“Man does not have a soul, he is a soul. He has a body.” – C.H. Lewis
How many times a day do you overhear conversations obsessing over the condition of the physical body? How often do you witness the possessed and fixated angst of those who can’t seem to do enough to get their bodies in perfect shape? How many billboards, commercials, advertisements, magazines, businesses, and medical experts have you read about or heard fanatically touting the importance of maintaining, improving, sculpting, and perfecting the physical body?
Where Our True Health Lives
How many times have you seen or heard any mainstream avenue suggesting that where our true health lives is in any condition in which the soul is able to express itself through the constructs of the physical form, including our emotions, mind, lifestyle, and spiritual life?
Our Obsession With The Body
Here in the Western world, it is apparent how we have become obsessed with the well-being and maintenance of the physical body and there are many corporations, businesses, establishments and governments that are happily financially invested in keeping us obsessed. It’s no secret that billions of dollars are spent on the fear of death, aging and body image and that billions more are made by those who would have us believe in those fears. Sure, we’re all gonna die someday, but when the focus of our true health includes the inner world and workings of the soul, then aging and death can be better understood as simply an organic part of life. These things don’t have to be shrouded in fear, especially when we can shift the focus of the body as being the vehicle for the soul to express through, rather than a mass of bone, blood, and muscle that we think we have to control at all times.
Losing Sight of Holism
The thing is, if we truly want freedom and autonomy, we have to be willing to let go of certain paradigms of belief, mainly the one where we believe we can’t think for ourselves. Whenever we become overly obsessed with the health of the body or our body image, we lose sight of what is naturally and inherently holistic within. We also need to ask ourselves what is the motivation behind the fixation on the body. Rarely is it to be of service to the soul.
The Soul’s Plan Is Executed Via The Body
It behooves us to remember that the soul transcends the body and personality – it came first, so it is the greater. To the soul, perfect health is a state through which its purpose and plans for you are expressed through the vehicle of the body and has no real concern over the comfort and ease through which that purpose is executed.
Limitations Do Not Hinder The Soul’s Expression
Think of Stephen Hawking, Helen Keller, Nicholas James Vujicic, Nelson Mandela and the like. All of them, seemingly caged and trapped physically with seemingly extreme impediments to their ability to express their soul’s purpose, and yet they all did, and even more important to understand, it was because of their physical limitation that the soul was able to flourish and help the world, and others.
Fear Keeps Us Obsessed With The Body
If the motivation to keep our physical body fit and healthy is stemming from fear of death, illness, appearing unattractive, or aging, then we have truly lost sight of the deeper meaning of what it means to have a physical body, mainly, a vehicle through which the soul can express itself. Don’t get me wrong. Obviously, if we’re dead that’s the end of our physical opportunity for the soul to express in this world. It’s just that obsessing over the body through external measures only does not equal any real depth of health, youthfulness, or quality longevity. Just because someone jogs every day or doesn’t eat meat, doesn’t mean they’re necessarily kind, generous, or compassionate to others, and it’s this kind of energy that emits a true fragrance of health and vitality regardless of age, diet, or weight.
The Five Paths To A Healthy Body
To serve the soul through our physical vehicle there are five paths that define our health and overall well-being – that of understanding the purpose of the physical body, our emotions, the mind, our lifestyle, and our spiritual practice.
1) The Body Needs To Be Productive
The physical body needs to be productive in order to achieve physical health either through work, through helping others, or by making meaningful contributions to life. The body does not need to be perfect in order to achieve this and often, it can have one or several limiting ailments or deficiencies, but so long as these can be overcome and even transcended, the body can remain vital and healthy.
2) An Outlet For The Soul’s Benevolence
The emotions are the gateway for providing the soul with an outlet for our personal expression of its benevolence, a vehicle for the highest qualities in life such as compassion, goodwill, humility, kindness, and inspiration. If we are expressing our emotions in these ways as we walk through this world, then this also contributes greatly to our physical well-being.
3) Deciphering The Soul’s Wisdom
The pathway of the mind helps us to decipher the soul’s wisdom by bringing us clarity of thought, awareness, the ability to think both logically and objectively, discipline through various forms of meditation practices, and determining right from wrong. In these ways, our mind adds to the pool of our physical health.
4) The Soul’s Expression Through Lifestyle
The way we choose to live our life or our chosen lifestyle, provides the canvas for the soul to paint its plans for us. With this in mind, it’s not too hard to see how people’s lives that have taken a drastic turn was for the purpose of the soul to be able to live out its plans in the environment and lifestyle that was truly required for this to happen, rather than the lifestyle our ego or mass consciousness would have us follow. Often when our lives do a major overhaul, whether wanted or not, whether deemed positive or negative, whether it includes suffering or not, it is in the new place that we’ve landed that our true soul’s purpose finds expression, and when that happens, we can truly say our body is now serving the soul.
5) Committing To An Inner Life
And finally, the attention we give to our spiritual life is part of the holistic way our physical body is used to serve the soul. When we are deeply committed to the inner life of the soul as the source of our greatest health and well-being rather than only focussing on the physical body, then we are on the right track. When we seek to raise our frequency, express our soul, contribute in ways that add to the quality of human life, and are willing to integrate all of this into our decisions regarding our own personal wishes and desires, then we are coming from a place of spiritual integrity.
Using Our Body To Serve The Soul
When we learn that the greatest source of health and well-being comes from our inner world and our willingness to let go of archaic, mainstream, socially conditioned, and all too often, fear perpetrating ways, then we can view our bodies in a new light and use them in the way for which they were intended – to serve the soul.
With much love,
Heather xo
P.S. If you have friends, clients or colleagues who you think may be interested in using their body to serve the soul, send them this blog. If all bodies were used in this way…well…just imagine…
(References: The Art of Living – Robert Leichtman, M.D. and Carl Japikse)
I like the simplicity of this. It’s light, easy and refreshing…like drinking well balanced lavender lemonade while sitting in the sun. The air is warm, but not hot and sticky.