The Physical Body and One's True Essence

What I'm about to say may challenge the way you think about yourself. The rewards of this shift in perspective may bring a new understanding about who you are and why you might want to seek self-improvement. So - at least for the brief moment - open your mind to the following concept - after we're through, feel free to pick up the concept of self that carried you here, as you walk out the door.

As a whole, we think of ourselves - our mind, body, and the animated awareness behind mind and body as Me. The rest of the world is not Me. The dermal layer of our skin is the liminal surface that divides that which is not Me from that which is Me.

Let go of your body for a moment and release it to the domain of the rest of the world. Revoke ownership of it and consider what you are left with. If you find this challenging to do, consider that the food you eat is repurposed into the physical structure that you call your body. There is truth to the refrain, "you are what you eat," and yet from a different perspective, it is a lie.

Over time that structure falls away. Skin cells slough off, fat globules are breathed out as carbon dioxide, the minerals in our bones may be excreted through urine. The matter which comprises the physical structure of your body is borrowed from parts of the World that are not Me. Matter flows through us with relatively strict form that seems unchanging and therefore we construct a physical identity around borrowed material that only seems unchanging as we experience it day-to-day.

To put a finer point on it, to define "My body" as my own when, as we see presently, My body is made of not My body, we get an inkling that something is funny here. In fact, to call My body mine is an arbitrary assumption. The human body is the world, it is the universe, and whatever is truly Me has conceived a way to form matter into My body. My body is only mine because something has orchestrated matter into a form that I have taken a sense of physical identity to and ownership of.

If our bodies then are transient orchestrations and recombinations of matter - never mind that matter itself is fundamentally energy or deeper still information - then one's individual identity as awareness is the conductor of appropriated matter; an energy signature that shapes itself into a physical body, much like the energy of a whirlpool shaping water itself into its form and yet remains a part of the river - we are the Universe and not.

The fundamental essence of our identity is not a physical body, but is closer to the intelligence that shapes matter into a physical form. We are not physical beings, we are in essence non-physical and our bodies are borrowed substance from the physical domain, that each one shapes into an avatar of self; a physical presentation of a non-physical design.

Our physical bodies however are special to each of us. They represent the molecules chosen by our essential identity to represent our form. If only temporarily, our essence manages to condense matter into a form and provide a greater degree of influence on the piece of the world that coalesces into our bodies. Our physical bodies represent an island of matter where our essence as an individual is given a degree of sovereignty. Through that sovereignty, the seat of our awareness is able to interact through our senses with the physical world from which our bodies borrow matter.

From this perspective, you are not your body. Your body is nevertheless integral to your physical experience in this Universe. It is the interface that projects your non-physical essence so it can operate and influence this physical domain.

We are consciousness that through some grace has been allowed to function within a physical form we call body.