Posted: February 08, 2018

When can you rest? When is rest possible?

Rest is only possible when you’ve stopped all activities. Stop:

• moving around
• working
• thinking
• talking
• seeing
• hearing
• smelling
• tasting

because when all these distractions disappear, then you get blissful rest. When you cease all voluntary activities, you rest. You remain with just involuntary functions (breathing, beating of the heart, digestion of food, blood circulation, etc.) during deep sleep.

Sleep gives rest – but is it total rest?

Recollect your own experience, when your sleep was not deep:

• There was some restlessness, agitation, or desire.
• The mind was planning and planning.
• Your ambitions made you restless.
• You were anxious about doing something: “Oh, I must do this.”

In all these instances - your mind was not free.

How To Be Free From Desires

As long as some desires linger in your mind, you cannot be in total rest. In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says, “You cannot get into yoga (union with the Self), unless you drop the desires and hankerings in you.”

• Blow Up Your Desire-- One way to rest from desire is to extend it – make it so big! Then too, it won’t bother you. It’s the tiny sand particle that irritates your eye – a big stone, a rock, can never get into your eye; it cannot irritate you.
• Be Dispassionate-- As long as you hold on to “doing” something (doer-ship), some planning ('I want to do this, I want to do this'), your mind does not settle down. Every desire, or ambition, is like a sand particle in your eye – it irritates. You cannot shut your eye or keep it open. If there is a particle of sand in your eye, it’s uncomfortable either way.

Dispassion is removing this particle, so you can open or shut your eyes freely – you can enjoy the world, relax, and get relief from the stress that accompanies desire.

• Dispassion Is Not Apathy-- 'Oh! Anyway, everybody is going to the grave, so what can one do now?’ This is apathy, not dispassion, and apathy is incomplete.

Dispassion is full of enthusiasm and joy! It brings joy to your life and allows you to rest so well. When you rest well, go deep into meditation, and then come out of a deep meditation, you become very dynamic - you are able to act more effectively. The deeper you rest, the more dynamically active you will be. Even though deep rest and dynamic activity are opposite values, they are complementary. Meditation gives you IPOD - Inner Peace and Outer Dynamism.

Deep rest with deep meditation => Dynamism when out of meditation

Learn To Let Go… and Relax in Meditation

When you learn to let go, you’ll be joyful. As you start being joyful, more will be given to you. Those who have will be given more - that’s a result of meditation.

To fall asleep, you’ve got to surrender everything. Only then you can rest. Why not do the same thing with respect to activity, moment by moment? At least, when you want to sit for meditation, or during meditation, drop everything. The best way to do this is to think or feel: "The world is disappearing, dissolving, dead. I am dead!"

What can you hold on to? You cannot even keep this body forever! However attentively you care for it, one day it will still bid you goodbye! A forceful eviction from this place will happen to you. Out of this world, with no prior notice! Before the body leaves you, with meditation you learn to leave everything. That’s freedom.

Meditation is:

• Letting go of anger from the past
• Releasing events of the past
• Stopping all planning for the future
• Accepting this moment
• Living every moment totally - with depth

The art of doing nothing, meditation brings rest that’s deeper than the deepest sleep you can ever have! It’s several times deeper, because in sleep, desires still linger. But in meditation, you go beyond all desires. This transcendence brings such coolness to the brain! It's like overhauling or servicing the whole body-mind complex.

If you choose to let go, you’ll see. Just this understanding and a few days of continuously practicing meditation deliver so much relaxation, and can change your quality of life.

If you are new to meditation, learn to meditate and relax dispassionately with Sahaj Samadhi Meditation, an easy and effortless technique of meditation or use guided meditations.

Meditate Now!