I am Not My Body

How many people look in the mirror and think the reflected image is who they are? Do we ever have a perception of ourselves that is true? It is wonderfully ironic that getting in touch with the body is what enables us to see that we are not our bodies. We are so much more. In the practice of grounding and mindfulness, we quiet the mind and feel the spirit that we are. In that space we viscerally understand our connection to every other spirit on the planet.

The physical experience can be delicious whether at a favorite restaurant, playing with a beloved or zipping down a slide at Water World, but it does not define us. Our bodies are what cause us to appear separate from others. They are our containers, our temples, and yet, we are all joined by a higher purpose that is born of Love. In the stillness we experience the Love that is much bigger than anything we have felt with another person. It is not special or unique to one, but it is the great unifier of all. When author of A Course in Miracles says: “I am not a body. I am free” (Foundation of Inner Peace, 1977) she refers to the freedom we can receive from a shifted perception.

Let me back up. When our minds are in control, they organize, plan, judge, divide like rats. Don’t get me wrong – I appreciate rodents, but by only looking down at the rodent, we miss the elephant. Our

Falling Off of the Pedestal: True Love Explored

The search for love is but the honest searching out of everything that interferes with love. 

A Course in Miracles (267)

Imagine eating several Almond Joy bars (substitute your favorite candy here) while riding a roller coaster in the snow. How different is “falling in love,” that giddy state where about all one can stomach is vanilla yogurt and the other person is pretty much flawless?

I have heard it said that falling in love is a form of insanity. The first time I was afflicted (and blessed) was in high school. The second time was in college, and I married him; I wouldn’t trade those 18 years for anything. The third time - almost 10 years ago - qualifies, admittedly, as insanity, because he was a lying scoundrel living a double life (I never even knew there was another woman let alone a MARRIAGE!). But never mind my perpetual naiveté and a propensity to ignore red flags (both an infinite source of fertilizer for my writing landscape). In retrospect, I understand that sometimes we’re magnetized to another in order to

Balanced and Unstable

A fond memory, in a twisted sort of way, is the time my mother chased Winnie the Pooh at Disneyland because he wouldn’t take a picture with my younger daughter. The woman escorting him said he was late for a show, but that didn’t stop my mother from swinging her big bag at his head and yelling, “You ridiculous, ineffectual lump! My granddaughter wants a PHOTO with YOU!” I know from whom I inherited my colorful vocabulary. I can’t imagine what would have happened had my Mom actually made contact with the ducking hunk of fluff. Perhaps Disney police in the guise of Brutus would have swept poor Mama off and handcuffed her to the slate wall of Snow White’s palace. Moral of that story: Don’t mess with my mother’s children or grandchildren or any blood relative! I love that about her. My mother is passionate and expressive. There is nothing passive-aggressive about her. You know where you stand. And as a side note, we always felt safe around her. Evidently, she reserved her physical aggression for imposter Disney characters. She is equally loving and brilliant; a perfect nurturer.

 Mama with my niece and nephew

I was thinking about an irony of our culture: that if someone shows sadness or anger they are considered “unstable,” but when we repress emotions, a whole gamut of physical stress related conditions manifest, including chronic (particularly back) pain issues, fibromyalgia, depression, bursitis, arthritis, TMJ, IBT, eczema, tennis elbow, tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, sexual dysfunction, Bells Palsy, rheumatoid arthritis and many other conditions as well as addiction issues.  We have been slow to believe the direct mind-body relationship. People stuff their emotions until feelings burst out inappropriately in a fit of misdirected rage, and then guilt ensues and nothing has been gained. Feelings are blamed as too risky. The key is...

I Made it All Up!

In a recent blog I wrote: “the only real truth we will ever have is in the moment. The rest is a result of confabulation, imagination and longing.” One of my three thoughtful brothers (all three pictured to the left) replied: “I would love to know what moved you to use ‘confabulation, imagination and longing’ to describe everything but the ‘moment’ in which we live. Not that I disagree, just an interesting description of everything else.”

He's my little brother - he better not disagree! Now that we're clear about that... "confabulation" is a great word. It reminds me of a con man with flatulence rolling around on inflated inner tubes. But alas, the denotation is: “to fill in gaps in memory with fabrication.” Using a recent incident: I had a clear memory of something occurring. Blank looks all around; no one else in the family remembers it – not even the person it supposedly happened to. How could this be possible!? Did it happen? Did it happen differently or in a different context or to a different person? I was flabbergasted (that word sounds like what happens when you let go of an inflated balloon that has not been tied. Sometimes I feel like a balloon that has not been tied). How could my memory fail me so completely? I didn’t set out to fabricate a memory to fill in the blank, but evidently my imagination took over.

Memory is fickle – we might not even know when we are fabricating. Everyone generally has a slightly different take on the past. You might be able to agree: yes, we all went to the Grand Canyon together, but everyone will remember different visual, sounds and experiences. Siblings might agree that they all have the same mother, but they all know her differently. So, the past is unreliable. The future is no more reliable. Our imagination draws pictures in our mind about what’s going to happen and if we let our egos get attached to those pictures, chances are we’re going to be let down big time. Expectations are a direct line to disappointment. Longing fuels our visions of tomorrow, but according to Neale Donald Walsch, longing in this moment shows the universe we want more longing. Whatever state of being we are emanating will grow stronger. The key is to get to the end feeling that any person or place inspires in us… and conjure that feeling now, in this moment. (If you want a great book that teaches joy and hope check out Martha Beck’s Steering By Starlight.)

So, this leaves this moment. What are we going to do right now? Or now? Or now? :o Philosophers explain that we are always in motion, like a pendulum, with only slight hesitations. We perceive “moments” as though they are still, but that is an illusion, so even the moment is fluid. Still, it is where we are. In those hesitations, are we engaging our senses? So many books such as A Course in Miracles or Eckart Tolle’s The Power of Now teach us how to interject ourselves into the moment, how to value what is and focus less on what was or what will be. The moment is intimate; it asks us to acknowledge what we feel about ourselves and our relationship to others and what we’d like to accomplish before we die.

The future is a guessing game and the past is a series of little deaths, of moments we will never recapture, half of which we might have made up. The only way to regret less and choose joy is to be fully awake right now.