What is the body?

Exploring this corporeal form

Belief

“The body is a problem,” “the body is a burden,” “the body needs to be fixed and healed,” “the body is in pain and suffering,” “the body is bad,” “the body is separate.”

Sitting with this mysterious bodily form, I become aware of these many painful beliefs. They all seem true to some extent to the mind. I feel the weight of centuries of bodily aggression and repression. So many beliefs about what the body is, what it should look like, what it should feel like, what it should be doing.

So many expectations, such harshness and rigidness directed towards the body. But most striking of all beliefs is the identification with the body - “I am the body,” “the body is who I am,” “I am the one controlling the body,” “I need to control my body.”

But are these beliefs true? Is the body form just mirroring these beliefs? What actually is this body?

Sensation

Immense tightness in the shoulders, the throat constricted, the breath shallow, pressure in the jaw, rigidness in the spine, the hips frozen.

These past years have included a great deal of physical discomfort and at times very intense pain. The body seems to be in a constant state of stress. My nervous system often is in a state of overwhelm. There seems to be some energetic purging process unfolding, where all the points of repressed emotion and memory in the body are being released.

All of the ideas I’ve had about the body, life, my identity seem to be going through a transformation, namely a great deal of dissolving. It’s been immensely uncomfortable.

So what is it like to meet sensation in the body without any ideas or meanings given to it? How is it to simply witness the intense sensations without a story attached to them, without it being a reflection of “my personal identity?”

Unknown

The more I sit with the body, witnessing what is appearing, the less clear it becomes what the body actually is.

Without a meaning given to sensations, without a story, what differentiates the body from any other form that is perceived? Where does the body end and the world begin? Is the body simply one expression of the infinite consciousness that is perceiving and projecting reality?

Being with the present experience seems to naturally dissolve concepts of boundaries. The body becomes unknowable when perceived with a clear mind, though it seems to take great stillness to realize this.

Spending so much time looking at screens, occupied with chronic busyness, anxiously worrying about a world in chaos, mostly living in a state of mental imagination, I often get lost in my conditioned beliefs about the body and life. I think that’s why the body has been expressing so much pain and discomfort these past years, it’s been trying to reveal the unconscious beliefs I’ve had - an act of grace.

Love

Sometimes it feels like the most profound spiritual practice is to simply sit still or lay down outside and perceive what is. As beliefs start to fade away, and the body is perceived with an open heart and mind, these is an intuitive sense that the body is not separate from perception itself. And somehow this realization brings enormous relief.

It’s realized how incredibly stressful the belief of “I am the body” can be. So much “efforting” to try to control the body and make it be a certain way. So much fear and anxiety around the body coming to an end.

Instead of the body needing to be something that is identified with, controlled, conceptualized or understood, it is realized to be an expression of loving awareness, the same love that ultimately has created this entire reality.

How incredibly freeing to see that the body is not separate from love. Today I feel sincere gratitude for this reminder. Thank you body for teaching me.