On Our Bodies, Beliefs, and Spirituality
Who, or perhaps what do you think you are?
It is so easy to assume that we are our body. We can go through an entire lifetime harboring this belief… living it… fearing death with it. We can define ourself by our body type, size, and coloration. We can dress our body in ways that symbolize our values, and “place” us in a particular cultural or ideological basket. But is any of this really US?
I suggest that none of it is, and the sooner we begin to come to see this notion as a fact, the sooner we can free ourselves from the baggage that dualistic thinking like this tends to create.
While I wrote a book titled, I Am My Body, NOT!, this concept was postulated long before I came on the scene.
One of the fundamental teachings in A Course In Miracles (ACIM), published by the Foundation for Inner Peace, is that we are not our physical body. Millions of copies of this book has been purchased over the past few decades. Study groups have formed all over the world, in many different languages, to ponder, appreciate, and understand the concepts contained therein, believed to have been given by the Ascended Master Jesus, and to more fully embrace the power of forgiveness.
In The Disappearance of the Universe, the two Ascended Masters that appeared to Gary Renard, Arten and Persah, made the same assertion.
“Your body is no more real or more important than any other body.” — pg. 179
The Conversations With God series, by Neale Donald Walsch, of which millions have been sold, asserts the same idea on numerous occasions, that human beings are not their physical form. This one is from Book 3:
“When you understand that life is eternal, you understand that death is your illusion, keeping you very concerned with, and therefore helping you believe that you are, your body. Yet you are not your body…”
In his How the Live Series, Living Fearlessly, Paramhansa Yogananda said:
“You are only dreaming that you have a body of flesh. Your real self is light and consciousness. You are not the physical body.”
If we are not our body, then what are we? This is an important, fundamental question that rarely, if ever, is addressed in school. Why do you think that is?
My guess would be because the answers to these questions fall into the realm of belief, wherein “reading, writing, science, and arithmetic,” are about that which is measurable, tangible, and otherwise quantifiable.
Belief appears to be subjective, whereas the measurable, tangible, and otherwise quantifiable appears to be incontrovertible. In fact, with respect to how we form and experience the reality that is our life on earth, the opposite is true. It is belief that yields knowledge, that, when exercised yields knowing, that when practiced, creates our reality. Please note that the “reality” of two people of similar appearance, background, and upbringing, but differing beliefs, will be correspondingly different. The difference? Beliefs, about self, God, humanity, possibility, “right”, “wrong,” potential… everything. No two are alike… and no two lives are alike.
All that is known today began as a belief. That which we believe today will eventually be known tomorrow.
Beliefs — something that is quite unseen — trumps the quantifiable, because they change our experience of the quantifiable. Beliefs determine how we experience the quantifiable, and what it means to us. Beliefs influence how we interact with others, and how we regard our self. More than that, beliefs actually bring the quantifiable into existence… as we presently know it. But then, that’s because we generally believe that things (even ourselves) don’t exist until they become physical… which is not true.
We sometimes think that we are insignificant accidents of a mechanistic evolutionary process, footnotes in a much larger story, expendable parasites on a massive biosphere. Not true. We are integral and important parts of the entire plan, significant to the universe beyond our imagination.
Hard to imagine how a simple belief in a very convincing duality… in the apparent separateness of all things, allows us to be selective in how we express and share our love toward others, and who we are willing to either hurt, or eliminate.
If you believe I’m a “black man”, you’re wrong. If you believe I’m a black man who doesn’t know that’s what I am, you’re also wrong (although you won’t believe that you are). Now… if you think you are black, white, American, liberal, Libertarian, rich, or poor… you’re defining yourself by exterior factors, which nullifies the magic that is only possible when activated through the inside.
I am a spirit; an expression of God, just like you. We are spiritual beings in human form, eternal and immortal, without beginning or end. Whether we call ourselves Protestant, Cathelic, Muslim Jew, agnostic or atheist, doesn’t change that fact. Disbelief in our innate and incontrovertible spirituality simply continues life as we’ve known it. Belief allows a new level of life experiences to take form.
