Page 19 - NAMAH-Jul-2019

The body — our perfect teacher

James Anderson

Abstract
When we integrate the body in our true growth and progress, it becomes our teacher. To learn we
have to listen to it. The unique relation it bears with the soul facilitates this. The author touches on
some of his experiences.

The relationship we have with the body reflects to decide what we need to do with the body
our direction in life. At the bottom of the itself. At first it seems inimical to pander to
scale, if we totally immerse with it, our nature something that has up to now clamped our
slumps to an animal level, wallowing in consciousness so much onto externalities.
desire and surface needs. All our solutions Indeed it always seems to incessantly drag us
will be drawn from the material plane and backwards! So abstinence and renunciation,
satisfying the body’s demands becomes the for some, become the convenient answer. Such
calling of our life. When a problem emerges, ascetic tendencies are latent in many of us in
we automatically seek material answers to it. varying degrees. There is a tendency to by-
Our life revolves around a cycle of material pass or ignore the vital and physical natures as
extraction and consumption. We walk a there seems to be no way of accommodating
treadmill which reinforces this preoccupation them in our upward passage. The interests
with matter. It is a suffocating existence and of life and body are so mixed up with each
much of humanity is still trying to claw its way other that shunning them both seems to be
out of this bottomless pit. Our consciousness the only way to rise up in consciousness. At
rarely peers below the surface and there is an extreme level, the desires of the vital are
no way out from the grip of the ego. We throttled and all communication is cut with
are caught inside a net of samsara for many the body.
lifetimes until some form of awakening occurs.
The work of integration
When it does awaken, immediately we reach
a crossroads where a choice has to be made. However, there is an alternative and this
Our orientation starts turning inside and if we comes through integration. We can choose
are to continue to expand and grow we have to integrate the body together with the rest

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