The Identity Crisis - Homosexuality

Homosexuality is a justly case of identity crisis. It is not just a gender crisis but a more subtle situation. They identify themselves not their body but they identify themselves with their mind. Entrap inside a male body, they think, the mind dictates a female identity, same as in the case of lesbians. Lesbians think they are masculine male entrap in a female body.

Every body identifies themselves as the tags as mark of their location, race or religion. One thinks I am black or brown, Chinese or Americans, catholic or Muslim, fat or skinny, tall or short, and male or female. These are the bodily levels we set note on our identity.

Just because a person is in male body doesn’t mean that the person is male; and just because a person or soul is in a female body doesn’t mean that the person is female. This is because the person is not the material body, you are not the body, I am not this body. At death you will all leave this suit of clothes behind, these bodily designations.

The gross material body is made up of the elements earth, water, fire etc., can be compared to the jacket and shirt and the subtle material mind, material desires etc., can be compared to the undershirt or underwear. In fact you are all these, you are not the jacket or the under shirt. You are covered by a gross material body and a subtle material body. You are the living entity, the life force situated within these gross and physical casings. The identity crisis exists for a person who is not aware of this fact.

Individuals in men’s bodies but who want to enjoy as women should appreciate the fact that they are not women trapped in men’s bodies rather they are living entities covered by their desire to enjoy as women, but their “female” desire is encased in a male’s body. In other words, they are actually identifying themselves to be the subtle body, the mind and desires. A person can realize that the mind is not the self. Homosexuals, for example, can separate themselves from the tendency to enjoy as women as something apart from themselves; in the same way that they can experience their body as apart from themselves.

Through meditation, a person says, “my body”, as if the body is their possession, “My mind” which point to the fact that the mind is also a possession of the person. I have a body and I have a mind – but I am neither the body nor the mind.

A person can watch images going through his mind in the same way he watches television. One can act as a witness to the activities of the mind or he may dream and say, “Oh, I had a terrible nightmare”, but as soon as the dream is gone, you still exist, as the witness viewing your dream. So you are not the mind.

Desires are continually changing. A desire to enjoy in a certain way may exist but then it goes away but the living entity stays. The living entity, who is aware of that desire, continues to exist. The homosexual should be aware that desires are changing day to day, moment to moment. The person is the one aware of these ever-changing desires, feelings and thoughts. Homosexuals can choose his ever changing desires, he can just watch and be the spectator of the streams of his desires, he can rid those perverted desires or thoughts and experience how hard to control them or he can give in to them. This shows that the person aware to make choices is apart from these flows of desires and they are not the mind’s desires or the mind itself.

Homosexuals somehow experience that their gross body is something foreign; they have the wrong kind of body on. Their subtle body, the mind does not match their gross body.
This is all due to their desires and activities in their past life, such desires and activities caused them to transmigrate to gross body which does not match up with their subtle body.

In this lifetime, we had already experienced transmigrating from on kind of body to another. The soul transmigrates from a baby body to a boyhood body, and then migrates into a young man’s body. A person who used to live in a young body now lived in a middle-aged body. And the person who used to live in a middle-aged body now lives in an old body. We see this process around us, person dropping one body, then leaving that body and taking a new one.
It is not the same body – the body of an old man is not just an old version of the same body he had as a youth. All the cells have changed, the bones have changed, the whole body is different. This is a scientific fact. The body is made up of cells which are constantly being replaced. The body is constantly changing.

“As the embodied soul continually passes, in this body,
from boyhood to youth to old age, the soul similarly passes
into another body at death. The self-realized soul is not
bewildered by such a change.”
(Bhagavad-gita 2:13)

In the same way that there is continuity throughout the gradual changes of the present body, there is continuity in the life of the conditioned soul. The desires that a person cultivates during the lifetime of the present gross body do not die when the body dies. They remain with the living being and act as a link or connection with the next body. The bridge between one type of body and the next is the mentality of the living being – the subtle body or mind.

To be continued.

Breathing Lessons

We may not be aware of it, but we breathe at a rate of 15 times per minute. When we are happy, we breathe in a rhythmic, deep and slow manner; when we are sad, we do so in a tense or depressed, gasping, sighing, shallow, fast and uneven way. Actually, we can control our breathing. A closer look at how nature designed our bodies reveals that man was meant to breathe primarily with his diaphragm, not his ribcage and clavicles.

Laziness, ignorance, smoking, pollution, constipation, and other factors have turned us into shallow chest breathers. Chest breathing uses the intercostals muscles between the ribs to forcibly expand the upper ribcage, lowering the air pressure in the chest so that the air enters by suction. This process leaves the lower lungs immobilized. Nothing is wrong with this, except that it takes about three times more of chest breathing to get the same amount of air into the lungs one can get from a single diaphragmatic breathing.

Clavicle breathing is even far worse than chest breathing. The clavicles of the collar bones are used to open up the upper portion of the lungs. Those with asthma or emphysema try to pant or breathe rapidly to get sufficient quantities of air pumping in the narrow little top pockets of the lungs controlled by the clavicles. This affects the heart which has too rapidly pump more blood through the lungs to compensate for the small surface area covered by the clavicle breathing.
We also do some clavicle breathing every time we are anxious or stressed out. Irregular, tense breathing can be caused by and lead to disorganized mental activity and chaotic thinking patterns, as well as physical, emotional and mental disease. Next time you feel uptight, change your breathing pattern. Take a few abdominal breaths, hold for a few seconds, then exhale long and slow. Your anxieties will melt away! Unfortunately, most of us forget how to do abdominal breathing.
Balanced Breathing
Two hemispheres of are responsible for different abilities and characteristic mode of expression of human individuality. The right side of the brains assumes the responsibility for the spatial, artistic, holistic, intuitive, and psychic side of our conception. The left side is responsible for our logical, rational, and analytical faculties and sequential and linear mode of the thoughts.
The left brain has the centers for verbal communication – reading, writing, talking and hearing. Our formal education uses more verbal than non-verbal communication, making much use of the left side of the cerebral lobe. The left side has the qualities of competitiveness, selfishness, and aggression or the male (yang) energy. The right side has the feminine (yin) qualities of love, compassion, and nurturing. Alternate breathing, or inhaling in one nostril as we close the other nostril with our finger, stimulates the opposite of the brain. This means that when we inhale through the right nostril, covering the left nostril, we stimulate the functions or qualities of the left side of the brain. Balance breathing through the right and left nostrils creates a balanced personality.

Dr. I.N. Rega, an EENT specialist in Bucharest, Romania conducted studies concerning nasal obstruction. One such study involved 200 patients suffering from one-sided nasal obstruction due to distortions and malformations of the nasal septum since birth. Dr. Rega found that 87% of those patients whose breath flowed predominantly on the left nostril suffered a higher than average incidence of a wide variety of respiratory disorders, including chronic sinusitis, middle and inner ear infections, partial or total loss of the sense of smell, hearing and taste, recurrent pharyngitis, laryngitis and tonsillitis, chronic bronchitis, and bronchiectasis.
He found that they eventually were more likely to suffer from one or more of these disorders; amnesia, intellectual weakness, headaches, hyperthyroidism (with associated irritability), cardiopulmonary weakness (manifesting in palpitations asthma-like-attacks, and chronic heart failure), insufficiency of liver and gallbladder, persistently altered cellular constituents of the blood and lymphatic fluid, chronic gastritis and enter-colitis (with symptoms of heartburn, gastric reflux, peptic ulcer and constipation), sexual and reproductive disorders (symptoms of dimunition of libido, menstrual irregularities, and diminished virility).

Twenty-six-percent of those whose breathing flowed predominantly through the right nostril were found to be predisposed to arterial hypertension and it’s numerous consequences.
Breathing Techniques
In his commentaries on the Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, the second great Taoist master aster Lao Tzu, explains how the vital energy can flow through the body, giving its multiplicity of the benefits. “(Those) who attain longevity with the management (of breath), who forget all things and yet possess all things; whose placidity is unlimited, while all things to be valued attend them – such men pursue the way of heaven and earth, and display the characteristics of sages”. The whole body must be involved in the breathing process as this makes the blood circulate better, bringing oxygen to the extremities. To do so, a person can either use his mind to mobilize and bring the breath to the different vital energy centers along the spinal column or he can use movement. By doing Hatha yoga, chi kung or tai chi chuan exercises, a person mobilizes his energy around the body. It is said that men of ancient times used their heels to breathe.
Breathing through the heels is done standing with your feet apart as wide as your shoulders. Raise your arms forward as high as your shoulders while you inhale. Get the energy from the heels, by pushing your arms up against the pressure from the ground. This brings the energy you have gotten from the earth up the legs to the body and finally your arms. Exhale and press your hand down. The breathing must synchronize with the movement of your arms.

For asthma attacks or difficulty in breathing, do some deep abdominal breathing, as well as the following simple but effective breathing technique, which helps the constricted bronchi-oles of asthmatic patients.

Lie down on your back, your body straight. Put your palms on the floor, besides your body. Bring your legs together and relax your legs. Look straight forward. Exhale all the air from your body through the mouth in a continuous manner, as fast as, when you are whistling. The abdominal muscles should contract when you are exhaling.
Inhale slowly through the nose, expanding the abdomen. Keep the air in while stretching the toes forward, tightening the legs. Pull the stomach inwards and keep your hands stretched. There should be a mild tightening of the whole body. Hold this position for three to four seconds during the first week. Gradually increase to six to eight seconds during the second and third weeks. Retain air as long as it is comfortable for you. Then exhale again through the mouth. Repeat the exercise during inhalation. You can do three repetitions for the first time, gradually increasing, but don’t do over five repetitions. The stomach must be empty when doing this.

The Greatest Love

Maria was very concerned with how she looked, especially her teeth. She was just not pleased with her image on the mirror. She had gone dentist hoping, feeling that each had only made her look worse. She went to have her nose fix, but they did a poor job. Each professional only mirrored her belief that she was ugly. Actually there is nothing wrong with how she looked.
Tina had a terrible breath that made people uncomfortable being around her. She was a theology student so her outer demeanor vibrated with piety and spirituality. Beneath this was a raging current of anger and jealousy that exploded from time to time, when thoughts of how a certain person was threatening her position. Her inner thoughts were expressed through her breath, and she was offensive even when she pretended to love. No one threaten her but herself.
We may know of people in similar situation – we may even be in it. We may scold and criticize ourselves endlessly. There could have been a time when praises and compliments surprised us, even made us feel uncomfortable. Again, criticism or reprimand seemed be safer water to tread. And if someone else expressed their love, sometimes we may have felt, “Why me?” – Or “You might be mistaking me for someone you know.” The belief that we are unlovable seems to be prevalent.
There is a litany of other negativities that could be included: we procrastinate on things that could benefit us. We are quite afraid to charge a decent price for our services. We create illness or pain in our body. We live in chaos and disorder, as reflected in how our house is arranged or how we work. We may even be attracting lovers and mates who belittle us.
By denying ourselves of our good, we show how we regard ourselves. Try to see these examples:
The husband is grouchy and tired; the wife wonders what she could have done to cause it.
A friend takes you out once or twice and never calls again. You think something must be wrong with you.
The marriage ends and one feels he/she is a failure.
An employee is afraid to ask for a raise.
We don’t close the sale or get the position we aim for and we are sure we are not good enough.
We mistreat our body with food, alcohol, or drugs.
A person is afraid of intimacy and allowing anyone to get close, so he/she has superficial friendships.
We can’t seem to make decisions and put other people on the spot to make decisions for us because we are quite sure that if we make them they will be wrong.
What about you, how do you show your lack of self-worth?
Problems and situations may be different but at the root of all these is how much we love ourselves. Some of you might even react on this, thinking that loving yourself is vanity or some kind of arrogance, an utter to conceit. These are beliefs that have nothing to do with love, but springs from fear. When we love ourselves, we respect ourselves and express gratitude for the miracle of our body and mind.
Loving ourselves can burst and overflow in all directions. Consequently, we feel love for the very process of life itself. We feel joy in being alive so we see beauty everywhere, in another person. We are curious and strive to learn more about how the universe works in us. Love is the miracle cure. Loving ourselves cures and transforms our lives.
Thanks to Marilitz "thoughts".