Self-love is a general definition for any activity that can be practised for one's own Anandayana.
Any activity that is good for the individual is a form of self-love.
To love oneself, one must practice acts of love aimed at oneself. When practising such acts, one feels oneself recharging with positive vibrations.
There exists a multitude of acts of self-love, such that listing them all is impossible: any spiritual practice, physical practices that make us feel good, behavioural guidelines that give us joy, attention to our diet to keep us in shape, and so on.
Your Anandayana is a journey of self-love.
Self-love is selfish. Selfishness is not the antithesis of altruism; on the contrary, selfishness is a precursor to altruism in the case of love: you cannot love others if you do not love yourself first.
This maxim is also inherent in Jesus Christ's famous words of the Gospel - thou shalt love thy neighbour as yourself.[35]
When we truly love ourselves, we do not seek the approval of others; it no longer matters what others think of us. When we truly love ourselves, our love saturates any need for external approval.
When we truly love ourselves, ambition also loses importance, as ambition is generally a search for the attention of others, as well as fuel for Egos... Thus when we truly love ourselves, we love ourselves for what we are, and then one begins to repudiate the masks of Egos, that is, what we appear as in the eyes of society.
When we truly love ourselves, we know what we like and what we need, and we do not allow ourselves be influenced by the likes of others.
When we truly love ourselves, we don't need status symbols to validate ourselves; on the contrary, every piece of belonging that is not strictly necessary is only a burden.
When we truly love ourselves, we are happy being alone and in solitude; our relationships with others exist only to share, not out of necessity.
When we truly love ourselves, Egos become useless and consequently disappear or minimise.
Loving oneself means taking care of oneself, of all of our conscious parts: body, mind and spirituality; neglecting any of these three parts would cause care of the other two to be in vain.
As we have seen, Spirit is closely related to mind and body, meaning that spiritual care, i.e., cultivating one's own spirituality, can be done in two ways:
directly: with ascetic practices such as yoga or meditation, or with ceremonial rituals (see Entheogenic Ceremony ⇒);
indirectly, taking indirect care of Spirit: avoiding stress and other mental negativity, practising aerobic and anaerobic physical activities, maintaining conscious sexuality, and caring for one's body in terms of nutrition, cosmetics, and rest.
“...
It took me a while to accept the diet imposed by J. : I did not understand why I needed to stick with yucca, rice, and banana... how does ingested food relate to the Ayahuasca experience, and how can it affect the shamanic study of a plant? [36] at first these questions troubled me, and J.'s answers seemed to me to be based only on superstitions, and not even very ancient ones. These disturbances raised doubts surrounding my reason for staying in the Amazon... then, without even trying, I understood: my body and my spiritual part needed to tune and synchronise, and to do this they needed to achieve a certain level of purification... I now feel an obvious difference in my mental and physical state, but above all, I notice that the shamanic rituals are becoming more and more effective, more meaningful, and deeper.
...
Pragnil reappeared today; it had been several days since he was last seen. He told me that he had gone to visit someone in C., a community a few hours away by boat. After mentioning to him my progress with the most recent rituals, I asked his opinion on maintaining the strict diet that I am following; Pragnil replied - cleansing diets only make sense because we are being poisoned during other periods -.
...”
Given that internal cell life is a manifestation of Spirit, any physiological/biological malfunction is both a cause and effect of a Spirit problem.
Therefore, an imbalance of Spirit leads to malfunction within cells. Such poor cellular functioning, whether short-lived or extended over time, may either not have any consequences or cause genetic modification, thus potentially very risky.
Acquiring Individual Consciousness and knowledge of Spirit is essential to maintaining better health.
Conversely, physiological malfunction due to external factors causes energy problems in Spirit.
Spirit can recover its state of well-being in several ways. Given a long or short period of time, Spirit can self-regenerate, especially if its consciousness is sufficiently elevated.
Through ascetic and spiritual practices, one can help Spirit regenerate so effectively as Individual Consciousness is elevated, and Mens, Spirit and body are in harmony with one another.
There are cases where Spirit struggles or fails to recover to a state of well-being despite a physical problem being in a state of healing, or having yet to occur. In such cases, a real shaman will be able to quickly resolve the situation.
One possible external factor that can generate a physical problem with which we can intervene is improper nutrition.
We read a lot about what we need to do to ensure a proper diet.
The importance of ingesting quality food is obvious: all cells of the body die; some have a life span of a few days, others much longer[37]. Dead cells are replaced by new cells, which are produced using substances ingested with food.
From our viewpoint, a manifestation of Spirit is the conscious life at the cellular level; it is extremely important to provide the proper nutritional elements to cellular life, and taking a macroscopic view, to the body's physiological system.
If we look at the history of dietetics, we will see that healthy eating advice has had continuous reassessments and contradictions, based on new scientific (or not-so-scientific) discoveries.
We all agree that ingesting toxic elements causes needless physical fatigue, but there is no need to blindly follow diet regimens designed according to the latest trend, because, as the history of dietetics teaches, this diet's efficacy will soon be disproved by a new future theory.
Each individual's body is different from others'. What may be harmful to someone may not be harmful to someone else.
For many people, vegetarianism and veganism are ideal diets, while for others they are not. Some people need to assimilate animal proteins, while for others endogenous proteins are more than enough to maintain perfect physical equilibrium, even when practicing sports at the competitive level.
Everybody would need to learn to understand what foods are right for own body.
Our own body tells us which foods to take in and which to avoid. In order to listen to our body, we need to develop a certain sensitivity. This sensitivity is a result of refinement undergone over the course of one's spiritual journey: as Individual Consciousness is acquired, so too is awareness of all the components of "oneself", allowing various sensitivities to be refined; in this case, improvement of the perception of bodily messages pertaining to which foods are most suitable for us.
Ascetic practice of yoga with full awareness is especially useful for refining all bodily sensitivities and improving perception of the messages sent by the body.
The popular saying "you are what you eat" has a ring of truth; in fact, most of the substances that make us up have their origins in assimilated food.
It is important not to inadequately and excessively intoxicate our bodies.
If it is important to eat well, using appropriate cosmetics is even more so; particularly with regard to suitable cleansing and personal hygiene products, which will be defined here as cosmetic products.
Fortunately, not all orally-ingested poisons are assimilated, thus entering the body's circulation: some are neutralised by enzymes present in the stomach, while others are evacuated with faeces.
The skin also possesses defences against the absorption of harmful substances to avoid poisoning the organism. Unfortunately, however, this defence system is not as efficient as that of the digestive system and, proportionately, fewer harmful substances are blocked or neutralised, while others penetrate and are absorbed through the veins.
Minimal basic knowledge is necessary in order to be able to choose cosmetic products with the least amount of harmful substances. This applies not only to cosmetics and cleansing products but also to any other product absorbed by the skin, such as sunscreen, moisturisers, toothpaste, etc.
Unfortunately, the information we receive from various sources is inconsistent and conflicting.
Some information in circulation is distorted by those with an economic incentive not to disclose studies surrounding a particular product's harmfulness, such as pharmaceutical/cosmetics companies or food industries.
As always, anyone curious must listen to all sides of the argument and form their own idea.
In principle, it can be asserted that the simpler and more natural a cosmetic product is, the less harm it causes.
There are many debates surrounding the possible toxicity of detergents, which are present in shampoo, toothpaste, and liquid soaps. Meanwhile, real soap, for example, defined as a product of the saponification process, seems to have no contraindications when used moderately and can be used to cleanse the entire body, including hair and teeth
Our body is subjected to physiological stress when it is forced to eliminate toxic elements and recover from poisoning.
As the functioning of the body is a continuous cause and effect of the state of Spirit, poisoning of the body constitutes an emergency of Spirit.
Limiting the absorption of toxic elements is equivalent to caring for Spirit, and so is an indirect form of spirituality, not secondary to other ascetic practices.
Understanding the importance of proper nutrition and mindful cosmetics (including cleansing products) is one of the first steps in the initial process of following one's spiritual journey. It makes no sense to seek spirituality in any other way if one persists in poisoning one's body.
It is necessary to love our bodies and satisfy its needs and necessities.
You should never deprive yourself of good rest.
Providing the body with adequate rest is essential for one's Anandayana.
It is difficult to be in a good mood when you have rested little. It is difficult to follow the precept of Here&Now or to maintain a certain level of attention or awareness when you are deficient in rest.
Each person has their own rest needs. There are periods when we need to sleep more and other periods when we need to sleep less. There is no need to fixate on quantitative sleep standards; one needs to listen to one's own body and provide the necessary amount of sleep.
Sleep quality is also important. In general, the lower the quality, the more prolonged the sleep must be in order to rest well.
Depending on habit and culture, each person needs certain qualities in order to rest well: in Asia, many cultures sleep on the floor with only a thin mat; for most people in the rest of the world, this standard would not be enough for a decent rest.
Buddhists in many countries misconstrue the Buddhist saying, - luxury is poverty - [38], convincing themselves that the faithful in search of spirituality should sleep on rigid beds, with an absence of mattresses and soft thicknesses. This prescription can be good for those who are able to rest on such beds, but for believers accustomed to otherwise, this is a pointless physical torture.
It is also necessary to indulge one's body when it requires further rest during the day. Whether it is a few minutes' nap or a more prolonged rest; whether it due to physical, mental, or any other kind of fatigue; time should be made to accommodate this need.
Excepting special cases, soporific drugs to facilitate sleep and other harmful substances that combat the body's need for rest should be avoided. Poisoning the body to stimulate or remedy its need is generally wrong.
Deficiencies in rest lead to unnecessary physical complications and lower immune defences, not to mention the many other physical problems that they can cause.