The Hidden Benefits to Accepting—and Loving—Your Body

Dedication to a life of health and healing requires an ongoing practice of open-mindedness. The most profound transformations occur when we step out of the familiar and into the unknown; when our sense of expectation is overcome by the clarity of our awareness and something new spontaneously comes into being. This practice, of course, has implications way beyond our personal lives.

What kind of world would we have for our children, for instance, if, as adults, we cherished and lived from the values that encouraged health and healing? What would our world look like? If we answered these questions from the familiar conditioned patterns of mind, many of us might not even consider such a possibility.

Expectations Undermine Imagination

The weight of our expectation—our beliefs about society, the economy, the trajectory of the human family—might undermine our sense of what’s possible. When we have no sense of what’s possible, we are not really available for anything revolutionary. For truly transformative healing to take place in our lives, we must be willing to fully step outside of what we know in order to discover new possibilities.

When we clearly recognize the interrelated aspects that make up our individual lives—the systems within our physical body, our emotions, our spirit, and our mind—we may see that none of these things are actually separate or distinct entities. Rather, they are more like descriptions of phenomena within experience that inform how we understand existence. It is only one step further from this understanding to seeing the interrelatedness of all life.

Consider for a moment the implications of living on a single planet with a finite set of resources. Finite freshwater, finite arable land, and, at the same time, a growing population that faces heretofore unimagined social stratification. At this moment in history, now more than ever, human beings are being forced to confront their place in the web of life and our role as a collective on Earth.

Making a True Commitment to Healing

When we truly have a deep commitment to our own healing, we will recognize the origin of this commitment comes from beyond ourselves as individuals and our personal desire to heal. True healing is not for the purpose of you alone. Our inherent connection to one another, to the planet, to all species, and to all life means that our deep commitment to healing is actually in service to the cosmos. Personal healing is a gateway for awareness to recognize your fundamental connectedness with the universe.

This will sound like a remote esoteric concept unless you are in deep connection with your purpose, aware, awake, and taking actions that are congruent both with your own healing and the healing of those with whom you share this world.

Healing on a Global Scale

As in our own individual lives, healing on a global scale comes about as a function of our deepening awareness. It is one thing to take action that is informed by rational, political, or ideological position-actions that are framed by “should” and “shouldn’ts,” which include rhetorical reasoning and, often, righteousness.

It is another thing entirely to have such a deeply embodied sense of connection with the world that your actions are a natural representation of your commitment to living as a healing presence. Your life, then, is not operating out of ideology, but flow, and that flow has the natural quality of creating harmony everywhere it goes.  In many ways, this is the deepest manifestation of what it means to be a healer. Your very existence is an invitation for others to step into a state of deep connection.

So, you start wherever you are with whatever you can. Every moment is the perfect moment to begin observing your experience without judgment, allowing curiosity to give way to wisdom, then allowing it to turn back into curiosity again. Hold onto nothing, treat yourself and others with kindness, and enjoy the ride.

Photo credit: Julia Caesar via Unsplash