try being naked

The aim of this exercise is not to challenge other people. So find a place where you can be alone, or where it is acceptable to be naked, such as a nudist beach. But you can also do this alone in your own home, or somewhere in nature far from other people.

Take off all your clothes. And stay naked as long as possible – all day long if possible.

Now this may sound a strange thing to try. What's the point? And the point is simple: ordinarily, we wear clothes without thinking, without asking why; just because we have been taught to wear clothes; because everybody else around us is wearing clothes.

And the clothes are a mask. We hide our physical body behind our clothes, just as we hide parts of our personality in our unconscious mind. Remember always that the physical manifest world is a reflection of the mind, of our consciousness. And anything which is unacceptable in our mind, we also try to hide in the outer world. So clothing, and the necessity of clothing, is indicating that somehow we are not accepting our body. We feel that the flesh is somehow sinful.

This rejection of the sensual body has been heavily conditioned in us, by religion mostly. And the large religions have a lot to answer for in this regard. But underneath the religious and social conditioning that requires us to hide our body, there is our own fear of our sensuality and our sexuality.

For these energies, sensations within us, are primitive, animal. They were in us long before the thinking rational mind came into being. And of course they are powerful. We are afraid to lose our self-control. And so we reject, suppress, our physical sensations, our sexual urges, and our sensual delights. And all of this is reflected in the need to clothe ourselves, to hide our bodies.

So try being naked. And if you are not used to being naked, it may feel strange for a short while. Perhaps you will feel uncomfortable, somehow nervous that perhaps somebody is watching. Such is the nature of the devious mind. But after a while you will become comfortable with being naked. And if you practise this method often, you will come to love being naked, and you will feel sad on those occasions when you have to wear clothes out of social necessity.

But through this simple method of being naked as much as possible, you'll come to be at ease with your body. And in your mind, deep down, you will be coming to accept your sensuality, your sexuality, and ultimately the divinity of your physical form.

So try being naked.