Dig this…your body (yes, yours) plays a major and pivotal role in your awakening process.  It is the vehicle you chose within which to navigate this awesome, quirky planet.  It is a vessel, a container for your Soul, a pliable, unique mass of cosmically earthy tissue put together with the most incredible precision, complexity, and perfection.  Every experience you give yourself must come through your body in order for you to experience it!  Every single one.  No body…no earthly experiences.   Period.

Now, that’s a great story, but chances are good that somewhere along the line, you learned to dislike, be uncomfortable with, or even downright despise your body.  Someone - perhaps your mother, or the mean girl in your first grade class, or that group of boys you had to walk past every day on your way home - made a completely inappropriate, derogatory comment about your body which efficiently and permanently stuck in your young, innocent mind as: The Truth.  This experience has undoubtedly since then been validated over and over again in the messages you’ve received from other people, television, movies, fashion magazines, and advertisements. 

The bottom line of all these messages?  Your body, as it is, is just not going to cut it.  And in this torqued out story, if your body isn’t “up to snuff” according to the latest rules of the culture at large, then YOU aren’t up to snuff either.  And that’s just bad news for the mind which wants to belong, and be accepted, and not wind up alone forever on the couch watching Desperate Housewives reruns with a 10lb. bag of potato chips and a six-pack of Diet Coke. 

This, coupled with any trauma you may have experienced in your life (abuse of any kind, a serious accident, severe illness, or anything else which caused you some major pain on any level) has probably made it very difficult for you to stay in your body and actually experience what is going on within and around you. 

What I’m talking about here when I say “out of your body” is a potent little psychological tool you were born with which is called dissociation.  When we dissociate, we go straight out of the body and usually straight into a tiny, tiny portion of the mind which is reserved for just “hanging out” in while the “bad” stuff happens.  The mind believes that if we mentally, psychologically, and emotionally jettison ourselves out of a potentially dangerous situation, we’ll be OK.  Most human beings at this time on earth have become almost professional at dissociating on and off throughout each day.  This natural mechanism which was meant to be hugely helpful and protective in dealing with seriously traumatic situations has now become an ongoing, daily habit for many people as they attempt to navigate lives which are just too full, too stressful, and way too overwhelming.  In other words, we have adapted to lives which are dangerously out of whack by continually utilizing one of our main survival tools - which was designed for rare and occasional use only! 

For instance, if you pull into the parking lot at work first thing in the morning, and wonder how the heck you got there?  You were dissociated during your drive.  When you’re in a meeting and someone asks you a question and you realize you have no idea what anyone is talking about?  Dissociation.  When you buy a half-gallon of Jamoca Almond Fudge Brownie Chunk Caramel Dream and look down to see most of it gone - with barely any memory of eating it?  You guessed it…dissociation.

When you dissociate, you are energetically, psychologically, mentally and emotionally not available to the current situation and again, your mind believes that because you’re not sticking around for the potential pain (the pain of going to a job you can’t stand, the pain of sitting through hours of people droning on and on about stuff that means absolutely nothing to you, the pain that all that ice cream was supposed to ease and comfort), you’re safe.  But get this…you are immeasurably less safe when you are out of your body.  If no one is home to feel and recognize what is going on inside, you cannot possibly make healthy, wise, or empowered choices around what you need or want in any given moment.  This leaves you more vulnerable - not less, which can then lead, at best, to mindlessly going along on autopilot with what everyone else is doing and, at worst, making choices which are diminishing, dangerous, or even more traumatic for yourself.

So why would you choose such a radical strategy for your day-to-day living?  Well, that’s easy.  If you didn’t, you might actually feel what was going on inside of you (you know, like all that existential angst, and anxiety, and hopelessness…not to mention the deep longing for something - your relationship, your job, your ability to speak Martian - anything to be different or better in your life) and that might mean you end up choosing to make some really, really big and mind-blowing changes in and around your personal corner of the Universe.  And everyone knows how the mind feels about change.  Not its favorite subject.

But if you’re one of the one’s (and there are LOTS of you now) who knows it is time for those really, really big changes to begin, then you need to remember this: No Body, No Change.  Period.  The good news?  You can learn to get back into that body of yours - and stay there.  And once you’re back in the driver’s seat of your very  own superbly tricked-out vehicle, you are one giant step closer to knowing and experiencing yourself as a magnificent living being instead of a fearful surviving automaton.   And that’s a big difference.  Because here’s the thing…if you aren’t in the driver’s seat of your own body, then someone or something else is.  And that’s just plain weird.  Who wants someone or something else taking charge of and wreaking havoc on all that beautiful fleshly perfection?

So basically, it is important for you to know that choosing to wrap your Sparky Divine Self within the luscious folds of your unique body was not a big, terrible mistake.  It was part of what you really wanted to experience!  It is a very powerful way for Consciousness (You) to experience Itself (Yourself) in form.  And thus, it turns out that your awakening process involves moving ever more fully into your body so that you can experience every single magical nuance of what it means to be human.  And who would want to miss out on that?