How to overcome Mental Illness

1 year ago By Yogi Anoop

Understanding The Present Depth is Essential for Overcoming Mental Illness;

During conversations with others, see the divine in them. While eating, see God in the food. While taking a walk, be aware of your breath. This is what it means to live in the present moment.

To eat food as food is to live in the present moment. By eating food in this way, you will taste its true flavour. However, if you imagine poison or urine in the food, your mind will begin to remember the unpleasant taste of those things, rather than the true taste of the food.

If you start experiencing the taste of poison while eating, you will become terrified, and the true flavour of the food will be lost to you. You may even lose your appetite. Even though you know that this is only in your mind, the fear is inevitable.

If during mealtime, one experiences the presence of faeces or any dirt in the food, then there will be a lack of interest towards the food in the mind and senses. In other words, the mind is wandering away from the present moment. During mealtime, the present experience is the taste of the food, not experiencing any other substance in it. If it is happening it means the mind has been trained in the past for making unnecessary imagination. 

Even if one experiences the presence of the divine during the meal, it is entirely inappropriate. This is also a diversion from the present moment.  The primary focus during mealtime is the taste of the food. It is necessary to experience the taste of the food when it is placed on the tongue, not any imaginary substance.

I have many people who come to me with this concern that they start experiencing dirty substances during mealtime. Even I myself felt this in childhood. Although they are given medication by doctors and referred to as mentally ill.

I say, why don't we understand food as food? When we treat food as food, we can at least enjoy its full flavor. Moreover, we can also avoid unnecessary thoughts. When the mind goes deep into any task, it automatically abandons thoughts. However, when you train your mind to imagine while doing a task, it is wrong. These very thoughts create chaos for yourself in the future. And, please note that patience increases greatly when we live in the present with completeness. For example, when we taste the full flavour of food, there is no rush to finish it quickly in the mind.

This can be understood with another example - A person who goes to the office in the morning is having a meal at home, but his mind is not on the taste of the food, but on the thought of reaching the office quickly. Therefore, he quickly eats his food in a hurry and cannot taste the actual flavour of the food.

The truth is that while eating, the mind brings up some other thoughts that end his patience. Note that while doing any work, the mind and senses should have a complete experience of it. That is the current situation. The real truth is that this mind wants to live in the present, wants to experience it, but from childhood, it is given such wrong training that it cannot even understand the reality. It cannot even understand ordinary things.

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