Wikipedia defines Asceticism as “a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from various wordily pleasures, often with the aim of pursuing religious and spiritual goals.” There are a number of reasons why it is favourable to observe ascetic practices in your day to day life. First of all, dedicating yourself to ascetic practices strengthens your consciousness. It makes you a purer person.
Secondly, it cultivates discipline within yourself. You begin to get a higher taste for happiness because you no longer act out of the motivations of your feelings and ego. You instead get in the habit of acting out of the motivations of goodness.
And finally, the energy that you generate through ascetic practices can be translated into mysticism, healing abilities, and the strength to find happiness. As you choose to no longer indulge in material pleasures of your senses you put that remainder energy into the pleasures of your spiritual and mystical senses. As you withdraw from indulging certain senses in the material/passionate world, you can generate more energy for your more subtle senses – such as your ability to see all things and all people clearly, to make predictions of the future, to heal.
The best way to cultivate intuition is to follow an ascetic practice. It takes time to develop. This is the reason why I would be cautious of psychics, healers and self-proclaimed mystics who live a very indulgent and extravagant lifestyle. Because then, you have to ask…from where are they getting the energy to develop their intuitive gifts? Either their their abilities are illusionary or they are using “dirty energy.” It’s also very difficult to cultivate good character traits in the face of extravagance, wealth and indulgence. It is better to cultivate good character traits and purify your consciousness in a more modest setting, and if you are destined for fame after that, then your consciousness will not allow you to be spoiled by it.
In this blog post I will be talking about examples of ascetic practices for women.
Ascetic practices for women
Washing Dishes
Washing dishes is an exercise we can do to accumulate spiritual goodness. The state of dishes can reveal the state and purity of her consciousness. The act of washing dishes in the home helps us to wash away our selfishness and our selfish desires from our heart. In this way she can take care of her family.
In the modern family, nobody wants to do the dishes. They argue about it, about who’s turn it is today, who’s turn it was yesterday, who did it before when it was not their turn etc, and sometimes at the end of the evening, nobody does it. In this family set up it is clear that self-interest prevails over all else. Everybody looks out for themselves. It is very difficult to create harmony and happiness in such an environment.
Mariana Polonksky remarked that unwashed dishes at night is equivalent to leaving the front of your house open while you sleep; all the families happiness and wealth will disappear by the morning. She says that a good hostess would not tolerate dirty dishes, not even during the cooking process. She also mentions that cookware has a special force of attraction too. Clean dishes in the home will attract good guests, while as dirty dishes attract bad guests. She finally warns that if you go to a house and notice that he dishes are dirty, it is better to avoid staying in that household for very long.
Doing things with love
The next female ascetic practice is learning how to accomplish her day-to-day tasks with love. This requires being present during her every-day duties and also cultivating enough love within herself and learning how to put that love into everything she interacts with. That means that we can learn to cook food for others with love. When we cook consciously, keeping in the mind the people that we wish to feed and nurture with our food, wishing them happiness and love, when they eat the food that we make they will feel truly nourished, and they will be protected. We can also put love into cleaning, laundry etc That means that when ever our someone enters our home, or whenever a loved one wears the clothes that you have washed with your care, they will feel calmer, they will feel at peace. This is the power of the woman.
Keeping her husband in her heart
Learning how to keep her husband in her heart is another female ascetic practice. Women have a natural tendency to withdraw their supply of love when something their husband has done offends them. If we can learn how to not do this, we will cultivate a great power. If, even when our husbands have offended us deeply, if we can keep our flow of love to them strong and consistent, it will strengthen the power of our consciousness, and also increase the respect our husband will have towards us over time. There are other ways to help show our partners what has upset us, and also how to “lovingly discipline” them (another post for that is right in my drafts, watch this space!) while still sending the love towards them.
This ascesa involves making a conscious effort to continue fulfilling your duties to your partner and cultivating the art of thinking kind thoughts about them, even when you don’t feel like it, and even when you want to distance yourself from them to “teach them a lesson”.
An ascetic woman will always keep her husband in her heart.
learning HOW TO BE SILLY, AND HOW TO MAKE MISTAKES
One of the biggest mistakes women make in their family life is trying to be stronger than their husband. Sure, you can do that if you want, but only if you are okay knowing that you will be dating/married to a loser. And why? Because you made him into one. You wanted to be strong. You wanted to show him how you are intelligent and independent and goal-oriented. Or should I say, you wanted to show him you are more intelligent than him. That you have more goals and plans for life than he does. That you are more connected to the spiritual/good/benevolent life than he is. That you make better decisions than he does. That you were right in that argument and he was wrong. We are very good at being stronger than our husbands. We are very good at making ourselves stronger than our husbands, without realizing that while we do that, we are also very good at making our husbands weak. And after we do all that, we sit around moping and complain to our friends and to our husband that he doesn’t take care of you. That he doesn’t step up and make good decisions. That he doesn’t make an effort to move your relationship forward. That he isn’t man enough for you, he isn’t a real man.
And you know what, maybe those things are true, or partially true. Maybe you are more intelligent, maybe you do make better decisions, maybe you were right most of the time. In fact, to be honest, I do believe that the woman in the relationship is the “smarter” one. She is the one who is the energy keeper of the relationship. She can control and regulate most of the inner workings of the relationship – but a wise woman would never reveal that. She would do it in a humble way.
A man will protect that which is that is weaker than him and what he feels would not try to do harm to him (on any level). A man will always fight the person that is stronger than him or who tries to be stronger than him. If you want to have a real man, you have to be a real woman. It goes two ways. So if you want more protection, you have to be someone that he wants to protect. He has to feel that he needs to protect you, that he needs to step up his game for you. If you become too “brave, strong and independent” he will just be thinking “oh, she looks like she can take care of things herself, I will just leave her to do that.”
So, the woman, being the “smarter one” has to do it in a quiet way. She has arrange her relationship in such a way that she feels secure and strong in her inner sense of self, but inspires her man to be there for her. She has to allow herself to make mistakes sometimes, to need protection, to need a leader, to need an intelligent man. I mean, that’s only if you want those things: a man who helps you when you mess up, a man who protects you, a man who leads your family to happiness, an intelligent and reasonable man (doesn’t sound too shabby does it
So here is the ascetic practice for women: learning to be humble, allowing herself to be lead even though she feels she is the “wiser/smarter one”, to allow herself to make mistakes and silly decisions.
Being honest
We women have a tendency to be dishonest. Sometimes we are just generally sneaky, or we use dishonesty as our weapon. We think “If you are going to be like that, then I guess I will just have to hide more things from you then!” The more aggressive a man becomes, the more secretive the woman becomes, and the more secretive the woman becomes the more aggressive her man is going to become. It’s a vicious cycle.
The Vedas teach that honesty strengthens our consciousness. So it is very important that we try to always be honest. This is the female ascesis as it is very easy for a woman to slip into the habits of dishonesty for whatever reason. She should try to be honest about everything and to everyone. She should be honest about everything, even the little things, and overtime she will find it difficult to be dishonest about the little things or the big things. She should not keep things from her husband.
Giving Blessings
Women also have the ability to give blessings to people. She can bless her husband before he leaves for work and she can bless her children before they go to school. This way she can protect her family and keep them connected to the highest happiness. For her blessings to be pure she must first cultivate selflessness by thinking first about the happiness of others. Then she must give a genuine blessing of love from her heart. It’s not as easy as thinking “Hmm ok I bless that guy”, but she has to really take the time to consider him with her heart and send a blessing with her love.
Serving people and charity
Women are naturally greedier than men. Greed is the woman’s desire for more “things” in her life. She wants a better home, better furniture, better decorations, a better car, better vacations, better clothes, better jewelry etc. While the Vedas do teach that it is OK for women to enjoy wearing beautiful clothes and jewelry, and also make her home into a beautiful space, she must also take into account her duty of charity and donation. That means that she should give away the things she does not use, she should think about how she can provide useful things for people who do not have them. She should engage in charity. This will get rid of her selfishness and build her compassion and her ability to take care of those around her.
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Thank you for reading
Malavika
