By ‘Tabassum’
Dear brothers and sisters in God!
I’d like to share with you something that I find very useful. It’s about a spiritual practice that I try to follow. I have to say that I don’t always observe it”sometimes it slips my mind or my mind is busy with other things. But, with God’s grace, I do often try to keep up the practice when I remember to.
I feel one should not advertise one’s spirituality”that would defeat its very purpose”but this particular practice is so useful that I feel that I should share it with you. You might find it useful, too.
Friends! One of the things that different Divinely-inspired religions have in common is their stress on the remembrance of God. They teach that we should remember God often. In fact, we can make every occasion a time for remembering God!
Repeating God’s Name, vocally or silently, is a method of remembering God that is recommended in different religious and spiritual traditions. God has innumerable Names, and we can repeat the Name we love the most or are most familiar with as a way of remembering God. This can be done throughout the day. In this way, one can be in God-remembrance even while engaged in so-called mundane activities.
The practice I want to share with you is taking the Name of God while eating and drinking. Many religious people say a prayer thanking God before and after meals”which is a wonderful thing. In addition to remembering God before and after one eats, one can also remember God while eating. How? Is it possible, you might ask, to do two things at the same time: to eat food and to think of God simultaneously?
Actually, it is possible, and it is very simple. Each time you chew your food, mentally repeat the Name of God (the Name that you most easily relate to) . Then, when you swallow your food, take the Name again. So, if, for instance, you’ve taken a morsel of food and you chew what’s in your mouth 15 times, you repeat the Name of God mentally 16 times (15 times for each time you chew the food and once for when you swallow it).
You can do the same thing when you drink something”water or tea or whatever. Each time you swallow, repeat the Name of God in your mind.
In this way, our eating and drinking can also become an occasion to take God’s Name!
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