Feeding the Inner Hunger

Everyone has deep seated hunger and feelings of emptiness and lack. We try to fill this hunger by satisfying our desires and sense pleasures. We eat and drink, watch TV, spend money, meet with others, try to find fulfillment in work, and go on vacations all to feed this hunger. However, we can never fill the hunger inside by satisfying our desires for sense pleasures.

In the Bible, Jesus says, "Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled." (Luke 6:21) The great yoga master Paramahansa Yogananda elucidates this passage saying "Blessed are you who thirst for wisdom and who esteem virtue and righteousness as the real food to appease your inner hunger, for you shall have that lasting happiness brought only by adhering to divine ideals - unparalleled satisfaction of heart and soul." (The Yoga of Jesus, p.78)

So how do we feed this hunger that we are blessed to have? The great masters tell us that the deep seated hunger that every man feels is actually the soul's desire for God. And to appease this hunger, we actually have to turn our hunger around from seeking to fulfill the desires of the senses on the outside to going within and seeking the kingdom of God within. This can be practiced in big and small ways.

Practices such as prayer, meditation, hatha yoga, scriptural study of your religion, stilling the mind in the present moment, mantra repetition, formal worship, and making some time to be with yourself in contemplation can all be forms of going within.

Desires can also be turned around with awareness and managed in order to start to truly feed our inner hunger right away.

Here are some ways that the Yogic Diet teaches to manage desires:
- I feel hungry, but I don't overeat (desire) because I want to have a lot of energy to do my my practices and be there for others.
- I want to eat a mostly highly nutritious diet, but I crave sweets (desire). So I pass on the cookies, gum, and diet coke and reach for the fresh pineapple and raisins instead.
- I want to be fit, but I feel a little lazy (desire). So I nudge myself off the sofa to go for a brisk walk in the evening.
- I want to be and feel beautiful, but I dislike parts of my body and want to criticize it (desire). So I train myself to love my body the way that it is.
- I try to remember to nurture myself and refrain from harming myself by smoking, drinking, picking my face, overeating, etc (desire).
- I want to have good health, but I am still holding on to resentment from the past (desire) which makes me susceptible to illness. So, I practice forgiveness and positive affirmations and achieve great health.
- I want to please others (desire), and sometimes I over commit. I turn it around and take time for myself first to deeply relax in meditation. Then I can serve other others with light-heartedness.

Learn more about practices like these in our Yogic Diet Workshops!