefully?  Even my meditation is all around keeping my body healthy! 

So, when should I think of God, life after death and rebirth?