Seven Great Spiritual Habits

Overcoming spiritual bad habits is a challenge but daily practice of good habits can overcome them. We all know about these seven great  spiritual habits to enhance our spirituality. Nothing is new about these, but we have forgotten all of them. This is to remind you of them. I am writing these points so that they should be firmly grounded in our mind. This is to improve the habits of mind.

Habit 1: Stay Active and Alive All the Day

Stay active throughout the day. This is one of the most important spiritual habits. As you are growing older, you need to increase your hormonal balance. Hormonal balance is the first thing of modern spirituality. Om meditation is a easiest way for hormonal balance. If your health is perfect, your spirit will be perfect and in perfect spirit you can realize the depth of your higher spirit. Insulin is one of the most important hormone to keep under balance for real spiritual progress. The first step to improve your insulin sensitivity is to participate in some sort of physical activity periodically throughout the day. It is not necessary that you have to go to gym regularly and perform vigorous exercises but you can easily do your home works like cooking, going to market, buying something new and fresh, walking on the footpath. Shopping malls are now a days are the best place for doing spiritual activities like mindfulness meditation.  Spirituality means something related to higher spirit. In this new era of spiritual freedom, you need to drop the old ideas of spirituality.

Active Walking
Active Walking

Habit 2: Drink Enough Water

Normally, we need to drink at least 1.5 litres of water daily to stop us getting dehydrated. This works out to be about ten x 150ml or 8 x 200ml glasses of water. You can drink more if you can. “God’s spirit hovered over the water.” (Genesis 1:2). About 60 percent of our body weight is water. We can not ignore water in our body. For spirituality, we can go to the churches and temples. But unfortunately we have forgotten the water, the living spirit in our body.

During baptism there is an vital spiritual rite that involves water. It is means to ignite the inner spirit of human being. There are many similar rites and practices exists, that uses water for taking bath or for drinking — sometimes an herbal or mineral bath are used for spiritual and/or emotional purification. Many traditions and some homes use holy water for blessings and spiritual protection. Drink water to lose weight and to stop hair loss.

Drink Water
Drink Water

Habit 3:  Eat a high-quality diet (enriched in fiber  and protein )

Protein is more important than carbohydrate.  In this age of “compassion”, we have to look for alternative protein other than animal protein. How can we think of spirituality with animal protein? We may need to bypass the milk and milk related proteins. For achieving higher spirituality, for a higher consciousness we have to cultivate something else. You may take milk and other protein, there is nothing wrong in it. Never change your food habits drastically But when we are speaking of  higher consciousness, I feel other routes are encouraging. Again spirituality exist in our mind, if our mind is full of compassion and love automatically we have to think about alternative ways. At the same time one should not change the food habits drastically.

We need about 0.8 grams of protein for every kilogram of body weight. Vegetarians should not worry about getting enough protein; if we eat a reasonably varied diet and ingest sufficient calories. The vegetarian foods that are sources of plant protein are; soybeans, peas, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, broccoli, onions, kidney beans, Barley, brown rice,  Almonds, and cashews. It is well established fact that fiber and protein intake are associated with lower levels of blood pressure.

Habit 4:  Cut Down Carbohydrate Intake

Cutting down our refined carbohydrate intake is crucial for spiritual development. Specially, carbohydrate in the morning is not good. It reduces the alertness of mind. Eliminate chips, chocolates, cakes, and biscuits and other highly processed and sweetened products from your daily intake. Reach for an apple, a plain bagel, or a handful of unprocessed nuts instead. One of the primary reasons people develop diabetes over time is their over consumption of refined carb/sugar intake in their diet, which causes the beta cells of the pancreas to continually generate more and more insulin, which converts the glucose into fat cells.

Low Carb Food
Low Carb Food

Habit 5: Drink Organic Green Tea

Morning green tea, gives your metabolism an incredible jump-start.  Green tea reduces total cholesterol levels, as well as improves the ratio of good (HDL) cholesterol to bad (LDL) cholesterol. Buddhist mindfulness meditation and green tea is having a very nice relationship. Stop at 3 cups  a day – any more can lead to insomnia. Drinking Green Tea is an important tool and catalyst to weight loss and speeding up your metabolism. It increases awareness in our daily activity. Sometimes, in daily meditation people become dizzy and dull.  Green tea eliminates that dullness. It contains a potent antioxidant called epigallocatechin gallate.

Green Tea
Green Tea

Habit 6: Take Enough Sleep

Needless to say, proper sleep is very important for spiritual development. Sleep deprivation is against spirituality. Normally for good spirituality one must sleep seven to ten hours per day. Going to bed at 10:30 pm and getting up from bed at 8:30 am is now considered as the best practice for modern spirituality. It produces all the necessary hormones in the body and balances them.  It is also observed that maximum number of damaged neurons are repaired during 4:30 am to 8:30 am in the morning. If you do not have enough time in the night to sleep, 25 minutes occasional power naps are also key for spiritual development. It improves the metabolism a lot. Awaking up early in the morning say at 4:00 am is not a good habit for spiritual development. Thousands of people experimented with that and its outcomes are poor. People become dull, sluggish and dizzy, which is against the spirit. Do a relax Om meditation, just after getting up from the bed. 

Deep Sleep
Deep Sleep

Habit 7: Avoid Stress

Stress is the killer of spirit. Stress hormones, like cortisol, stimulate fat cells deep in the abdomen and it increases in size. Cortisol damages the neurons in the brain. Those hormones also can spark our appetite, leading to overeating.  By practicing equanimity and tranquility our metabolism will increase. Om chanting and meditation relaxed the body and mind easily.

 

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