During last 20 years, I have struggled a lot to understand what really is best for me. This search has led me to various explorations. It took me on various paths like earning huge amount of money, addictions, higher education, jobs, extensive travels across India, reading plenty of books and so on. All these habits were captured from people around, reading, watching television and so on. However, I felt that something is missing. I have been successful, but never at peace with myself or society. I studied all kinds of self help books, articles, blogs, and videos, but none really helped me understand what really is important for me. Everyone was telling their own thing (and negating everything else) about what is best for me.
I developed plenty of conflicts inside and outside. With myself and with others like friends, family, employers, society and so on.
Let me illustrate some of here.
I asked this question about corruption at workplace to some of my friends and relatives who have been working in offices that are highly corrupt. All of them said that it's is not normal to be corrupt but they can't avoid it or help it. Their justification was "everyone around here is corrupt and there is no other way" (passing responsibility on to others!). But I could not tolerate the idea of being a corrupt person. I felt very difficult to feel connected/related with such people.
This is one example of a moral/ethical conflict I developed. There were many more such conflicts like, to accept dowry or not, falsifying research data as a student, smoking, excessive drinking, overworking, addictions, bad diet, overspending, debts, lying, rejecting relatives due to their habits, hiding/altering facts, and so on.
My efforts to overcome these conflicts were met with serious social consequences. When I questioned a corrupt practice, the people felt bad about it. When I rejected to accept dowry, elders on both sides felt insulted. When I lowered work hours and ended up with less earning, many said I am a fool. When I got rid of food addictions, people said I am doing some kind of drama. And so on it goes.
Being truthful cost me my PhD (from JNU Delhi), lots of money and time. I chose to leave PhD studies but not write lies in my thesis that was expected of me by my supervisor. But I was overjoyed of protecting my integrity.
The textbooks have taught me not to lie, not to take dowry, practice equality with all humans, not to be a corrupt and so on. But reality was opposite of this. My conclusion is that morality does not exist in the society, or exists in places I am yet to go.
If morality is not normal, why have I been craving for it? Every time I did an immoral act, I developed a permanent nagging feeling about it. Compared this to moral acts, which I hardly remember. I probably remember all the immoral/unethical acts I have done. These have become etched in my memory. For example, whenever I had scolded or hit my children, a few minutes after the act, a bad feeling develops. I hear speaking with myself in the head like, they are just children, you could have been gentler, they were just playing, don't do it again, I should not be harsher with little children and so on. This act and these voices are permanently present in my memory. And with time, these prevent me from repeating such acts. Consequently, such acts have become minimized over time. However, I hardly remember all the normal/good/wonderful things that I have done for my children. Here I realised that negative behaviors that harm, scare, punish, affect or hurt others create negative feelings and emotions in me. And these negative emotions last a lifetime, probably to stop me from repeating these behaviours. This looks like an important trait of social animals. Social animals can live in a society only if people have more prosocial/positive/helpful/ethical/moral behaviours than antisocial/harmful/negative/immoral/unethical behaviours. This is essential for the societies functioning. And my body knows this very well. This is the reason, my body was developing negative feelings, bad feeling in stomach, disgust, nausea, sleeplessness, anxiety and so on when I was immoral/unethical/hurting self or others.
This brought me to a very important observation. Body never lies. Body knows everything. Thoughts/mind/brain may be wrong as it listens to people. But body knows rights and wrongs with certainty.
I have now learnt to see how my body is reacting when I am doing something uncertain/new/risky/adventurous/etc. If I develop negative emotions like fear, anger, disgust, shame, sadness, rage, loneliness, anxiety etc., I have found that I was doing something wrong. I stop these acts. If I am uncertain, I take some time and act accordingly. I have found that this has reduced moral conflicts in my life. Consequently, I feel more peaceful.
Immorality or lack of ethics has serious long term consequences. Let's look at the example of a corrupt lady police officer. Such a person will be constantly stressed, tired, ashamed, sad, angry, and so on about his corrupt practices. A constant fear of legal consequences will be looming on her head till death. She will make all efforts to hide her corrupt behaviours using social/situational/personal and other overstretched justifications/reasonings. But none of these frees her. Everyone in the office, in the society, the spouse and children, siblings, friends, neighbors, relatives will be knowing about her corrupt behaviors. She will have nothing to teach her children as there is no truth in her. She cannot be a role model to anybody. Her children will end up being corrupt if they decide to stay with her, or they have to leave her if they decide to live a moral life. In both the situations, the relationships are broken. Nobody respects such a person. People will show some respect on the face out of fear, but in their heart, they cannot have respect for her. She will always be living in conflict with herself and everyone around. Everytime her body raises alarms when doing wrong, she has to suppress it with wrong justifications. But body does not accept any justification. And mostly end up developing all kinds of stress related diseases and eventually succumb to a sick geriatric phase full of remorse and regrets. Such a person cannot be alone either. Her loneliness brings the conflicts out. Everytime she sees a mirror, she sees a corrupt person. This all burns her from inside. This all is very heavy. And not worth. Look within and look around friends, you will see that a corrupt human is a stressed human.
I realised that the cost of ethical conflicts is huge. It destroys everything. It affects self, family, the society and all the relationships. It eliminates truth and fills life with lies.
I don't really know even now what is right and wrong. I still do lots of wrongs. But the number of rights is increasing and number of wrongs is reducing. However, everytime I get a wrong feeling, I am doing whatever it needs to stop doing such acts. My body is a guiding compass. I now try to do what I feel is right. I have reduced/stopped forcing my body to accept wrong things.
This is one example of how I have been guided by my body (not experts or others) to see right from wrong and consequently increase morality in my life.
Same thing applies to conflicts that arise in various aspects like relationships, parenting, religion, politics, work, society, business, and so on.
Well, coming to conflicts that have flooded my needs and created havoc in my life. I have given absolute importance to my body's needs. This has freed me from all the unnecessary things that had crowded my life. My body needs few things and that too in little amounts.
Maslow has extensively worked on human needs and also have placed these in hierarchical arrangement based on their importance. All needs are important. The lower needs are essential for survival. Higher needs are essential for reproduction and functioning sanely in the society. Maslow summarized his findings in following image.
Here is a list of steps we have taken to overcome conflicts of needs. All these were possible by listening to the body.
SURVIVAL NEEDS
Air: Unknowingly we had ended up in polluted atmospheres like cities, near industries etc. We have chosen to live in a farm with no existing air pollution in tens of kilometers radius and no future possibility of such pollution. This has resolved the conflict of good air.
Food: We have believed the farmers, corporates, governments, shops and everyone else involved in food production to food delivery. Unfortunately they all had ended up making us eat junk, contaminated, processed, non-seasonal, non-local, nutrient deficient food. We have done lots of changes to overcome conflicts in our food. We are sourcing staples from organic farming friends directly, and trying to grow fruits and vegetables. As of now, we are dependent on market for fruits and vegetables. In few years, we will be most likely getting fresh veggies and fruits from our own garden.
Water: There are many issues with water too. Water from deep borewells is usually loaded with toxic minerals. Water purified with filters is not good for the body (more on this in a later blog). We are working on harvesting rainwater as it is the purest and most natural form of water. Yet to achieve it.
Sleep: I had almost a decade of disturbed sleep. Overwork, stress, bad diet and lifestyle, bright interior lighting, smartphone use etc had spoiled my sleep. I have eliminated all these one by one. I sleep like a baby now. Undisturbed. I sleep whenever body wants to.
Sex: Can't get into details of it as it is too personal!
Homeostasis: I had multiple diseases like gastric ulcer, piles, constipation, acidity, knee pain, obesity, hypercholesterol, dandruff, asthma, eye glasses, a severe scalp infection and emotional issues. No treatment helped. I did nothing directly on these. As I worked on diet and lifestyle, these vanished completely.
Excretion: It was difficult to even excrete my feces few years ago. Urination was fine. But defecation was affected. I had to defecate multiple times. I was constipated. Bleeding frequently and developed piles. Tried many treatments. Nothing helped. With improved diet and lifestyle, I excrete like an infant now. On most days, as soon as I get up, I get an urge to defecate. On the Indian seat, I just have to spend 1-2 minutes to dump completely. Feels so great. Makes me lighter. I don't get even a thought of defecation till next morning. Urination and sweating happens multiple times a day easily too.
SAFETY NEEDS
Resources: I feel that we now have most resources needed for living a peaceful domestic life. We have been struggling to build a home. Owing to various reasons we are yet to feel secure about our home. We have been living on friends land by building our home. However, this arrangement failed to give us a sense of security owing to various reasons. Hence, we are planning to buy a peace of land around here and rebuild our home. I had a desire to live by sharing. This is not working out unfortunately. And after multiple failures, we have now lost trust in people's capacity to share. Most friends and relatives had warned us that sharing land is an impossible idea. Even then we wanted to explore it. After that, I don't think there is any major resource we need! We are in a position to buy all the resources needed for us. We feel safe about satisfying this need.
Morality: I had lived a fairly immoral life. I don't want to repeat immoral behaviours as much as possible. It may not be possible to be absolutely moral, but I am sure that it is possible to continuously reduce immoral behaviours. I have been able to do so. I am healthier, peaceful and relaxed. I think these are possible only due to moral practices. I feel safe as I have nobody or nothing to fight with now.
Family: I am married, have two healthy and normal daughters. We live together. We share the space, works, and joy of truthful living. I couldn't ask for more. I feel that my family is very safe.
Body: My body has become healthier, relaxed, peaceful, and so on. I feel that my body's needs are fulfilled much better than before. My body feels safer than ever.
Finances: I was earning more and spending even more. Earning leads to spending. There is no other equation possible. Spending leads to accumulation of materials. This creates all kind of problems. I have learnt that it is more important to learn how to spend, than how to earn. Anybody can earn. But it takes efforts to be conscious about spending behaviours. We are now earning much less than we were few years ago. However as we have eliminated most wants, spending has plummeted. We spend now to meet our needs. Needs are very easy to meet and needs very less money. We have never been more secure about our financial needs.
Employment: I have written many times about this aspect. We are running a home based healing consultation business. And a gym, that is yet to return our investment. There is no boss, timings, travel, transfers, hierarchy, politics and other issues that affected us earlier in jobs. Our employment needs have been very well secured.
Health: Never been so healthy. All of us are in supreme health. Children hardly get sick.
SENSE OF BELONGING
When the physiological needs were taken care of, magic started happening with higher needs. Higher needs were automatically met gradually. My sense of belonging with others has skyrocketed. People have very high respect for truth and honesty. I dont think there is any person who does not like truth. Many known and unknown, connected and disconnected people have started visiting us to learn more about how we are able to achieve health and peace in our life. Everybody needs same things. Everyone wants to do what we have done. Some deny, some ignore but there are plenty of people who have become friends to us. It is so much joy when we meet them or talk with them. We are open to visitors who are on the path of truth, healing, self-care, responsibility, morality, simplicity and so on. We have even built a home for such visitors as they wish to stay longer with us. Unfortunately, this shelter was stalled before building the roof owing to our plans to buy a own land. There we will be building a shelter for visitors, friends and relatives. People on this path are welcome to visit even now, but stay is possible only for people we know well as the space is limited. With each day, new connections are formed. A few years ago, we had sense of belonging through money and materials. Now, it is directly with the people.
ESTEEM
Same thing happened with our self esteem and esteem. Both have grown by bounds and leaps. Listening to body and satisfying it's needs gave us results in the form of health and peace. This enhanced our self esteem as well as confidence and snowballed into various other works. All of these happening little by little every day, are enriching self-respect and respect of others. We now have internal as well as external validation about our choices. Our bodies have showed that we are doing right by getting healthier. Friends have validated that we are on the right path of living too.
SELF-ACTUALIZATION
I don't have any desire to reach a state of self-actualization. As of now, I am totally satisfied with what we are doing. I don't know whether self-actualization is possible for me in future, or whether it is an indispensable need.
To sum it up. When I failed to meet my body's needs, I became sick. Due to too much focus on external learning and listening to others, thought/desire/wants became more important than survival needs. This created an inner conflict in my body. Similarly, when I failed to satisfy external needs with friends, spouse, children, society, further conflicts developed. I worked on body's needs and inner conflicts minimised/resolved. Body has become healthier and peaceful. External conflicts that depend on relationships with others were resolved automatically.
My advice, just understand that your body needs a certain diet and lifestyle, as well as truthfulness. It is damn easy to do this. Just need honest efforts. Costs nothing. Your body will guide you throughout this journey. Once you start this journey, everything you need as a human being automatically comes to you. And chances of living a healthy 150 year long life become a possibility.
Thanks for reading & Take Care
Madhukar