When you ask yourself the question, “Who am I?” What is the answer you get back?
I am me.
Who is “me”? Who is the “I” thinking the thoughts? In our mind we create these ideas of I am this or I am that.
We can take a step back and observe the mind thinking so we can consider maybe we aren’t the mind.
If I am not the mind then am I the body? If our physical body is only made up of matter, where do we get our awareness from? And where do thoughts and emotions come from? We can also take a step back and observe the body. So we can consider that maybe we aren’t the body either.
If I am not the body and I am not the mind am I the spirit? If we try to take a step back and observe the spirit, this is much more difficult. It can be downright uncomfortable. Most of us think of the spirit as ghosts and scary invisible things that might get us in the night. These are really just creations of the mind when we are in fear. We will begin to explore this topic in more depth as we continue on.
What is the Body?
Body
/’bɒdi/
noun – the physical structure, including the bones, flesh, and organs, of a person or an animal.
“it’s important to keep your body in good condition”
| synonyms: | anatomy, figure, frame, form, shape, build, physique, framework, skeleton, bones, flesh and bones |
Each of us are much more than just a physical body. We actually have many “bodies” or levels to ourselves, that few people understand. Increasing your awareness of these bodies by becoming more conscious of them and understanding how complex you actually are will ultimately simplify your life, allow you to let go of fear, and be in balance.
Although the physical body is necessary for you to experience and enjoy the journey in this physical world, who you are is not limited to your body. The physical body is a vehicle, like your car, that carries you around and takes you wherever you wish. It is a self-regulating machine. Its basic need is only survival. Its awareness is cellular. This body is your protection. It is very dense; made up of mainly water, cells, toxins and minerals. The nervous system and brain are its messenger/communication service, without which one cell would not know how to respond to external stimuli or to any other cell. For all its amazing abilities and strengths, however, the physical body has a very short life span when you compare it with eternity.
We only use the physical body, giving it life with our consciousness . . . our awareness. When we consider, per A Course in Miracles by Marianna Williamson, that the body is a learning device for the mind, we can see a possible purpose making it easier to comprehend that we are more than our physical body. It can act wrongly only when it is responding to misthought from the mind. The body cannot create, and the belief that it can, a fundamental error, produces all physical symptoms.
What is the Mind?
Mind
/’mʌɪnd/
noun – the element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.
“a lot of thoughts ran through my mind”
| synonyms: | brain, intelligence, intellect, intellectual capabilities, mental capacity, brains, brainpower, wits, wit, powers of reasoning, powers of comprehension, powers of thought, understanding, reasoning, judgment, sense, mentality, perception |
According to A Course in Miracles, the mind is the only thing able to create and is capable of error. It cannot create beyond itself. God created the mind to actually form creation. This body or level is where thought manifests. This is where true duality and the ego exist, which creates separation. This is where male/female, up/down, black/white, small/large, good/bad, etc., is created. To experience anything you must first think about it. You must have an image or create an image out of what you already know or have experienced in the past. Then, with this data you create your future. Thought is totally limited to past experiences or conditioned responses. Consider that the mind is like a computer; it can only function as it has been programmed. The emotional messages, our interpretation of them through past experiences (filters), and physical body only respond to thought. Thought is the creator and the emotions are the driving force or manifester, so to speak, of these images. All thoughts and emotions are like your physical body—they go through birth, life and death. The mind is just another “body” that you use to experience and “create experience” with.
The ego is the “body of separation.” It leads us to believe that we are separate and different from everyone else. This is the first body that you as soul must use to begin your journey into creation. This is the first separation that you have from God, and the last you must drop to be free again from creation. When you go beyond your ego, which is a limited and limiting “little” self, you can then experience the truth of the real you, the unlimited you, again. You will find that you have “always been there” or “here” all along. Your bodies and their functions hide your true self. All this is necessary in the scheme of things so that God and you can experience endlessly. God being omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent needs this separation in order to experience. God is our eternal companion always there with us and here for us at any moment if we just ask for help.
Mind-Body connection
Before we move on to the last section, let’s consider the relationship between one’s physical health and the state of one’s mind. This can be a key indicator of dis-ease in the body and a major prevention tool once brought into awareness and practiced mindfully (mind-fully).
Your emotional body, which is distinct from your physical body, are all of your feelings and emotions. It is thought that a higher part of our self sends messages through our mind and into the physical body by way of emotions. Emotions drive thought and give motivation to the physical body. Without desire, your ability to create in the physical world would not exist. Your emotions are not you; they are only used by you to further experience creation.
However, the health of your physical body can be greatly affected by your emotions. When we ignore emotions (messages) they can manifest into unhealthy results. Anger, hate and rage will destroy your liver. Jealousy, anxiety and negative emotions will affect kidneys and adrenals. Fear, gossip, and ego will shut down the heart. You can see how important it is to become aware of, understand, give attention to, and express emotions. They are not to be feared but received as a communication tool from our higher self.
Emotions affect the physical body by releasing chemicals (peptides) that cause cells to behave in a certain way depending on the emotion we feel. Dr. Candace Pert describes this process in her book, Molecules of Emotion. If we experience particular emotions over and over, we create an unhealthy addictive belief in our minds. The peptides turn programs on and off within the cell, releasing chemicals such as dopamine, to elicit repetition of certain behavior patterns. These patterns are unfortunately destructive. Understanding that we are not our minds or bodies can help us overcome these negative patterns. The awareness that all experiences are learning tools removes separation and fear, helping us achieve completion in our spiritual nature.
In Dr. Gabriel Cousens’ book, Conscious Eating, he discusses in depth the Ayurvedic health care system and its focus on psychophysiological (mind-body) connections for balanced health. The three Doshas–Vata, Kapha, and Pitta–are the categories all people fall into that can help identify when there is an imbalance in the body. Ayurveda has been practiced successfully for over 5,000 years and connects us back to nature to help our bodies and minds come back to balance naturally, alleviating illness and further spiraling into disease.
The healthier you are on all levels (bodies), the greater and happier your life is, and the more love and God you will experience as an active part of every moment of your life. Our awareness, our consciousness, comes from our union with God, our inseparability from the One. I believe God is infinite. There is no place in which God is not. God has no boundaries, and thus cannot be a limited being in any way. Therefore, God cannot have form or substance, as we know it, or God would be limited. God cannot be limited to a body, or to emotions, or even to thoughts, as all of these are limiting and based upon conditioning and experiences, not truth.
What is the Spirit?
Spirit
/ˈspɪrɪt/
noun – the force within a person that is believed to give the body life, energy, and power. The inner quality or nature of a person. The “real you.” The non-physical part of a person, which is the seat of emotions and character; the soul.
“we seek a harmony between body and spirit”
| synonyms: | soul, psyche, inner self, inner being, essential being |
At your core, you are pure awareness, without thought or emotion. This is the “true you”, the spirit, that always abides no matter what your experience is in the outer world. You cannot hide from your true self—this awareness—that is always observing what your mind and emotions create. This “you” is the observer of the observed. Even though many people use drugs or alcohol in an attempt to hide from themselves, this is impossible. Your awareness is the one thing that you cannot kill or get rid of. It does not die. It is the part of you that can expand without limit. Know that the spirit has already been created and is perfect and then we have no reason to try hiding from ourselves.
Contrary to popular belief, one does not need to think to exist. You become awareness itself when you stop thinking, planning, and desiring. Presently, however, you are chained to your thoughts, feelings and desires by the attention you give these energies. This wasn’t always the case. Remember when you were a child? Time as we know it did not exist for you. You simply played until suddenly your mother called you in for dinner. Consciousness or awareness is the life force that experiences and radiates everything.
True health is a result of wholeness, wherein the body, mind, and emotions are kept in harmony with this soul awareness and with God. The toxic conditions we experience are essentially self-created. Since we create them by our lifestyles, including our diets and our thoughts, we can turn them around. We can renew and revitalize body and mind.
Body-Mind-Spirit Connection
This Body-Mind-Spirit connection refers to our overall state of “being” and how balanced we feel on all levels. When we are in balance or in alignment we experience joy in everything we do, treat others with love and respect, treat ourselves and our bodies with love and respect, and have a sense of purpose and universal service. When we become out of balance, we do not perceive the world accurately. We make assumptions instead of asking for clarity. We speak against ourselves and others. We accept the projections of another’s reality as our own and fault ourselves for not doing things like they do.
According to A Course in Miracles, “the mind that serves the spirit is invulnerable. Whatever is true is eternal, and cannot change or be changed. Spirit is therefore unalterable because it is already perfect, but the mind can elect what it chooses to serve. The only limit put on its choice is that it cannot serve two masters. If it elects to do so, the mind can become the medium by which spirit creates along the line of its own creation. The body is a learning device and falls into alignment with whatever the mind chooses. In the service of the right mind the denial of error frees the mind, and re-establishes the freedom of the will. When the will is really free it cannot miscreate, because it recognizes only truth.
Closing Thoughts
The two most powerful tools you use to create your experience here in the physical world are your mind and your emotions guided in truth by You, the Spirit. Your physical body is just a shell that carries your awareness around. Remember that it’s a learning tool. You would not be able to create the events in your life if it were not for the thought processes that allow you to imagine the sequence of events you wish to experience. Without the emotions, however, there would be no desire to create. As the mind takes images of the past and present and puts them together to create the future, it is the emotions that drive you to manifest these images. The stronger and more balanced your feelings are toward some idea or image, the more you’re going to “experience the experience,” no matter what it is.
The mind and emotions can work for us in a positive manner or against us in a negative manner by controlling and enslaving us. I suggest that you use your mind and emotions to enhance and revitalize you. Reconnect with You the Spirit. Remember, the mind works from images. What you imagine becomes your reality on one level or another. So, turn this process to your benefit. Imagine yourself healthy and vital. This is where your emotions can come in. Get excited about a new life, full of vitality and vibrancy. Let your emotions be the drive to your success. Read and surround yourself with books and information on raw foods and detoxification. It is vital that we, as spirits, understand our bodies, for they are our vehicles on this journey through creation. You must learn how to properly use the body for your highest good. What you create mentally and emotionally becomes your experience. True health and vitality is found when we have these mental and emotional “bodies” in balance. Each of these bodies impact one another. Your emotions, especially the negative ones like anger, hate, and jealousy, can make your physical body sick and full of disease. Emotions can even shut down our mind, affecting our ability to comprehend, think and make rational decisions. They especially can close off the heart centers. Once the heart center is closed, your ability to get healthy drastically decreases, even to the point where death is the inevitable result.
Love, happiness, joy, health and mental control all keep the heart open. Unhappiness, depression, despair, anger, jealousy, rage, envy and negative states shut down or keep the heart center closed. The mind must also be kept in control. They say the mind is a great servant but a lousy, even destructive, master. The thinking process keeps us from enjoying the present moment, the “eternal now” as it is called.
By detoxifying your physical body you can start a chain of events that will allow you to clean and control your emotional and mental processes. You can help this process by allowing old thought patterns and the emotions that can surface during detoxification to finally be released and forgotten. There are several ways to do this. Begin by watching your thoughts. Step away from them and become the observer. Become detached about the outcome of things and from other people’s opinions and emotions. Let go. This allows the greatest healing power to flow through you and your mental, emotional and physical bodies, bringing a vibrancy and awareness that is indescribable and rare. Enjoy life moment by moment. Break out of the old conditioned states of thinking and feeling and become vibrant and healthy. Clean and strengthen yourself in every way.
Blissings!
Andrea
Citations:
- Morse, Robert (2013-09-11). The Detox Miracle Sourcebook: Raw Foods and Herbs for Complete Cellular Regeneration (Kindle Locations 10468-10476). SCB Distributors.
- Cousens Md, Gabriel (2009-03-03). Conscious Eating: Second Edition (Kindle Locations 5-6). North Atlantic Books.
- Schucman, Dr. Helen (2007-12-25). A Course in Miracles. Foundation for Inner Peace.
- http://www.simplypsychology.org/mindbodydebate.html
- http://www.metaphysics-for-life.com/mind-body-connection.html
- https://nccih.nih.gov/health/mindbody
- http://www.gdatf.org/about/about-graves-disease/patient-education/mind-body-connection-attitudes-affect-your-health/
- http://www.beliefnet.com/Wellness/Health/2005/07/The-Connections-Between-Mind-Body-And-Spirit.aspx#
- http://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/2009/10/msoc1-0910.html
- http://mindbodyspiritualawareness.com/
- http://www.my-holistic-healing.com/body-mind-and-soul.html
- http://www.drchristinahibbert.com/personal-growth-and-self-actualization/spritual/
- http://www.mollysfund.org/2013/08/lupuschronic-illness-the-mindbody-connection/
- http://www.healingcottage.in/body_emotions.html
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