Spirituality and Age
Being a regular practitioner of meditation and seeing its benefits in my life and the lives of my loved ones, I often encourage people to try meditation. However more often than not I hear excuses like “too young” to get into all this. Here is a blog to put my two cents on this.
The conception of most of us is that Prayers, Pranayams, Asanas and Meditations are for the elderly. I understand that this comes from the belief that in the old age once a person is done with all their responsibilities they can focus better on God and Self.
The body itself starts complaining (if you haven’t done something for it by then) and out of the mere will to survive and get free from the physical pain, people start their journey in Pranayams and Asanas. Also, as the kids get busy in their lives, grand children head off to school, TV shows have a huge generation gap and the fear of death creeps in, there is nothing better to do but focus on the Almighty or sit with your own thoughts, at least for sometime in a day.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the elderly’s starting their spiritual journey. It’s just that with my observation and experience, I feel the right age to start is much much earlier. How my mentors explain it is, we offer the Divine fresh flowers, not the stale ones; in a similar manner offer Him your fresh mind, a mind free from impressions and experiences of a lifetime. Give the Divine, the Divinity in you, your first class time to get first class service :) Not when there is nothing better to do.
Today’s world is so fast paced, competition starts right from the school, colleges, workplace, relationships, break-ups, losses, deaths of the loved ones, expectations vs realities, all the stress, everything takes a toll on the mind. There is still an awareness about the physical health, gymming is a “cool” thing but what about the mental health? Do you really want to ignore the mental health till it gets too late and you hit rock bottom? Stress is the root cause of all the major diseases. Infact 90% diseases are due to psychosomatic reasons.
The main reason I love meditation is, it makes you more natural, the way God intended you to be, before you let the world influence you. The quality of your smile, your laughter improves, you learn humility, being grateful for the smaller things in life. The kind of meditation I try, erases all the past impressions, the emotional garbage, makes you free and light as a feather.
I remember, in my life I was the saddest when my Grandma passed away, cried for days together, could not sleep at nights. But then I did myself a favour and went on the Silence program. The mediations on the course are so simple and yet so powerful. I would start the meditations in tears, in memories of my Grandma but would be at ease(peace as they call) by the end of it. I would not remember where I was for the hour, before gaining consciousness. So many random thoughts would come during the mediation, just to leave me forever. By the end of those four days I was lighter, hollow and empty. It’s not that I stopped loving my Grandma or forgot about her but the pain and loss associated with her memories left me. I could remember her much more happily and be grateful for the time I spent with her.
This is what meditation does. It makes you strong to sustain any kind of loss and see this world as a play of The Divine. The more you collect impressions and memories, the more garbage you have in the mind. And suppressing or ignoring your emotions is like hiding dirt below a carpet(its still there). Alcohol, drugs or any other such addiction for that matter, are harmful for the health and just help to forget about the pain for sometime, a very very temporary solution that takes you to an ignorant state of bliss. Let meditation, your own breath, clean it for good! Be free!!
Meditation clears the emotional and mental garbage but it takes time and dedication. You can’t start at an old age and expect to become suddenly free from all the impressions collected over 50–60 years. Start at the age when these start accumulating and keep dumping the garbage away at regular intervals and you will see a different quality of life.
I feel so glad that I started when I was 19 (I secretly wish it was even more early). The age when I could dedicate myself with much more sincerity. The sincerity I had then vs now has a huge difference. As the responsibilities and problems increase in life, your mind gets scattered, it becomes more difficult to relax and let go. And by the time you are done with the responsibilities, it gets too late to train the mind. Remember how learning as children was much easy than as we become older. Learn meditation too while you have that grasp, start when the mind can still be moulded into letting go :) Start young!
