Rest To Refresh

Do you just stop? Do you make time to be still? Do you have a pause button? Rest is vital. Do you know how to have the deepest rest? When we focus on something it helps us to forget our troubles. Many people find activities such as sports, gardening, music, drawing and crafting to be like a form of meditation. It's a total focus for the thoughts and attention. But is this the deepest rest for the soul?

Transcript

I'm Shanti and good evening and welcome soul to soul and we're going to look at how to rest to refresh so how do we do this do we just stop and make time to be still do you have a pause button rest is actually very very essential for our physical and our spiritual well-being but do you know how to have the deepest rest the rest that will give you back your power your strength your life energy your happiness when we focus on something it helps us to forget our troubles and many people find activities such as sports and gardening music and drawing and crafts etc like a form of meditation and these are very good nothing wrong with these aspects however they help us to concentrate and feel enthusiastic and they do take our mind maybe away from other things like our worries etc it's a total focus for the thoughts and attention however if we really want to find real rest is this your deepest rest for the soul yeah you can do that other times but when we look at meditation we find we need to have time we have to have a timetable where we say now I'm going to go into some different focus and concentration to give myself a truly deep and life-changing rest that will give me back my strength and my power of course sleep is absolutely essential for the body to heal but silence and deep peace are what the soul longs for and peace is the natural state of the soul so can I rest my mind do you get a break from negative thoughts and worries and sadness and anxiety also and I rest the intellect from making judgments and decisions how can we do that because we're constantly thinking thinking worrying concern responsibilities responsibilities this is draining our strength and we know that we have to live our lives but when can I give my personality a rest can I do this can I turn down the volume of expression I don't need to be constantly projecting my physical personality I can give myself deep rest a little pauses make a huge change so if I could remember over and over if I can practice spirituality and stillness and silence inside still living my physical existence so if I want meditation to be like the deepest rest for the soul I can experiment with the words man man above it means rest your mind on the divine so your rest will they be very nourishing and you will feel loved cherished so this is like this makes us very comfortable so we could ask the question so where do I find the divine and where can I rest my mind the physical world is full of ups and downs and yes nature can be very beautiful but it will also have a lot of harshness and violence so I won't get rest or peace there I'll be very concerned in many ways so let me take my mind beyond the physical world from time to time this is where meditation comes in I need to make spaces where I can take my mind out and up just for a poi a respite you could say just ah just even for a second throughout the day over and over and over and over so the soul world is the land of peace a non-physical realm of light golden red light a realm of pure consciousness where I can be with the divine the one above so if I could think about this practice this experiment with this experiences because this is the deepest rest for the soul can't find it any other place I can't find it in all the artwork and all the nice things I might do music and dancing and all this and nice relationships they will still drain my energy drain my power I can go sleep at night and I kept rest for the body I wake up in the morning I'm still going to start doing the physical life which is of course we are but that's not going to give me that's going to use up my energy and so the realm of pure consciousness where I can be with the divine is the deepest rest for the soul and this piece recharges my batteries and refreshes the entire body system as well as refreshing the soul I can feel Wow we charged I have strength some people feel that they get strength they never had for years so they almost feel like they're going back in time a bit I've see I have experienced that a lot that gosh I never felt like that for 20 years and here I feel like that now because it recharges the entire system the physical system and the spiritual system the batteries become charged and refreshed so I can rest and trust there's no danger there there's no danger there's only benefits I can rest in a notion of peace with the divine the one above the supreme father the supreme so and I am refreshed can I ask you something about you said there being no danger and total relaxation and a feeling of being cherished how have you developed that understanding of the divine because some people think that the divine is something to be feared almost you know I've heard these ideas and some people come with that baggage that they should be afraid of the divine so how can you rest and be at ease and feel cherished and completely relaxed if you have fear well it starts with we have to get to know ourselves and realize we're not bad we've got karmic accounts we didn't know how the drama worked just for a long time and so we just lived our lives and and we made mistakes and and we feel guilty about our mistakes so we feel that we're not worthy so I don't really sometimes we might initially feel we don't want to meet with the divine because I feel love I've done a lot of things that I wish I hadn't done but that that's past that was the drama of life and that one does not judge and so when I start to think in a more peaceful way also I'm having a different vibration and that vibration even going about my normal life is like a safety for me I have a vibration that helps to safeguard me in many different ways and so I can feel a bit more safe even amongst the complications of life and even if I could remember during complications because complications are our karmic accounts which gradually we understand and gradually they dissolve so only way I can get rid of them is through becoming peaceful and so gradually gradually I have gratitude for that one and I'm not ashamed anymore and I can feel that restful peaceful safety security welcoming energy which will have a huge impact on our physical as well as our spiritual well-being and you can grow and grow and grow in that strength both physical and spiritual but we need to practice being spiritual for in order for all that to happen we were speaking this morning about how the physical world kind of fascinates us and if the fascination is pleasant if the experience is pleasant like we're talking about drawing sports music is it still positive because it seems to be taking me away from self-awareness in some way so how do I balance the both of being active in the physical but not losing myself well it's up to us to learn to discriminate if what we're doing is like not useful at all then we would know that but things that are skillful I mean you're developing skills so that's not a bad thing and if they're useful for you and your community that's not a bad thing so we have to really have to live a life and there's a lot of things it's better not to do it's a waste of time a waste of money and maybe being harsh on others or abusive to others or anything like that it's not good or something that's like involved in any form of cheating or that I want just something for myself and that's it that it's not good but I can soon see these things and it's up to us personally what we do but things that are skills and skillful and useful are actually developing characteristics in the soul that are okay I mean you need to be sort of a master of something you might be a farmer you might be brilliant with nature and crops you might be a jeweler you might be an artist making beautiful pictures and so yeah okay so why is it essential then that even if I'm engaged in lots of good activity you might call it where it's not immediately in any way harmful in fact it might even be creating something why do I still need to rest the mind the intellect and the personality to rest the soul why just only to turn down that volume of expressing the self as a as a bodily being and just retreat for a while because we have used up nearly all our energy we're all given a certain length and a certain capacity for life energy and we use it up living our physical life and if I continue continue continue to use it up without refreshing the battery of the soul then many complications will come health complications relationship complications wealth complications everything even if you're really good at something at being an artist you won't be as good as you were because you won't have the same focus or concentration so a lot of your skills will will be diminished from the center of the forehead the tiny point of living life energy and it needs attention and it's only when we've reached the stage of total non attention and we have so many complications that we're then almost forced into thinking there must be something else we start to look and at that point it could be such a relief okay so the fewest piece then yeah nothing but peace yeah yeah and that was a lovely phrase man man above rest your mind on the divine yeah it sounds really simple it's not a focus or something really a struggle or even a mantra it's just a rest yeah with the divine could you say something more about defining that difference or that concept there's this realm of light and within that is the divine so it's the divine just like this great universal light or you seem to be talking about a world of light the world it is a world of light is where every single soul on the planet has come from so we use the term that we're all brothers we are actually our old brothers but we come down to earth and we pick up our different identities and we have dislike and wars and all sorts of things because we forget we're spiritual and within that world of light there is one soul who is forever only a soul not physical who's like an ocean of love an ocean of peace an ocean of bliss so that one has all the qualities we have lost so if I can come back to that one trust that one not gonna judge me and pick up my qualities again that's what Raja Yoga is all about and that's the role that that one plays now at this time when we've all you know we had enough of our physical ways that are making us tired and unhappy and sad and unwell and we need some strength we need some support we need to know what is it all about I wonder how often we've asked that what's it all about what's happening now I can begin to understand and I can begin to understand myself and gain or regain my self-respect because all of us are wonderful beings beautiful beings no not difficult not difficult at all yeah it was interesting as well that you made the distinction between finding peace and rest in a spiritual way by connecting with the divine as opposed to trying to find it in nature because I think that's quite an idea it's quite quite popular idea really that God's in nature but actually I remember you saying to me once you know nature is cruel like can you if you're driving past it looks beautiful if I left you there at the side of the road for 48 hours in the lovely nature you wouldn't be very happy when no I picked you up because it's become quite harsh as well yeah yeah so do you think nature just kind of follows our lead I think that we have caused a lot of damage to nature yeah and we've exhausted nature actually we've exhausted nature we've expected it to give us happiness and food and everything and wealth and health and everything and and never with much thought of putting anything back most of us I mean there are people who are healers and there's people who are doctors and there's people who are farmers but it's without understanding that we're all of these things yeah and once we have spiritual energy even nature won't hurt us nature will begin to serve us so it's worth there's a lot of stories about this about how farmers start to give energy to their crops and their crops grow and all this kind of there's a lot of things we haven't the time to go into that but people could research yeah yogic farming yeah yeah and putting vibrations into energy into nature it's good energy yeah okay thank you so now we'll do a little bit of meditation on being that energy so we sit with our eyes open and we focus our mind in the center of our forehead and we become aware I am the energy the peace the beautiful being the life energy in the center of my forehead I am so to see myself as the beautiful being it's also very refreshing I'm a being of beauty peace love happiness I begin to remember these energies that are within myself I'm an unphysical light so to take my mind beyond the physical world to a realm of pure consciousness where I can be with the one above the divine this is the deepest rest for the soul and this piece recharges my batteries and refreshes I the being of light I the soul I rest in my original home the ocean of peace with the divine the one above and I feel I've come home I'm safe I'm refreshed and take this back with me and to my everyday world and keep that energy with me in my awareness I am the beautiful energy of peace I am a peaceful soul Ohm Shanti