Are You Living In A Rented House?

Owner vs Tenant Mindset

Let me turn this question around and make the most outrageous claim that more than 99% of us are living in rented houses! And let me explain what I mean by this.

 
We live in our houses with the mindset of a 'tenant' rather than that of an 'owner'. As a tenant, you are not concerned with, or not even aware of, the electrical lines, the potable water pipes, the sewage water pipes, or the data cables of phone, Wi-Fi, etc.

A tenant is bothered about any maintenance of the house only when something breaks down. Like, for example, a light is not burning, water is not coming through a tap, toilet water doesn't flow when you flush, etc.

However, as an owner you have a greater awareness of all these service lines, you possess the electrical and plumbing diagrams that your architect gave you, and you watch out for small water leaks or electricity fluctuations, etc. and take appropriate preventive actions much before things breakdown.

Your Physical Body

Now let me go to the point of my 'house - resident' analogy. By 'house', I mean your physical body and by 'resident' I mean You, your true Self, your mind-intellect, the life force that controls all your actions, that subtle entity that resides in your body, the soul that has found a temporary shelter in your physical body.

Most of us look after our body with the mindset of a tenant. Many of us are not even aware of the numerous subsystems of our body - such as the digestive, respiratory, circulatory, excretory, muscular, and nervous systems. We do not understand how each body subsystem interacts with the other subsystems.

 

With our busy work schedule, we are blissfully unaware of what is happening to the different parts of our body, and only when some parts breaks down, we go to a doctor, a specialist. And most of the specialists today are so engrossed in their specialty discipline that they ignore the side effects of their treatment to other subsystems. When something like that happens, you go to another specialist. 

For most people this is how we look after our body - we have outsourced the complete maintenance to specialists! In short, it is only when we are afflicted with some physical problems that we become even aware of the different parts of our body - head, eyes, ears, nose, throat, teeth, stomach, hands, legs, etc.

Otherwise we live with gay abandon mostly concerned with our external appearances - how we dress, how we look, how we smell, etc. Most of the time we are concerned with our body image and self esteem. We hardly care what food we eat and what fluid we drink, as long as they satisfy our hunger and quench our thirst.

And we are completely ignorant of our mind, the emotional stress, the fact that most of our physical ailments are psychosomatic in origin.

As against this dismal situation, each one of us should change our mindset of a tenant and reside in our physical body and look after it with the mindset of an owner.

To continue with our analogy of a house, many of us living in cities know that these days our houses are more complex. For example, recently I took possession of a new flat. It has separate water lines for treated clean water for normal use, treated grey water for toilet flushing, RO (Reverse Osmosis) water for drinking, and heated water from solar. The electricity cables and wiring become more complex with two Distribution Boards, the second one for the provision of home automation features. Similarly, it has separate communication cables for voice, fiber cables for data, routers and electric cables that are connected to various devices (lights, fans, geysers, ACs) and that can be controlled with voice or with your smartphone remotely. Consequently, the responsibility of an owner of such a house increases exponentially.

The body that our mind resides in is even more complex, to say the least. In the case of our body that houses various physical subsystems, as well as our mind, intellect, and other non physical parts, the owner's task of maintaining it in a fit, healthy, and superb working condition becomes even more challenging.

Here again there are two approaches. The don't care attitude of not knowing anything about our body (the tenant mindset) supported by the firm (but often false) belief that with money we can afford the most expensive doctors and the best equipped hospitals.

It is only when the life force is finally ebbing away and leaving your damaged body, that you come to the realization, lying lonely and helplessly in the ICU bed, that we should have been more aware and should have taken better care of the body and its different subsystems.

The other and the more satisfying alternative is to acquire the 'owner mindset', and take proper control and responsibility of looking after the different aspects of our whole body and health. Of course this is a more challenging task and we have to be continuously and keenly on the look out for various subtle signs and signals that the body emanates.

For example, the whole day fatigue that may signal a thyroid problem, the persistent whole-body pain that could be due to Vitamin D3 deficiency, the tingling feeling in your hands and feet that signals Vitamin B12 deficiency, etc. This is where the importance of preventive maintenance come into the picture:

• the need for physical exercise of your body, 
• the mind body exercises (yoga and meditation), 
• the less damaging alternative systems of medicine (like Ayurveda, Homeopathy), 
• the awareness that we are what we eat (Naturopathy), 
• understanding and exploiting the strong healing power of your mind.
  

Your Subtle Body 

And if you really want to go even beyond what the medical science teaches you about the complex innards of your physical body and understand how all eleven organ systems function in the human body, then you can tap into the rich repository of ancient Vedic wisdom that tells you about the five sheaths (kosha) covering your Self (Atman):

1. Annamaya kosha, "food" sheath (Anna)
2. Pranamaya kosha, "energy" sheath (Prana)
3. Manomaya kosha "mind" sheath (Manas)
4. Vijñānamaya kosha, "discernment" or "knowledge" sheath (Vigynana)
5. Anandamaya kosha, "bliss" sheath (Ananda)

With this intimate knowledge of your physical and subtle body, you, as the owner can go to the other extreme of looking after every aspect of your house (body) by becoming a DIY (do it yourself) enthusiast and not seeking any external help.