Discipline leads to organised living

We unconsciously regard our life as a race against time. However, in spite of all the rushing around, multi-tasking and manipulation of time, when we look back at our lives - the opportunities that we have missed or messed up are far more than our achievements. This is because as long as we are time bound, we are always limited.

If we look at the lives of great achievers and enlightened beings, we usually wonder at their accomplishments and the great legacy of wisdom they have left behind for the future generations. We find it incredible that they could achieve so much in one lifetime. How could they do it? They were also ordinary people like us, but they made use of every second by following external and internal discipline. They spent some time everyday to tune into their soul, they evaluated themselves and acknowledged their strengths and weaknesses. As they did this on a daily basis with complete dedication, they transcended time and became extraordinary. They had time at their beck and call. Enlightened beings could even dictate terms to death by choosing their own time to leave the body after they felt that they had accomplished their mission on earth.

Like all human beings, till we understand the value of time, we know only two states in life — either we are in a hurry or we are lazy. Both states carry us away from the soul. The greater the hurry, the greater our misery, because stress never comes alone. It is always accompanied by a horde of physical and mental problems. On the other hand, the lazier we are, the crazier we become; without an aim, the mind is lame and can never kindle the soul’s eternal flame. So we completely lose our bearing and control, and are carried along by the currents of life like an inert piece of wood. Whether we stretch ourselves by racing against time or remain slack and lazy, we lose our mental elasticity. We should never allow this to happen to us because it sets off a whole chain of reactions. When we lose our inner elasticity, we lose our joyful spontaneity.

When we lose our spontaneity, we are cut off from divinity. When we are cut off from divinity, we lose our inner affinity. When we lose our inner affinity, we are de-linked from serenity and tranquillity. We lose our original state of pristine purity. This drains away our inner power and stability and makes us lose confidence in our own ability. So we feel completely useless and become a bag of skin, flesh and bones with no life and charm inside us.

To avoid all this we have to be disciplined. External discipline leads to organised living and principled thinking. Internal discipline leads to meditative living and blissful being. To discipline the body and mind, we should follow a strict regimen with fixed hours for work, food, exercise and sleep. Our body works on bio-rhythms. This means that when we do the same things at the same time every day, the body knows exactly what bio-chemicals and hormones to generate for those activities. So it keeps them ready and waiting before we begin that particular activity. For instance, if we habitually eat at the same time every day, our digestive system generates all the digestive juices and enzymes we require before we begin eating.