Develop Hunger, Eliminate Craving
Imagine a man in a desert in a scorching heat going without food and water for days. Imagine the sight when he is given water and food. Every drop of water will taste like an Amrut (nectar) for him. He will be full of excitement and joy to have his food. Each morsel will make him feel like heaven. The food will taste like a delicious feast, even though it may be an ordinary meal.
Now take an example of a very rich man who indulges in binge eating of all sorts of tasty food. He is given the same simple food as is given to our desert man as per above example. This rich man will not have any appetite for this food and will only reluctantly eat it if forced to do so. He will not enjoy his food as it will not taste good to him.
What does the above examples tell us? Hunger is the mega engine of enjoyment of food. Hunger is felt when we need food. Hunger is a physiological process. It generates appetite for food - the desire to eat food. This desire to eat food is very crucial for digestion of the food. The process of absorption of nutrients from food is done best when we feel hungry, when we have appetite for food, when we fully enjoy the food we eat.
As opposed to hunger, which is a biological condition, the craving is purely a mental condition. We feel craving for food when we have an intense desire to eat a particular food without any relation to our biological need for the food. This desire may become uncontrollable at times. Physiologically, food cravings are caused by the regions of the brain that are responsible for memory, pleasure, and reward. When we eat a yummy dish, hormone endorphins are released into the body. It mirrors an addiction. Endorphins are ‘feel good’ hormones.
Our life field is full of different types of memories of emotion generating events. These emotions can be of anger, hatred, love, sadness, jealousy, feeling hurt, feeling of insult etc. These memories have their station in our brain. They remain in our life field like a cloud. Every part of our life - whether physical, mental or spiritual - needs food to sustain and grow. Very high level finer spiritual fields take their intake of food by way of smell of the food and fragrances. These clouds of emotions act like an intelligent entity and like any other living entity always try to survive and become stronger in our life field. For this purpose they need their connection with their base station in our brain to be kept full of vibrancy. It is through this base station they receive their nutrition. The only way to do this is to make us ‘feel’ that emotion which is the characteristics of that particular cloud. The ‘Anger’ cloud will try to make us feel angry so that it gets its nutrition through its connection to our brain. In addition to this, it will need a specific ingredient in food which is suitable for its characteristic quality. In Ayurveda, the food is classified into three broad categories based on these principles. These categories are Satvik, Rajasic and Tamasic. Satvik food generates hey in turn foster corresponding qualities of Satva, Rajas and Tamas.
Sattvic means purity, health, harmony and well-being.
Rajasic means stress, anger, activity and restlessness.
Tamasic means dullness, laziness and lethargy.
In actual practice there are hundreds of such qualities and each quality has its own specific nutrient requirement from the food.
A craving for food arises when these emotional entities in the form of living clouds in our life field activate their respective brain station making us intensely crave for that particular type of food which provides them their essential nutrient. We should remember that craving for food has nothing to do with the needs of our body. It is the needs of our mental being as composed by these emotional entities. This is the reason we become slaves of our own cravings and can sometimes go to any extent to satisfy our cravings. It is nothing sort of an addiction. Alcohol addiction is an extreme form of such craving based on the same principle. It causes us to completely disregard our physical well being. Various disease symptoms like obesity, diabetes etc are the result of such uncontrollable cravings.
Our desire to be in shape and attractive makes us compulsorily control our diet. However it only treats the physical aspect of our overeating while leaving the emotional living entities in our life field intact. These entities are intelligent which is the basic characteristic of any life. They devise clever ways to ‘make us want’ to eat their type of food. If we do not succumb to their demands because our desire to remain in shape and look attractive is stronger, then we innerly harbour the feeling of ‘starvation’ of the food of our cravings. These emotional entities will constantly nag us to act as per their way. A constant inner battle keeps on raging between one mind which wants us to look good and the other mind which is composed of these emotional entities. We tend to focus more on palliative treatment than look for etiological solutions to the problem. We have even developed drugs which ‘suppress’ the production of hormones which generate our want for foods. The root cause of craving for food is beyond the scope of our current medical science. This is the reason why all weight loss programmes invariably fail in the long run.
The practice of Sri Anand Yoga specifically handles this problem. Our life field is continuously kept well balanced and clean of all these emotional entities. Even the practice of affirmations helps us in ‘snapping’ our ties with these entities. This has the natural effect of completely eliminating our cravings for food. We will further explore this aspect in a separate note.
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