I AM... not my body.

Hello Beloved,

First, I MUST express my gratitude for having running water again! And what a blessing it certainly is. Thank you my dear husband for staying up late to dig up and tighten the leaking coupling. And for installing this wonderful new (used... but close enough to new!) sink and new non-leaking kitchen faucet! This is a very helpful Christmas present "from us to us" and I cherish it.

------------------------
On to my post now: :-)

I AM... not my body.

I mean surely, my body is an ever present expression in this world of who and what I Am. But it is not me. The real me goes much deeper than this, and is, I believe, eternal.  And the experience of this truth is something I am finding to be absolutely invaluable in my everyday life.

I read this last night:

"A friend can be a Divine mirror showing you areas of yourself that you had hoped to hide from the world. They encourage you to shine the light of Love on these areas and embrace them, to see that they really had no power at all. For in the light of Love all things are healed."

The thing about this that moved me so deeply was the concept (or rather even the experience I have had since then) that in the light of Love, all things are healed. And that this light is one that we, our Selves, can shine on the areas where we are struggling. Something about the imagery of this really resonates with me. If I can shine the "light of Love" onto something I am struggling with... whether physically, emotionally, or whatever... than it follows that the "I" that is doing the shining, or the directing, of that Love cannot actually BE the problem that I am seeking to heal. Are you following me?

To really get what I'm trying to say here, you will have to experience it. I don't think words will ever be enough.

In a moment that you find challenging, for whatever reason that may be, ask yourself or remind yourself to "shine the light of Love" on this area, as it says above, and embrace it. Visualize it however works for you. See yourself directing actual light and Love onto this area, onto yourself. Sit with this imagery for a bit (or if you can't actually sit, just let it sit internally) and be with it. Have compassion on the you that is being impatient or cranky. Or on the you (or me, ha ha) that is at that moment a tired mom with a cold that is being crabby with her dear one. Feel gentleness towards this, just as you seek to feel towards others. Because, in truth, how can you give to someone else what you have not given to yourself?

The experience that will ultimately come out of this is that you are not your body, and you are not this impatience or this anger or this frustration or whatever it may be. And somehow, when you look on these things that you see in yourself in this way, they just dissolve in the inherent healing of this Love.  Somehow, you find that this thing you have struggled so much with, really never had any power at all.  From within it, we cannot seem to heal anything in those moments. For all our trying, the thing just persists and persists and persists. Yet, if we can just make the slightest shift in our perspective... the shift that takes place when you begin to focus on shining the light of Love on these areas, the thing literally just falls away.  It feels like the classic example of "What you resist, persists." When you stop resisting it, when you move into the place of embracing it as the Beloved, of experiencing compassion towards the you that is struggling so, this slight shift makes all the difference.

And once you can do this for the "dark" areas in you life, once you know and have experienced how this transformation, this Divine transformation takes place, you can shine that same light of Love to others, extending the same compassion towards them instead of judgement.

Take it for what it is worth to you, but this current, this rhythm of peace was magic for me this morning. I cannot say that I will not struggle at all again today, but I know what it felt like for the weight of my struggle to begin to simply vanish under the Love that began to shine there, from the Me that I Am.

I AM... not my body.

Blessings and thank you for your presence here!

Serafina