Module 12 – Lesson 1: Why have a Body?

Module 12: Body Issues

Video One: Why Have a Body?

Before we get right into the broad topic to be addressed in this module, which is to explore the role emotions play in how we experience the physical body, it is worth looking at and wondering why we attach so much importance to our bodies and the degree to which we identify with them.

We pay so much attention to it, we could even say we are obsessed with our bodies. It’s hardly surprising then that we become convinced that we are our bodies!

The truth is, of course, that we existed before we had a body, and we will continue to exist after we have experienced our physical death and dropped the body.

Interestingly enough though, in spite of our obsession with the physical body, and as much as we have studied it and come to know its intricate workings, we’ve all but ignored the most fundamental question of all.

Why do we have a body?

Why would a spiritual being, who is free to move around at will within the World of Divine Existence, decide to lower its vibration and become encumbered with a body that is dense, heavy, and prone to breaking down on a regular basis?

Well, as we have discussed previously, we believe that the reason we do it is to be able to experience separation and all that comes with that. And, we do it in order that we might develop a deeper awareness of ‘Oneness.’ Remember that?

It is an important lesson for us spiritual beings to master, and it is no easy task, especially since, for much of the incarnation experience, we cease to have remembrance of the spiritual world. Separation is experienced as real and painful — and it sucks!

Thank goodness that we have Radical Forgiveness to carry us through to an Awakening of the truth that we are not separate at all. What a relief that is!

The other part of the agreement we made with Spirit was to be willing to have the experience of separation as an emotional event. And, for that, a body is essential. That’s because an emotion is a thought attached to a feeling. If you don’t have a body to provide the feeling element, you have only a thought form.

The primary function of the body is to give us the opportunity to feel our feelings and to have emotions.

The human experience, therefore, is meant to be an emotional experience, and the degree to which we won’t allow ourselves to have our emotions, or to experience life through our feelings, is the extent to which we are denying our purpose for being here.

It is all the more extraordinary that in spite of all our scientific knowledge about how the body works, and our seemingly endless obsession with it, there has been precious little focus on the feeling element.

It was not until Candace Pert wrote her book, Molecules of Emotion, that anyone really bothered to look at the direct role the body plays in helping us feel our feelings and, by extension, to experience the pain of separation. It has always been assumed that emotion is located in the mind and has little to do with the body, but you only have to think about what happens in the body when you have an emotional experience to know that the body is indeed fully involved.

If the body is our spiritual vehicle then, for taking us into and through the deep pain of separation, is it any wonder that we are not only obsessed with our bodies, but essentially hate them for precisely that reason?

Even though our memories of existence prior to incarnation are dim at best, or for the most part non- existent, don’t you think that part of us might remember what it is like to be just spirit and not encumbered with a body?

Isn’t it possible that we might have some resentment about having to carry this burden? If so, doesn’t it make sense that we might project all our guilt and rage about being separate and in pain onto our body?

After all, having taken on a body as a symbol of separation, it follows that the body must also symbolize the intense pain that inevitably accompanies the sense of separation.

In this world of separation that we have created and live in, one of the ways to stay stuck there is to consistently blame, justify, deny, and project the pain of having to endure separation onto something else. We do this in one of two ways. We either project it onto someone or something out there, or we turn it back and project it onto our own body. We’re so identified with our bodies, that the hatred we feel towards our bodies becomes generalized as self-hatred.

Once we have awakened and realized that separation is an illusion, the basis for that self-hatred disappears. Radical self-love and self-acceptance become possible, and we no longer feel the need to project hate onto our bodies and indulge in hateful, self-destructive behavior.

But if we are not yet at that point of awakening and are still mired in victim consciousness, there is one body issue over which we obsess and which serves as one of the most convenient targets for our self-hatred.

That is the question of weight.

And, we’ll address this in the next video.