These thoughts came about while hav­ing an email dis­cus­sion on the topic of time man­age­ment as energy man­age­ment with my friends. One of my friends quoted from an arti­cle he had read that we should man­age our phys­i­cal energy by sleep­ing for 7–8 hours, eat­ing every four hours, etc., to get the work done and still have energy left. I agreed with that, but with one cau­tion, “One size does not fit all.” So, I am post­ing that email ver­ba­tim under “Mus­ings” cat­e­gory, only edit­ing out some names and cor­rect­ing some gram­mar. Here it goes.

Energy Man­age­ment ver­sus Time Man­age­ment as dis­cussed with my friends

Note that these are my per­sonal expe­ri­ences as expe­ri­enced within this body as it is my lab­o­ra­tory. I can­not pro­vide you with sci­en­tific the­o­ries or aca­d­e­mic references.

I am going to prob­a­bly raise a few bushy eye brows or cre­ate some con­tro­versy here. But, well, what heck, here it goes. This may be rather long and wordy, so bear with me.

Note that when I use the term “body” it is not just phys­i­cal dimen­sion I am refer­ring to but our entire being includ­ing ener­getic, and emo­tional dimensions.

The key is “aware­ness.” Being aware of what is hap­pen­ing within and with­out right “now.” Only thing tan­gi­ble in our real­ity is the body and body is the only one that is always here and now. Mind always wan­ders either to the past or to the future. If body moves from here to there, “there” becomes “here” for the body. It does not think about a here that was past, nor does it think of a there that is the future. Mind may and will wan­der all over the place.

My per­sonal expe­ri­ence has been that body is in direct con­nec­tion with or longs to be in touch with what one may call Brahman/Spirit/Supreme Being/Life/Narayana/Siva/Christ Consciousness/Allah or what­ever you want to call it. This is what is called “sep­a­ra­tion”. Lib­er­a­tion or yoga is the heal­ing of this sep­a­ra­tion. Who is caus­ing this sep­a­ra­tion? Thought, out of which arises ego and thinks it is in con­trol of every­thing. Body tells the ego in var­i­ous ways, mostly in the form of phys­i­cal ill­ness or pain, that it is not in har­mony with life, but ego does not lis­ten. The larger the ego, the larger this sep­a­ra­tion, and stronger the ail­ments like deep depres­sion and lone­li­ness. Ego starts a par­al­lel and some­times oppos­ing move­ment to life as it is unfold­ing. Ego dis­so­lu­tion or tran­scen­dence is noth­ing but the heal­ing of the sep­a­ra­tion between body and spirit. How to bypass ego? Con­stantly being aware of breath and body is one tech­nique. This is not to be con­fused with obses­sion with looks or being crit­i­cal of the body. It is just being aware of every part in the body and just notice it with­out chang­ing any­thing there. As you watch, things may them­selves change. If you become aware if your body deeply enough you will notice that every cell is vibrat­ing with energy which we call life. You treat your body as if it is a new­born infant, with so much love and atten­tion.

When you focus on the body or breath you will notice that the rac­ing thoughts slow­down or entirely stop. This I call embod­i­ment. As you embody more and more by becom­ing aware of it more and more, thoughts and the ego start dis­solv­ing into the body, bring­ing you more into the present moment. As you become more and more present in the body, you can lis­ten to body’s sig­nals on what and when to eat, when to sleep, etc. Life starts becom­ing more and more spon­ta­neous. This means you become more and more an ener­getic being. What used to take you eight hours to do, you may fin­ish in a cou­ple of hours, since your thought is now a razor sharp tool in your hands rather than being an all-over-the-place-and-stressed-out-unruly-boss. This is how you man­age energy and con­se­quently time.

It is again the “belief” that body is intel­li­gent and a gate­way to and part of the divine that will get you deeply in touch with every­thing that is inside and out­side of you. If you believe that body is filthy and that one should shed this body in order to achieve mok­sha or lib­er­a­tion after death, then what I am say­ing may not go well with you. Lib­er­a­tion after death, as some sects of Hin­duism and other reli­gions teach, has no attrac­tion for me. There are even many Vedan­tists who say body is filth and must be dis­carded once you have achieved lib­er­a­tion, and that does not appeal to me, since this lib­er­a­tion does not become fully embod­ied. Mean­ing, you are dis­card­ing a part of you, the body.

I believe that every­thing has divin­ity in it and that 3D world or form is not only divine, but also the only gate­way we have for lib­er­a­tion from lim­ited thought processes which bind us from truly enjoy­ing this life in this 3D world. This is the path of the Tamil Sid­dhas (such as Babaji and Thiru­moolar) I fol­low. They did not throw away any­thing. They said every­thing is divine includ­ing the 3D world. Inside every form that you see there is a divine essence/energy. If you want to get in touch with that energy, you need your body’s help. So, “giv­ing up” the 3D world roles does not mean run­ning away from your respon­si­bil­i­ties. It means, “Giv­ing up the lim­it­ing thoughts about the 3D world (or even higher dimen­sions). Giv­ing up uncon­scious­ness about our­selves and becom­ing aware of our entire being includ­ing body and mind which leads to con­scious liv­ing.” That is Giv­ing up uncon­scious­ness and becom­ing fully con­scious. This is achieved through body consciousness.

I don’t believe in “eat­ing every 4 hours”, “get 7 to 8 hours of sleep” etc. One size fits all solu­tions won’t work in my opin­ion for every­body. As you cul­ti­vate more and more body aware­ness, you will know how your body will react to cer­tain sleep pat­terns and foods. Six or seven years ago, eat­ing every 3 or 4 hours really worked for me. Then, it was three meals. But now my body tells me not to eat that often. These days I have only one large meal for din­ner. I wake up in the morn­ing have a cup of cof­fee and pos­si­bly a very small bowl of oat­meal or a slice of sprouted multi­grain bread with peanut but­ter. Then, if I feel hun­gry I may have 5 or 6 almonds a few hours later. Some days I don’t feel hun­gry at all to have lunch. On some days, I will have another toast or one or two small rotis or a peace of fruit. On some other days body may want a good lunch. Once or twice a day I make car­rot juice and have it so that the body’s need for live enzymes is ful­filled. I eat a large meal in the night. This works very well for me now, as my energy lev­els remain quite good through­out the day as I fol­low body’s rhythms. As an exper­i­ment I reverted to hav­ing heavy break­fast and lunch as I used to before, and I felt lethar­gic and could not think clearly and work as efficiently.

So, the key to aware­ness of the present moment is via body aware­ness. This means you need to con­sider body to be your tem­ple and not as a dis­ease rid­den roach motel. You need to mon­i­tor your self-talk about your body. See if you have body neg­a­tive dis­po­si­tion. I had it and I had to cor­rect it. Body neg­a­tive dis­po­si­tion leads not only to ill-health but also to a neg­a­tive dis­po­si­tion towards 3D world and god/life/etc., and our worldly respon­si­bil­i­ties. When we become body aware and know that body is divine and is the micro­cos­mic reflec­tion of the macro­cos­mic real­ity, the body rejoices and you will have all the energy that you need to accom­plish your goals. And, it will enen­tu­ally lead to the heal­ing of your whole being. This pos­i­tiv­ity will even result in your find­ing your every­day pur­pose and ful­fill­ing it easily.

Sorry for the rant, but it had to be writ­ten, I had no choice in the mat­ter!