One must reinforce the mind's strength through methods such as prayer, study, respect for parents and other well-known measures. It is a challenge to set up the right order between the mind and body so that both can function in the best way.
For example, one who is trying to control their appetite and their unhealthy passion does not have to lead to anti-physical or otherworldly excess.
Weakening the Power of the Body
The first method is to weaken the influence of the body's wants and desires. One has to make a conscious decision to disregard the body's preoccupation with being comfortable or wanting control over our better thoughts.
1. Deprivations
One basic means is through fasting and other deprivations. These stunts the usual control of the body and material environment over the spiritual and moral desires to make it easier for the mind to assert itself.
Meditation, prayer and reflection come more clearly and readily.
“The first week of Ramadan is really hard,” reports a university student. “I am just tired and really hungry by nightfall. But after that, I start feeling light and really good, and don’t miss eating. I am more in touch with myself, more aware of other people, more sensitive to God’s blessings in my life.”
When one experiences this deep joy and liberation it shows the motivation for the extreme practices of some religions and medieval ascetics in order to control the body's temptations and individuals in a society.
A secondary effect of fasting help to control self-centered impulses like complaint, anger, impatience or jealousy and suppress the body's reliance on physical distractions.
Our spiritual strength arises when we overcome physical desires that cause physical discomforts. There are other ways besides fasting to weaken the body. Reducing the hours the body needs to sleep by rising early for morning devotions is a common way.
Introducing the body to discomfort on purpose such as cold showers or hard physical labor is another way. The main idea is to combat any unproductive habit as the simplest way to stay in charge of one's mind and body.
“I quit smoking two years ago,” declares a restaurant manager, “and now I watch out for something getting a hold of me even in a small way. Like I stopped watching the news for a few weeks one time, and I skip my morning coffee once in a while, just to show myself I can live without it.”
Practicing chastity and celibacy is a strong way to keep the strong hold of the body in balance.
2. Obedience and Self-denial
Another way to weaken the body is through a life lived in service and submission to a higher authority. This authority can be a moral or spiritual principle, God or country or anything else an individual holds in great regard. In order to do so, this involves self-denial, overcoming the need for self-assertion and rebellious behavior and eliminate immature attitudes like ego and pride.
The military is the obvious example of training in obedience.
3. Living Simply
When one makes their lifestyle simple, it is compared to avoiding idolizing materials. One has to choose to put their focus on the spiritual and rational approach when it comes to property.
When we turn on the media, we see the push for us to consume more and acquire more in order to foster a self-indulgent way of life where the importance is on comfort and amusement. Living a simplistic life resists this and helps to maintain a proper balance of mind and body instead of our well being depending solely on the material.
Adopting a certain austerity in possessions means the preference of substance over style and remembering the difference between needs and desires.
Living simple avoids the traps of debt that is very oppressive and is a burden that saps the peace of mind and constrains one's ability to give freely.
Like the Israelites in the wilderness who were instructed to take only of the manna and quail that they needed for the day, simplicity means resisting the temptation to hoard and trusting in tomorrow’s provision.
“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you shall wear,” Jesus declared. “Is not life more important than food, and the body more than clothes?”
Matthew 6.25
This is a reminder how Heavenly Father takes care and keeps a connection with those that keep His words and makes the strength of the spirit over the body or flesh a priority.
“Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness,” and material needs will be taken care of as well
Matthew 6.33
A simple life relies on bringing happiness from the treasures of the heart instead of from pleasures of the body. Also, having faith that true wealth is in love and spiritual growth and not in having an abundance of things. Such a life recognizes that God is the real source of material prosperity and security.
Strengthening the Power of the Mind
1. Determining and realizing goals
2. True love as motivation
3. Acting on faith
4. Service
5. Connection with God
When the body is subdued, we need at the same time to strengthen the mind through toughening the moral will. We build this will through the daily habit like a muscle through choices of doing the right thing despite having fear, distress or being tired.
To do so, an individual needs to strengthen their moral fiber through adversity. The individual needs challenges whether it is given or self-sought to develop inner strength of will.
The basic way to strengthen will and build self-discipline through making a determination to oneself and God and then achieve them. This can be exampled through talking to a troubled relatives just as you were about to delve into an enjoyable book. Also, when one changes careers in order to be a greater service to humanity. Trying to stay healthy for the children and spouse.
Even more challenging is to set goals that rely mainly on spiritual power, fueled by prayer, study of spiritual truth and acts of love.
“Twelve years ago when I first came to Mountainview High,” recalls a physics teacher in a rural school in the American Midwest, “I swore that I would bring the white and Native American students and faculty together in a tangible way. I prayed about it every day, stuck my neck out more than a few times, got misunderstood a lot and once almost lost my job. But now in the faculty there are cross-cultural friendships developing and this year the president of the student council is a Native American boy.”
In order to reverse the negative history of betrayal between God and humanity, we need to make promises to God and fulfill them. This is significant. It also helps to build self-respect and faith in oneself. This is probably the most powerful way to attract divine support. A person that fulfills their promises and actually carry out their responsibilities is noticed not only by other people, but also and especially by Heaven.
2. True Love as Motivation
Having motivation empowers the will to go beyond any discomfort we may experience in order to achieve our goals. This motivation depends on having meaningful purposes that will make such sacrifices worthwhile.
The strongest motivation is true love; “love is the key to unification of mind and body,” states Reverend Moon. This power of love is familiar to parents.
Dick Hoyt, 62, has raced in every Boston Marathon for over 20 years pushing his paralyzed adult son, Rick, in a wheelchair. In 1999 they became the first team ever to finish the Ironman Triathlon World Championship. It began when teenage Rick asked his father to push him in a local race. When they finished, the boy excitedly declared, “It was as if I wasn't handicapped.”
This motivated his father to challenge his every physical limitation in order to give his son that experience over and over ever since then.
The power of love is behind the heroic sacrifices of religious and national lore.
An example of this will is the first Pilgrim settlers to North America. They starved to death instead of eating the grain that was intended for planting once their reached their destination out of love and hope for the next generation with dreams to build a community where they could worship freely.
Out of love for God and the Savior, St. Peter desired to face a painful execution by being crucified upside down. This can be through legendary proportions or just small everyday acts of unselfishness, true love as the strongest means of subduing the body.
Act on Faith
A person can have tremendous powers of self-control when they are able to visualize a better future despite any obstacles that stands before them.
Debi Faris is a woman who knows what it is like to heed the call of her heart and conscience in faith. A wife and mother of three teenagers, she heard of an abandoned baby found dead in her town of Calimesa, California, and arranged to give the child a proper funeral and burial.
One child led to three and her middle-class family committed to the costs, ultimately $27,000, despite other pressing expenses. “I remember praying, ‘I don’t think I can do this, God. I don’t think I have the courage,’” she recalls. “I stayed quiet for a while until I sensed that what we were doing was right. It was an act of love, and at that moment I made a commitment to offer it to any child who needed it.”
She has since organized the funds and volunteers to found a cemetery for abandoned babies, the Garden of Angels, and is fighting for legislation to help prevent such tragedies.
Those who believe in one's own gifts or that it is inevitable that truth and goodness will finally triumph have a strong advantage that helps them achieve the strongest resources to unite mind and body. As well as those who have built the power of faith and hope and are "sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see".
Hebrews 11:1
4. Service
This includes the physical service to others: massaging the back of an elderly person, preparing salad for the homeless, picking a bag full of trash in the neighborhood all are helpful practices for strengthening the moral will because it requires humility.
“We made a point of just showing up ready to do whatever work was needed, no fanfare,” recalls a man of his group of comrades from a service club.
“The staff at the rehab center were surprised to see middle-aged men willing to just set up the party, serve the boys soda and food and take down and mop up afterwards. And it didn't do this CEO big shot any harm either to do grunt work for a bunch of not-too-grateful teenagers. I think I learned a few things.”
Connection With God
All of these methods are used to empower the moral will and is the greatest prescription for mind and body unity by connecting to the divine Source.
“The first step is for your mind to become one with God,” says Reverend Moon, “and then your body will become one with your mind.”
Here are more resources of strengthening the mind and access the Heavenly Parent:
Prayer, worship, scripture study, supporting the local community, putting faith into action, fulfilling determinations and promises, practicing submission and offering service.
“Live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature,” promises St. Paul.
Galatians 5.16
Like a soldier, the stronger the bond of the mind and God, the more ready the mind can conquer the body. The brave Corrie Ten Boom, a elderly watchmaker, was sent to a concentration camp because she rescued Jews during the Holocaust.
Corrie began to lecture after the war about God's love, forgiveness and healing of the wounds of war. After one of these lectures, a former S.S. guard, who had been at one her concentration camps, was waiting in the back of the room.
Immediately, she began to have flashbacks of her and her sister who had been forced to walk naked in front of men guards on the way to the showers. She remembered being ill, cold, old, hungry and in pain and how she was being mocked sexually by these guards.
She remembered that her sister had been tortured by pain of humiliation in front of the same guard she sees now. Her sister later died at that camp. The former guard came up to Corrie acknowledging her pledge of God's forgiveness in her life. He held out his hands reaching out for hers asking for her forgiveness.
Forgiveness was part of her life now and not only a part of her lectures. Was it easy for her even now?
“I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity,” Corrie said.
Yet, she could never forget all the religious teachings she has had and was teaching about forgiving people who have hurt you in the past. So, being the woman of faith, she took in a breath and prayed for the strength to do what God wanted and she eventually took his hands into hers.
She matched her deeds to her highest ideals and words that she was illuminating to the crowds when she finally could take action to forgive the most horrid part of her life with this guard as a representative.
Then, “As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.”
This spark of love made Corrie cry out that he was her brother and she assured him that she had completely forgave him.
Her ability to take actions on truths and promises that she had spoken had unleashed the flow of true love and liberated both persecutor and the persecuted. When a person is able to love even when it is the most difficult requires us to assert the mind over the demands of the body to protect itself and its ego.
Through such efforts to reduce this pull of the flesh while at the same time enhancing our moral and spiritual strength, the mind and body can be brought into unity!
Thus the heart is liberated to give of itself freely and unselfishly, and will be able to reap the richest rewards in return.
Return for Tomorrow's Post: Control Fleshly Desire Gain the Universe
This text was taken from and rewritten from the textbook: True Love Chapter, Mind and Body Unity
No comments:
Post a Comment