The True purpose of your physical body

From a spiritual perspective, your body is simply a crucial tool, or learning device, to enable you to learn and grow, and to master life. You need a body in order to establish a path, or journey, back towards wholeness. You can use your body to experience whatever you want to experience in this physical world. If you sincerely desire to grow spiritually, your body will be a great asset on your path. Indeed without your physical existence, you cannot grow spiritually because you cannot learn from experience. So we can use our bodies to develop ourselves. Through our bodies, we can return to our natural state of being. But we have to choose what meaning we give to our bodies. We can choose to see our bodies primarily as tools for physical pleasure and comfort, or we can see them as a means to return home to our true selves.

All your dreams of happiness this lifetime are related to your body. Do you long for a more loving partner, a better career, a house in the country? Ask yourself would these dreams mean anything to you if you did not have a physical body? Your self-importance is all based on your body, and your fear of dying is based on your body. In this world you see yourself as a body and others see you as one too. We have created a world full of separate bodies and a world based on bodily consciousness. Normal human conversations are all about bodies - ‘Where did you go? What was the food like? Did you enjoy the weather? How’s your knee now?

But when you identify yourself with a body, you are dis-identifying with your spirit. Your body perceives, but it does not see the truth. Your brain thinks lots of thoughts, but it does not know anything. Only spirit knows. Our creator did not create a world of bodies that are all born to die. The Source of perfection knows nothing of imperfection. Your body is your idea not God’s. Your body is your creation. It started in your mind first, and is actually an effect, or symbol, of your deep down belief in sin, guilt and fear.

When you identify yourself as a body, you think that you can either win or lose in your relationships with other bodies. You win if you kill your murderous attacker. You lose if your attacker kills you. You win if your partner stays faithful to you. Your partner wins if they manage to conduct an affair behind your back. This is the insane world in which we all live. Bodies either win or lose. This is our reality.

The Truth can never be fearful, but bodies are made to be fearful, and your body can only serve the purpose that your mind gives to it. In my experience bodily consciousness always has, at the very least, a twinge of fear in it. When you think ‘My money’ there is always a twinge of fear attached to it. When you think ‘My wife’ or ‘My husband’ you inevitably fear losing him/her. Your spirit never experiences fear, but your body is in a constant state of fear or anxiety. If you really tune into your body, you can always feel this underlying state of tension or anxiety.

You cannot just disassociate from your body

However, if you are a spiritual practitioner, you cannot just disassociate from your body, it will simply become weak, wobbly and inflexible. A spiritual path that ignores the body is unbalanced. You cannot avoid the problems inherent in being in a body by becoming ‘spiritual’. No, you have to transcend them. It is not helpful to keep telling yourself, as some spiritual seekers do, ‘ My body is not real, it is just an illusion’. This may be the ultimate truth, but at this moment your body is very real to you because you are living in a physical world, and while we are in this world, we have to learn to manage it successfully.

Some spiritual traditions reject or ignore the body. Some extreme spiritual practitioners have even inflicted severe pain on their bodies in order to transcend the physical. I do not recommend you try this at home. How can you become whole and natural by rejecting or abusing your body? This is just a form of denial. It is like cutting off your toes in response to noticing that you have athlete’s foot. As long as perception lasts, your physical sensations such as pain, hunger and thirst are very real and you need to honour them. You also need to honour them in others. Please do not ignore or belittle others’ physical suffering on the grounds that it is just a dream.

We are all light beings, but most of us have not transformed into light yet, we are still very much flesh and bone. Our physical aches and pains are very real to us, unbearably so at times. Great spiritual masters may be able to live for years on just light and fresh air, but we lesser mortals need to nurture our bodies with good food and pure water. For light to manifest through flesh, you need to follow a disciplined, wholesome regime including exercising your body on a daily basis. You need to work towards a complete integration of spirit with your physical existence.

True beauty shines forth from our souls

However, whilst you need to strengthen and open your physical body to support your spiritual awakening, you also need to realise that your body is not ultimately who you are, and that your physical body does not even belong to you. You do not really own your body. You just borrow it from the earth for a while. You should nurture your body, but do not spend too much time pampering it, or focusing on bodily attractiveness, or bodily achievements. Physical beauty and physical prowess are flash in the pan phenomena, no matter how much time and money you spend on achieving them. Whereas true beauty shines forth eternally from our souls.

If we want to be beautiful forever, we need to cultivate the beautiful qualities within our soul rather than our ephemeral external appearance. If you spend too much time, energy and money trying to make your body more attractive, or trying to ward off the ageing process, you will waste a very precious opportunity to grow through physical experiences. You will die none the wiser. You will also become very fragile and fearful. Rich Westerners have become very fragile because they over value their bodies. Americans spend billions trying to prevent sickness, old age and death, and they just feel more frightened than most other nations. As a spiritual seeker, it is your responsibility to opt out of this fearful mass consciousness.