Human Body: Medium for higher understanding
As the New York marathon approached nearer the media was flooded with stories of runners who were preparing to conquer the 26 miles run despite of physical limitations. The one that particularly caught my eye was that of a ‘girl-next-door’ runner who was diagnosed with breast cancer few weeks ago. Instead of remorse and self-pity she instead took out her jogging shoes and enrolled herself for the marathon. She had been preparing for over 8 weeks and was ready to run the long stretch. In addition to this being an inspiring example it points to something I have always believed in – how the body is a vehicle to attain our different personal goals. It’s my version of the answer to the ubiquitous question of the purpose of life.
Human body can be possibly called the most intriguing of all because of its intrinsic connection with human mind. This implies that an indirect way to understand and channelise the energy of our restless mind is via our body. The connection has been underscored by various techniques of meditation designed to leverage the tangibility of the body to understand the ether like quality of the mind. Be it ‘Vipassana’ where the crests and troughs of the sensations in the body associated with different emotions indicate toward the ephemeralness of the world or be it sudarshan kriya in ‘art of living’ where the flow of the breath is used as the loop to keep your thoughts in a circle of constant awareness – without the body as the medium these efforts toward higher understanding would have been impossible.
The connection athletes and other sports persons experience between their body and mind cannot be emphasized enough. Getting into your ‘zone’, feeling the ‘flow’ are some of the phrases accomplished sports persons understand and use to their advantage.
The opportunity to comprehend this connection probably lies in the vast imperfections existing in human body and the ignorance of the potential that is untapped. So, even a layman dabbling in physical workout is astonished by the feats achieved by her on including the mind in the workout and feeling the highs of getting visible results out of honest efforts. The more the imperfections are the more it provides you with an opportunity to gain the side-effects of self-improvement in terms of tasting the untapped potential and getting a glimpse of what one is capable of.
Unfortunately the tricks of the mind are also manifested via the body. So the efforts to leverage the potential of the body are perennially upstream – against the momentum. The second law of thermodynamics states that all bodies like to be in a state of entropy – that is constant chaos and any effort toward order is against entropy. Most of us are at the bottom of the triangle with entropy acting toward the bottom. Any effort to move to a state of higher being, or to the top of the triangle will have to be against the entropy.
But these efforts to move to the top of the triangle are precisely the efforts that would sculpt an individual into a better version.
We have been provided with an incredible channel to move toward our individual goals of bliss. All we need to do is to tap the source inside.
As the New York marathon approached nearer the media was flooded with stories of runners who were preparing to conquer the 26 miles run despite of physical limitations. The one that particularly caught my eye was that of a ‘girl-next-door’ runner who was diagnosed with breast cancer few weeks ago. Instead of remorse and self-pity she instead took out her jogging shoes and enrolled herself for the marathon. She had been preparing for over 8 weeks and was ready to run the long stretch. In addition to this being an inspiring example it points to something I have always believed in – how the body is a vehicle to attain our different personal goals. It’s my version of the answer to the ubiquitous question of the purpose of life.
Human body can be possibly called the most intriguing of all because of its intrinsic connection with human mind. This implies that an indirect way to understand and channelise the energy of our restless mind is via our body. The connection has been underscored by various techniques of meditation designed to leverage the tangibility of the body to understand the ether like quality of the mind. Be it ‘Vipassana’ where the crests and troughs of the sensations in the body associated with different emotions indicate toward the ephemeralness of the world or be it sudarshan kriya in ‘art of living’ where the flow of the breath is used as the loop to keep your thoughts in a circle of constant awareness – without the body as the medium these efforts toward higher understanding would have been impossible.
The connection athletes and other sports persons experience between their body and mind cannot be emphasized enough. Getting into your ‘zone’, feeling the ‘flow’ are some of the phrases accomplished sports persons understand and use to their advantage.
The opportunity to comprehend this connection probably lies in the vast imperfections existing in human body and the ignorance of the potential that is untapped. So, even a layman dabbling in physical workout is astonished by the feats achieved by her on including the mind in the workout and feeling the highs of getting visible results out of honest efforts. The more the imperfections are the more it provides you with an opportunity to gain the side-effects of self-improvement in terms of tasting the untapped potential and getting a glimpse of what one is capable of.
Unfortunately the tricks of the mind are also manifested via the body. So the efforts to leverage the potential of the body are perennially upstream – against the momentum. The second law of thermodynamics states that all bodies like to be in a state of entropy – that is constant chaos and any effort toward order is against entropy. Most of us are at the bottom of the triangle with entropy acting toward the bottom. Any effort to move to a state of higher being, or to the top of the triangle will have to be against the entropy.
But these efforts to move to the top of the triangle are precisely the efforts that would sculpt an individual into a better version.
We have been provided with an incredible channel to move toward our individual goals of bliss. All we need to do is to tap the source inside.
posted by Garima at 2:48 PM
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