The Importance of "Being in Your Body" During the Shift

"To open to God you have to open to life. You have to live, love, enjoy, and share. Spirituality is based on the value that you express in the physical world." - Swami Rudrananda

I have always thought of the spiritual path as a difficult balancing act. The roots of my spiritual practice are in Buddhism and Taoism. In these practices, I learned not to view what is spiritual as separate from the rest of our lives, our bodies, and the material world. I've also learned that this seems to be a good check against one of the spiritual traps of compartmentalizing one's practice by wanting to only live in realm of "love and light" without paying necessary homage to our human physicality. To me, thinking otherwise can get us a little too close to the roots of dualism and perhaps even unhealthy attitudes towards the physical side of life that have crept into some of the mainstream religions.

There's another side to this as well. Honoring the body means that spiritual practice doesn't just stay in the realm of mind and heart (although practice in both areas is obviously very important, especially the latter.) Positive spiritual intent needs to get translated and incarnated into action in the minutia of ordinary living. This keeps us grounded which is really important as we work through the powerful activation points we've passed through such as the recent 11:11:11 gateway. Treating co-workers, friends and family with respect and consideration, helping those in need, helping to transform our frayed cultural paradigms in big and small ways: these are all the currency of the Shift and a safeguard against grandiose thinking. Earlier this year, we hosted an excellent teacher, Dr. Christine Page, for a three-part teleseminar series. One of Christine's comments that really resonated for me was "This is a time to be in your body".

"Being in the body" simply means keying into body awareness. But it also means addressing the real needs of the physical world with action. In the context of sacred activism where intent meets action, it's very heartening to see the Occupy Movement gaining momentum globally. Yes it could go awry and the relatively small number of violent incidents are unfortunate. But in my opinion, you won't find a better example of awakening in action given the fact that this is truly a global movement which leaderless, highly cooperative in nature, democratic, peaceful and inclusive in its principles.

This is a time to fiercely hold on to the most fundamental of human values that are under now widely under attack and we hope you will feel the urgency of the need to participate in some way. Please feel free to post your thoughts about this here or send me an email at tom@theemergenceproject.net. Thank you.