Hallowtide is a season rife with remembrance of the fragile body. After all, Halloween, “hallowed eve”, signifies the night before the Day of the Dead or All Saints’ Day. Though Hallowtide, the triduum of October 31, November 1 and 2, is symbolized by skeletons, cats, monsters and goblins, — and now, candy — the essence of the season is the acknowledgement of the spirit that reigns on the other side from the physical plane. Halloween is one of many traditions that serve to remind us that spirit rules on this plane, too. Viewed rightly, they serve to beg the question, “Which are we, spirit or body?”
Whatever the appearance of our worries, cares and woes, whatever it may be that we are afraid of will happen in this worldly life, it always comes down to a case of mistaken identity. If we believe that who we are is a body, then the possibility of harm, inadequacy, loss, sickness and even death become real. And we seem to inhabit an era of human history so removed from nature and the lessons that it teaches that we are desperately consumed with belief in the power of the body.
Obsession with the body has reached staggering proportions. The main focus of our news, research and endeavors is how to protect it, how to heal it, how to make it look better, how to pamper it, how to promote it, how to make sure it is better off than the other bodies around it. Yet ironically, who would accept being defined or limited to being a body anyway? I mean, after all, walk up to an attractive person in a bar or at a party and state that your interest is solely in their body and you will likely get a rebuff that will make your cheeks sting. No one wants to be considered as just a body! Everyone wants to be identified as something more but we pay little attention to that something more. Or if we do pay attention to that something more that we are, like praying or meditating, it’s often with the goal of improving our body’s condition in some way.
Elementary, my dear Watson. The laws of physics tell us a different story if we would just pay attention. Pare away the illusion of solid matter and even a school child knows we are made of tiny particles called atoms. Physics takes us further, to the level of subatomic particles of quarks, leptons, mesons, gluons and upside-down quarks and so on. Each time we find a particle we think is solid matter, we find out it isn’t, but made up of a conglomeration of yet more new particles that are even smaller.
Eventually we find out that what keeps these apparent “solid” particles from running into each other is a vast (relatively speaking to the particles) area filled with nothing but energy. Short answer to the big question? We are not solid matter. (We are not bodies.) We are energy. That ain’t conjecture. That’s fact.
Who are you? To get as close as we can to remembering who we really are is a moment-to-moment exercise. It’s helpful to use what we have on hand to deal with that and the best instrument is the mind. In a stroke of elegance, creation made it the best place to look for what we really are. All right, we’re energy. We’ve got that part down. But what kind of energy are we? Maybe we have trouble identifying with what we really are because we haven’t considered it rightly. I mean, we’ve defined and identified all sorts of energies over the centuries. There’s electricity. We’re not the same as that so we don’t identify ourselves as electricity. There are radio waves. We don’t seem to be radio waves. There are cosmic rays with energy fields we didn’t know existed until 1912. There is magnetic energy, solar energy, nuclear energy and we don’t seem to be any of those. All of these forms of energy seem to be very powerful on the gross level. All of them seem to be somehow outside of us or around us.
However, there is one form of energy, little understood, that seems to be our essence. That energy within us is within the mind. It is thought.
We know thought is a type of energy. We can measure it by measuring its effects. Thought energy can move needles on EEGs. It can instantly effect changes in the organs of the body. And in little-understood instances it can transcend space and time, such as in the cases of remote viewing.
We aren’t as adept at measuring thought as we are in measuring other energies. It took decades to identify and harness nuclear energy; centuries before the observation of electricity by ancient Chinese and Greeks led to its utility in the 1800s. Now that we are realizing that thought is indeed energy, it should follow that it will someday be utilized in a similar fashion. Thought would likely be the highest and most powerful field of energy, able to operate on subtler, more energetic levels than crude forms.
More importantly, as we begin to understand thought, we will find that we can identify with it as who we are. Realizing that who we are is energy and operating from that field rather than from the field of form will give us a more accurate direction for undertaking action.
Thought is not form, this much we know and understand. That which is not form (or in our self-centric terms “body”) is often referred to as “spirit.” The term works though it is sometimes helpful to remember that any term could be used. Operating from the realm of who we really are is like operating from higher ground: it gives the advantage of clear sight.
In the case of our experience through the physical senses or “in this world,” it gives us the advantage of correct identification. And in a wry bow to egocentrism, why care about that which we are not (a body)? It is important to realize that does not imply disdain for the body or disrespect, only appropriate status.
Be well.
Heartland Healing is a metaphysically based polemic describing alternatives to conventional methods of healing the body, mind and planet. It is provided as information and entertainment, certainly not medical advice. Important to remember and pass on to others: for a weekly dose of Heartland Healing, visit HeartlandHealing.com.