Tantrik New Year’s Resolution
Tuesday, January 1st, 2008In most world cultures, the new year is synced with some event in nature: an astrological configuration or seasonal shift, or both.
Although many of us have forgotten this, in fact, the entire manifest world is a time piece. Our mechanical (or digital) watches are a pale reminder of the inexorability of the life process. Stars, planets, seas, and our own bodies go “tick tock, tick tock.”
Our bodies converse continuously with natural cycles of living and dying, waxing and waning, and dancing all around us and within us. When we don’t live by these natural cycles, our bodies slowly start to forget the correct vocabulary and develop their own, sociopathic language. “I must have caffeine.” “I can’t eat until afternoon.” “I’ll just lie on the couch for another month.” “I can’t sit still.” “Another beer!” “Another 80 hour work week!”
Most of the substances Westerners call medicine work to antidote the ill effects of living out of sync with natural time, or to preempt natural time with chemical “invincibility.”
But the energy we expend in trying to step out of natural time is our own. When we take a medicine that suppresses illness so we can work without resting; when we live at the same breakneck pace, regardless of the season; when we allow our bodies to be anesthetized and cut into for the sake of cosmetic beauty; when we have mechanical sex and remain in depleting friendships, the energy that is being wasted is our life force. We sink ourselves deeper into energetic debt and move closer to death by exhaustion.
In our culture, paradoxically, we strive to look youthful until we die, and we expect to die of disease. When someone dies, our inevitable question is: What did he or she die of? We can’t imagine a death that is not brought on by decrepitude.
Our view of illness is truly perverse. We live in a soup of chemical pollutants and radiation of various sorts. We take medicines with debilitating side effects as a matter of course. And yet most of us are desperate to avoid illness.
Spiritually accomplished human beings have many kinds of bodies and states of health or illness.
Some discern the exact date and time of impending death. They calmly prepare and die in seeming perfect health at the appointed moment.
Others have serious illnesses, but relate to them quite differently than do less expansive folk.
The 16th Karmapa was ravaged by cancer, but he consistently reported that he experienced no pain. Attendants say that throughout his “illness,” he never wavered in his concern for those around him.
Anandamayi MA had intestinal parasites. She reported that they did not disturb her. At other times, she exhibited various symptoms of illness that alarmed her doctors. Seeing their distress, out of compassion she would instantly cause the symptoms to go away.
The more expansive one’s perceptions become, the more subtly one relates to disease and the process of dying.
Eating, sleeping, working and patterns of interacting also become more refined, more appropriate and more in sync with Nature in the largest sense. Healthy or ill, accomplished human beings are supporting their own and others’ unfoldment, not working against this natural process.
The new year reminds Tantrikas to take better care of our bodies, to listen more closely to the conversation our bodies are having with the world, and to respond to their real needs.
Anandamayi Ma was often surrounded by people who had grown up in a culture of the denigration of bodies. But she said: you have no right to misuse your body or care for it improperly. You should always care for your body.
So an appropriate Tantrik new year’s resolution is to listen to your body. Eat when you are hungry. Eat non-toxic foods to the best of your ability. Rest when you are ill or tired. Get a proper amount of sleep consistently. Investigate your constitution by consulting a naturopathic doctor such as an Ayurvedic or Chinese medicine practitioner. Live according to the rhythm of the days and the seasons.
Don’t let our stumbling, out of sync culture drag you along with it to chronic depletion and death by exhaustion. This is not the Tantrik way.
For many contemporary people, it is a great adventure to rediscover that our bodies are in a living relationships with the rest of the cosmos, with all of the cosmos.
Waking up to one’s relationship to all of life is like regaining your senses a hundred thousand times.
You can start on this great adventure now by taking simple, practical steps in your everyday life.
Happy fresh and new year!
In Ma’s eternal love,
Shambhavi
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