I was feeling rather pleased with myself for having stumbled upon this understanding yesterday (which is rather simplistic and I must add the disclaimer that as most analogies go, it will be limited in some way, but effective in making a few points clear). Yesterday, while icing my wrists I was trying to imagine what a normal one would feel like. And I was quite stunned to realize that when everything in our body is working as it is meant to be, we do not feel any motion or function distinctly; we do not feel our muscles pull, our joints ache, our skin itch, our pulses race and so forth. In other words we do not perceive the otherwise enormous effort we would have to take to re-align a malfunctioning organ or gland into working harmoniously with the rest of the body. You see as a whole, the body has a purpose. When some part of it is ailing, it detracts in some fashion, the whole from working as efficiently as it should or could be, towards that purpose. And every ache and bruise, every disease and affliction, remains a nagging reminder of that imbalance and disharmony within.
That got me thinking, how we do know our spirits are healthy? Or is there even a golden yardstick for how a healthy one 'feels'? A series of recent blogs by
C &
N helped me clarify how it might feel. (I highly recommend reading those posts with all the comments that followed for an excellent synthesis of ideas surrounding a harmonious existence from within and without). I believe our spirits (individual organs) feel bogged down and frustrated when its purpose is at odds with the purpose of the collective organism or body it is serving (the body); when the goal of one organ is to siphon off all resources for its own functioning without concern for how that might affect the equilibrium of the body as a whole; when one organ does not pitch in to compensate for an over-worked other while it recovers, the (individual) spirit while enjoying some temporary advantage soon succumbs to the malaise afflicting the collective (body) due to this lopsided progress.
And when it does work in harmony with the whole?
सत्- चित -आनन्द ।
Peace.--
