By Shankar Ramani, Instructor, Sahaja Online

 

These days some herbal supplements and alternative medicine experts are on a rampage to create fancy solutions for pretty much every health and wellness need or problem. Recently I happened to read about a supplement that is a carb blocker. These are supplements you can take that help block out carbohydrates once you consume them and hence come with the benefits of allowing you to eat carbs but not take the hit of calories from eating them. You trick the body into avoiding carbs even when you are eating them.

 

It sounded like magic to me. Indulge as much as you want, but block out the consequences?

 

As a person close to self-improvement, I find this somewhat amusing. After all, shouldn’t the best form of carb blocker be our discretion in controlling what we eat? Why put carbs into your mouth and then again pay for and consume supplements that block carbs?

 

Ah, the elusive self-discipline and self-control paradigms, of course. Very few of us can fight the temptation of carbs, day in and day out for years on end. Ultimately, they overpower us. That’s why someone came up with this brilliant invention of carb blockers, setting aside the topic of how well these really work, for a moment.

 

Anyways, there’s a broader aspect here of how relying on self-discipline and self-control are alone are inadequate for one’s self-improvement. So what else can done do?

 

 

There are the further downsides of these funny carb blockers. We’ll allow carbs to dominate us even more. That’s because the newfound freedom that comes from this seemingly powerful supplement will bring down our resilience and self-control even further. They may even cause us to eat more carbs than before because we can now afford to, without the unintended consequences. An official license to indulge without any worry.

 

So much so, that we could get to a point where it is much harder to come back to a balanced diet in our lives, the natural way.

 

As human beings, we always get entangled in excesses. We stretch too much in one direction and continue to do so until we have no choice, and something detrimental happens that causes us to move back in the right direction. So it’s almost sure that we’re going to lose even more on that self-control and self-discipline part.

 

 

It’s like speeding on a highway with the guarantee that your car’s speed will never be detected or be ignored by the cops. Chances are high that you’ll speed even more than usual. An accident is virtually sure to happen at some point.

 

The only real solution for self-improvement, therefore, is to bring our lives back in balance and keep that balance always. Meditation helps with that in a very reasonable way.

 

What is the reasonable and balanced path for self-improvement and self-control?

You don’t have to use your will power.

 

First, you don’t have to use your will power to avoid carbs. Or for anything else that requires self-discipline. Instead, you increase your meditation and allow yourself to move to a higher state of existence and maturity, where the urges are far lower and even irrelevant. You innately fix the root cause by eliminating temptation. This is instead of trying to control and discipline yourself from giving in to it.

 

Very specifically, how this works is that your attention reaches a kind of a witness state. You can witness yourself being tempted and have the resilience to stay away from giving in to it. Sure, it’s not going to be easy, but you definitely will feel a lot more powerful and strong than without meditation.

 

You have a built-in warning mechanism when you’re getting off track.

 

Meditation helps you with introspection a lot more than usual and continually provides feedback when you’re getting off track or when you are about to get out of control. Your catches and obstacles in your chakras will alert you immediately and well before the problems due to your excesses begin to set in.

 

You’ll develop detachment towards things that aren’t good for you.

 

Meditation helps develop an innate sense of detachment towards the more mundane things in life. This detachment is real and not mentally made up by you. That’s because meditation allows you to enjoy those moments and find those periods of silence when you’re switching your attention off from the multitude of things that attract your attention. This is particularly true for things that may tempt you. When meditation becomes a habit, your attention is much more balanced and immune to unnecessary excesses and indulgences.

 

Meditation is a slow and steady way of incrementally making yourself a better person in a holistic manner. It works on you from the inside and helps you achieve the right balance in your life.

 

You have a powerful life supplement in the form of meditation. You only need to dig into it and make it part of your life.

 

What if such a powerful natural supplement was also completely free?

 

Online Sahaja meditation sessions are always available to you, as are our instructors.