Principles for gaining strength of mind: how using water after the toilet cleanses, cools the nerves and conserves the energy of the lower centers.
The principles of gaining strength of mind center mainly on accumulating and conserving energy within the body; they prevent it from being spent needlessly.
First we will talk about a person's lower energy centers. There are seven centers in all, and the lower three are very important. Most human suffering comes from having weak and unbalanced lower centers. When they become strong, 90% of a person's suffering goes away.
Using water to sustain energy in the lower centers
Youth is the result of a certain hormonal state, of how the inner system works. The longer the reproductive system stays healthy, the younger a person remains. As soon as this system stops working properly, the person also becomes "old" mentally. This is how the body begins to wither and fade. The first practice is to use water to keep the múládhára and svádhiśt́hána cakras, the first two energy centers, healthy. It consists of using water after every visit to the toilet. Moreover, it is important not only to cleanse yourself with water but to use cold water. Why is this needed?
Water for cleansing
Every visit to the toilet leaves us unclean, both on the physical plane and on the subtle, energetic one. Urine is considered the dirtiest liquid in the universe, the most tamasic. If even a drop of urine remains on underwear or on the body, it creates and attracts negative energy, which gathers wherever a polluting factor is present. All of this has a corrupting effect on the mind. That is why after every visit to the toilet, whether to urinate or to defecate, it is important to have access to water. Toilet paper does not give sufficient cleansing for hygiene. It is a placebo: it does not clean, it only gives mental comfort. Try using water instead of toilet paper, or together with it: first water, then toilet paper.
The body's natural cleansing
Every visit to the toilet is a cleansing of the body. It is important to achieve complete release of both the bladder and the bowels. This way toxins leave the body instead of being reabsorbed. Cool water, on a purely physiological, reflex level, produces an additional emptying that cannot be achieved without it. On contact with cold water the muscles and nerves contract, the inner ducts contract too, and the remaining urine comes out. You can observe this process: if, after what seemed a complete emptying of the bladder, you rinse the genitals with cold water, further emptying takes place. The last of the urine comes out and the bladder is emptied completely. No environment is left in the body in which disease can thrive. This means the risk of inflammation falls and the reproductive system stays young longer. Diseases such as prostatitis and inflammations are increasingly found in fairly young people. One of the reasons is improper hygiene of the urogenital system.
In addition, it is worth mentioning the male habit of urinating standing up. From the point of view of health and of preserving the reproductive system, this is wrong and harmful: there is not enough relaxation, and the bladder does not empty completely. In a sitting position the emptying is deeper, but still not complete. The most ideal posture is squatting. In this posture both the bowels and the bladder empty completely.
Water to cool and calm the nerves
Cold water not only cleanses and fully frees the ducts of the bladder; it also acts on a subtler plane: it removes excitement from the brain.
Energy is movement. When the lower part of the body is heated, the internal organs heat up too, and movement occurs. This means that the area of the brain connected with the svádhiśt́hána cakra is stimulated. And energy flows out and is spent in this center. Cold water removes the excitement from the brain, the nerves calm down, and the lower energy centers are no longer stimulated.
As the experience of most practitioners shows, if you cleanse the body first thing in the morning, emptying the bowels and bladder completely, then meditation takes place on an entirely different level. This cannot be achieved with full bowels or a full bladder, however much effort a person makes and however hard they concentrate. Until the body and all its excretory systems are cleansed, there will simply be no strength and no inner resource on the physical level. This is because the energy does not reach the upper centers.
It is important to add that all these recommendations for keeping the second energy center healthy also help to conserve within the body the seed, which should not be spent on the lower centers. And then for the upper energy centers, the anáhata, vishuddha and ájiṋá cakras, however pure and developed they may be, there will simply not be enough energy. Besides, if the lower centers are not in order, and there is a lot of energy inside that is not spent and not directed upward, it becomes suffering for the person. It turns into sexual desire, intrusive thoughts and cravings, and the person is as if in agony. It is a very painful state.
The points we have talked about today are very important. These practices make it possible to gradually reorganize the body so that energy rises upward rather than downward. When this happens, clarity of mind, willpower, creativity and intuition all begin to appear. All the highest qualities of the human mind awaken. It is both easy and difficult at the same time. For this we need to cultivate in ourselves the habit of regularly caring for our lower energy centers.
