Consciousness through the day
Namaskar Yoga: Harmonising the system
The higher possibilities of life are housed in the human body. The physical body is a platform for all possibilities from the gross to the sacred. You can perform simple acts of eating, sleeping, and sex as acts of grossness, or you can bring a certain dimension of sanctity to all these aspects. This sanctity can be achieved by bringing subtler thought, emotion, and intention into these acts. Above all, remember that the grossness and sanctity of something is largely decided by your unwillingness and unconsciousness, or your willingness or consciousness. Every breath, every step, every simple act, thought, or emotion can acquire the stance of the sacred if conducted recognizing the sanctity of the other involved.
Of all the loving acts that two human beings are capable of, the simple act of holding hands can often become the most intimate. Why is this so? Basically, because the nature of the hand and feet is such that the energy system finds expression in these two parts of the body in a very singular way. Two palms coming together have far more intimacy than the contact between any other parts of the body.
You can try this with yourself. When you put your hands together, the two energy dimensions within you (right-left, masculine-feminine, solar-lunar, yin-yang, etc.) are linked in a certain way, and you begin to experience a sense of unity within yourself. This is the logic of the traditional Indian namaskar. It is a means of harmonizing the system.
Try this simple namaskar yoga. Put your hands together and pay loving attention to any object you use or consume, or any form of life that you encounter. When you bring this sense of awareness into every simple act, your experience of life will never be the same again.
Change the health and fundamental structure of your body
The simplest thing that you can do to change the health and fundamental structure of your body is to treat the five elements with devotion and respect. Just try this. Every time you are consciously in touch with any of the elements (which you are every moment of your life), just make a conscious attempt to refer to it in terms of whatever you consider to be the ultimate or the loftiest ideal in your life, whether it is Shiva, Rama, Krishna, God, Allah (or even Marx!).
You are a psychological being right now, and your mind is full of hierarchy. After some time, the word can fall away. But you instantly see the change as the number of truly conscious moments in your life increases. The air that you breathe, the food that you eat, the water that you drink, the land that you walk upon, and the very space that hold you—every one of them offers you a divine possibility.
Devotee - Dissolve
When you experience something as far bigger than yourself, bowing down will naturally occur to you. If you want to become a devotee, at least once an hour in all the waking moments of your life, put your hands together and bow to something. It does not matter who or what. Don’t choose. Whatever you see, just bow your head—whether it is a tree, a mountain, a dog, a cat, or anything. This need not be a physical act; it could be internal action. Just do it throughout the day, once an hour. See if it can become once a minute. When it becomes once a minute, there is no need to use your hands and body; simply do it within yourself. Once that becomes your way of being, you are a devotee.
Even if you spend a lifetime, you will not understand a leaf, an elephant, an ant, or an atom. You are incapable of figuring out even a molecule of DNA. Everything you cannot grasp is in a higher state of existential intelligence than you are. When you see this—really see this—you are a devotee.
A devotee is someone who is willing to dissolve into the object of devotion. If you are a devotee of life, you will become one with it. Don’t be an outsider to the life process.
Become a devotee. Dissolve.
Change the health and fundamental structure of your body
Later, without even uttering the sentence aloud, take the simple idea—‘My responsibility is limitless; if I am willing, I can respond to everything—into the entire day. Be conscious of it until the last moment before you fall asleep and remind yourself of it the first thing when you wake up.
If you sustain this awareness of your limitless nature for just one full minute, you will achieve a tremendous transformation. A minute may seem very simple, but you will see it will take a certain level of application to arrive at this. Just one minute can elevate you to a different dimension of experience and function. Right now, your awareness is erratic; this moment you are aware and the next moment, you are gone. It is okay. Every hour, remind yourself. Experiment with this awareness, allow it to deepen and see what happens.
Conscious response brings you a profound and enduring state of contentedness with life—not as an idea or an emotion, but life as life is. In this willing, active involvement with life, you are embraced by it and that embrace takes you to the very source of creation.
That is all it takes to touch the Creator—just willingness, nothing else.
Stepping to the larger intelligence
Just work at removing from the mind the idea that thought is intelligence. The whole process of creation, from a single atom to the cosmos, is a fantastic expression of intelligence.
Right now within your body, there is a throbbing intelligence that is the very source of creation. With the overrated intellect that you own, can you even understand the activity of a single cell in your body in its entirety?
The first step toward moving from the trap of the intellect to the lap of a larger intelligence is to recognize that every aspect of life—from a grain of sand to a mountain, a drop to an ocean, from the atomic to the cosmic—is a manifestation of a far greater intelligence than your minuscule intellect. If you take this one step, life will start speaking to you like never before.