2014 ms item01 03 23 b phillips awakeningday23
Formula for Miracles® Presents
30 Days to Awakening
Thousands of Years of Spiritual Wisdom Revealed in Fun, Ten Minute Insights ©2012-2013 Brent Phillips www.FormulaForMiracles.net
Day 23: The Awakened Relationship to Your Body One of the most powerful obstacles to overcome in Awakening is to find the proper and healthy relationship to your physical body. (Of course, that statement is factually incorrect, because it is not “your” body, but instead it is the physical vehicle that creates the experiences that You perceive. But in the interest of simplicity of language, we’ll use the active voice and use the common term “your body” below.) In particular, identification with the body is one of the most powerful and most compelling aspects of false identification. After all, it really seems that You are your body, doesn’t it? In order to help you make a clear distinction between the harmful false identification with the body, and a healthy Awakening relationship with the physical vessel that we call “your body”, let me offer the following contrast: •
An un-Awakened person might say “I am in pain.”
•
An Awakened person might say “There is pain.”
Do you see the difference? In the first statement “I am in pain”, there is an inherent false identification, assuming that “you” are the one that is in pain. That’s not true, because You are not you! To elaborate on that point, remember that You are in Unity, while you (the “false I”) is in duality. Because pain and pleasure are polar opposites within duality, pain can only exist within duality, and so the You (that is, the Unity or the truth of You) can never be in pain, because You can never be or not be in anything. Impossible! Instead, the simple truth is that “There is pain”, as it may very well be that the physical vessel we call the body is producing a signal that is perceived or experienced by consciousness as the sensation we call pain. And this difference is not just academic – it’s the difference between success and failure, wealth and poverty, love and loneliness, life and death, pain and joy, and even Heaven and Hell! You see, when you identify with the pain, the mind creates a huge amount of suffering (the “emotional problem”) that compounds and amplifies the sensation of pain (the “technical problem.”) And when you identify with the pain, the suffering is inevitable and sometimes overwhelming. There really is a difference between pain and suffering; in our vocabulary, pain is a feeling (that is, something that is really happening in the moment), where as suffering is an emotion (it is unnecessary and completely synthesized by the mind.) In the un-Awakened, pain always creates suffering, and nearly always great pain creates great suffering. By contrast, in the Awakened person, pain does not need to include suffering, because You do not identify with the pain experience and so do not take it personally. (After all, because there is nobody here, there are no persons; if there are no persons, nothing can ever be taken personally!)
There is a great Buddhist saying that you should now be ready to understand at a deep and profound level: “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional”. I’ll suggest that the proper relationship to have with your body is similar to the relationship you have to a pet you really love. If, for example, you have a cat you really love (like I do!), you’ll want to do what’s best for the cat, and that sometimes involves giving the cat what he wants, but other times involves doing things the cat doesn’t want to do, or things the cat actively resists (like eating healthy food or going to the vet.) If you’re seriously ill or in a lot of pain right now, this idea may seem too good to be true, and you may be thinking something like “Spirituality is all well and good, but it can’t really do anything about my pain, because my pain is real and it’s caused by this condition X, Y, or Z.” Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that your pain experience isn’t real or valid or that this material will necessarily instantly vanquish your pain forever. (However, I do have other material – such as the VIP Club event Dissolving Pain – that may allow you to achieve this.) What is important is that I am saying that many studies have proven the incredible power of the mind as a pain killer, such as the dentists and surgeons that use only hypnosis instead of chemical anesthesia. I simply encourage you to open your mind to the possibility that reframing your relationship to your body and the pain experiences it provides has the potential to deliver far more powerful and permanent pain relief than any drugs or other remedies. Instead of seeing the pain simply as an enemy to be vanquished, you might realize it is an ally that you can use to give you important and valuable feedback on where you are at with your own spiritual evolution. Awakening your relationship to your body is a great place to accelerate your embodiment, and will yield many profound and powerful benefits. However, you don’t have to stop there – you can use your Awakened relationship to your body as a template for your relationship to other important things in your life. And if you can pull this off in regards to your relationship to different challenging aspects of your life (including your physical health, your mental health, career, money, romance, sex, love, friends, family, and spirituality, to name just a few), you’ve started to embody your Awakening and are well on your way to becoming a Vehicle!
30 Days to Awakening
Thousands of Years of Spiritual Wisdom Revealed in Fun, Ten Minute Insights ©2012-2013 Brent Phillips www.FormulaForMiracles.net
Day 23: The Awakened Relationship to Your Body One of the most powerful obstacles to overcome in Awakening is to find the proper and healthy relationship to your physical body. (Of course, that statement is factually incorrect, because it is not “your” body, but instead it is the physical vehicle that creates the experiences that You perceive. But in the interest of simplicity of language, we’ll use the active voice and use the common term “your body” below.) In particular, identification with the body is one of the most powerful and most compelling aspects of false identification. After all, it really seems that You are your body, doesn’t it? In order to help you make a clear distinction between the harmful false identification with the body, and a healthy Awakening relationship with the physical vessel that we call “your body”, let me offer the following contrast: •
An un-Awakened person might say “I am in pain.”
•
An Awakened person might say “There is pain.”
Do you see the difference? In the first statement “I am in pain”, there is an inherent false identification, assuming that “you” are the one that is in pain. That’s not true, because You are not you! To elaborate on that point, remember that You are in Unity, while you (the “false I”) is in duality. Because pain and pleasure are polar opposites within duality, pain can only exist within duality, and so the You (that is, the Unity or the truth of You) can never be in pain, because You can never be or not be in anything. Impossible! Instead, the simple truth is that “There is pain”, as it may very well be that the physical vessel we call the body is producing a signal that is perceived or experienced by consciousness as the sensation we call pain. And this difference is not just academic – it’s the difference between success and failure, wealth and poverty, love and loneliness, life and death, pain and joy, and even Heaven and Hell! You see, when you identify with the pain, the mind creates a huge amount of suffering (the “emotional problem”) that compounds and amplifies the sensation of pain (the “technical problem.”) And when you identify with the pain, the suffering is inevitable and sometimes overwhelming. There really is a difference between pain and suffering; in our vocabulary, pain is a feeling (that is, something that is really happening in the moment), where as suffering is an emotion (it is unnecessary and completely synthesized by the mind.) In the un-Awakened, pain always creates suffering, and nearly always great pain creates great suffering. By contrast, in the Awakened person, pain does not need to include suffering, because You do not identify with the pain experience and so do not take it personally. (After all, because there is nobody here, there are no persons; if there are no persons, nothing can ever be taken personally!)
There is a great Buddhist saying that you should now be ready to understand at a deep and profound level: “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional”. I’ll suggest that the proper relationship to have with your body is similar to the relationship you have to a pet you really love. If, for example, you have a cat you really love (like I do!), you’ll want to do what’s best for the cat, and that sometimes involves giving the cat what he wants, but other times involves doing things the cat doesn’t want to do, or things the cat actively resists (like eating healthy food or going to the vet.) If you’re seriously ill or in a lot of pain right now, this idea may seem too good to be true, and you may be thinking something like “Spirituality is all well and good, but it can’t really do anything about my pain, because my pain is real and it’s caused by this condition X, Y, or Z.” Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that your pain experience isn’t real or valid or that this material will necessarily instantly vanquish your pain forever. (However, I do have other material – such as the VIP Club event Dissolving Pain – that may allow you to achieve this.) What is important is that I am saying that many studies have proven the incredible power of the mind as a pain killer, such as the dentists and surgeons that use only hypnosis instead of chemical anesthesia. I simply encourage you to open your mind to the possibility that reframing your relationship to your body and the pain experiences it provides has the potential to deliver far more powerful and permanent pain relief than any drugs or other remedies. Instead of seeing the pain simply as an enemy to be vanquished, you might realize it is an ally that you can use to give you important and valuable feedback on where you are at with your own spiritual evolution. Awakening your relationship to your body is a great place to accelerate your embodiment, and will yield many profound and powerful benefits. However, you don’t have to stop there – you can use your Awakened relationship to your body as a template for your relationship to other important things in your life. And if you can pull this off in regards to your relationship to different challenging aspects of your life (including your physical health, your mental health, career, money, romance, sex, love, friends, family, and spirituality, to name just a few), you’ve started to embody your Awakening and are well on your way to becoming a Vehicle!
