A new look at my body

I now realise that, just a few years ago, I had given up on my body and I’d given up on life. Sure, I wanted to live, but I didn’t really expect to LIVE (in the really and truly joyous, fun sense). How could this have happened? How could it apparently be happening to so many people around me?

Now I find it clear that we’re trapped into this by many of the things we are taught as we grow up, and many of these things are just plain wrong.

My Body, Mind and Spirit

It’s pretty clear that we are actually multi-dimensional beings. Religions exist because of the spiritual side of our being. We also hear from many secular sources how we have to balance our body, mind and spirit to have a content life. If you are religious, then you’re probably aware of the teachings of Jesus where he spoke about The Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit and how God was made of these three parts. He also taught that we were created in God’s likeness, so it would make sense that we have three dimensions as well.

However, even if you’re not religious, you only need to listen to some of the great teachers of meditation or yoga (if we can’t listen to ourselves) and you can come to the same conclusion that we are multi-dimensional in some way.

Where I went wrong

Somehow, I’d got to the point where I thought my spiritual side was the good side of me and that my body was bad. The overwhelming emphasis was that my body was a problem and an impediment.

I was brought up as a Roman Catholic and a lot of the teachings that I remember where along the lines of;

• I am a sinner
• I was born sinner
• The body causes sin
• If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off
• Sex is bad
• Life is hard
• I need to repent for everything I’ve done wrong
• Only if I’m good will I get to heaven and that will be paradise

Now that I look back on this I see it is so wrong. No wonder I didn’t like life and I had no respect for my body. Effectively these teachings told me that life is basically horrible and that being here, in this world, will cause me to be tempted by so many things that I will sin and won’t make it to heaven. And, by the way, heaven is the only real chance of paradise we will have and guess what? – you have to die to have a chance to get to that paradise.

Unfortunately, bad teachings like these are not uncommon.

The Sacred Body

Going back to the concept of God being made of three parts – The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit – then it’s logical that each of these parts are equally important. No part can be more important than another. It might be easy to think that The Father must be the most important, but it cannot be so. If one part was more important that the others, then that part would effectively be God (since it’s the most important) and God wouldn’t be a three-part being.

Applying this to our situation of being body, mind and spirit, it’s easy to see that our body is as important as our mind (and here I don’t mean brain) and our spirit. A few years ago I thought my spirit was all that mattered and that my body was useless and just a vehicle for temptation.

Now I see that my body is equally important as my spirit and my mind. Fully equally important. It’s easy to associate thoughts of sacredness to our spirits, and the exact same thoughts can be applied to our bodies.

Think about it for a second. If we were created by a supreme being, why would that being create something (our body) that was only worthy of conceit and dread. If our bodies were created by a supreme being, then they must be sacred.

This completely changes my mental attitude towards my body. We can imagine that our bodies are sacred gifts we’ve been given. Doesn’t that change the way we might want to look after it?

Don’t take my word for any of this. I encourage you to listen to your intuition and those quiet voices inside. Learn to be still and listen. The results can be amazing.

Related Links – A new look at my body

• I really like this article from Larry Maguire – http://wokenmind.com/do-we-have-free-will/29/10/2014/
• The book by Neale Donald Walsch “Conversations With God – Book 1 – an uncommon dialogue” was fascinating and, in no small part, led towards the thoughts I’ve written above. I haven’t put together a review on this book yet but my notes are ready to be written up. Hopefully soon.
• When we get into deep thoughts like the ones I’ve written about in this article, it’s always good to reflect on where our knowledge really comes from – I wrote about this in the earlier article Original Knowledge – where does it come from?