Sponge-able

Ask Amy: Are You Spiritually Sponge-able?

Q: Can you explain more about how we need to use the body to undo our belief in the body?

A:  Spiritual sponge-ability is a whole new way of using your body.

Stay with me: sponges are porous and absorbent.  The spiritual law “giving is receiving” only works if you are also able to receive.

You must be able to sponge in God’s Love if you want a loving life.  Ask yourself:

  • Is your heart porous, in the sense that you’re able to receive and accept love?
  • Are your lungs porous? Are you able to inhale and exhale fully, enjoying the sensuality of your breath?
  • Are your muscles and interconnective tissue porous?  Can you feel energy humming and tingling through your torso?
  • Is your brain porous?  Is possible for you to allow your eyes to soften and melt back into your head, releasing your brain to float softly within your skull?

A Course in Miracles tells us, “…all sickness is mental illness….”*  So it is the mind which must be healed.  However, while you believe you are the body, Jesus advises that you ask the Holy Spirit to use the body for Her** divine purpose. This choice is crucial to your happiness, peace of mind, and ongoing sense of well being.

Up until now, you have probably been experiencing your body as flesh and blood — dense, contracted, possibly pain-riddled, and almost always not looking as good as you would like. You physically experience guilty feelings, heartache and body tension (often in the form of headaches and upper body pain such as TMJ, neck and shoulder tension, etc).

Probably no one has told you what the body feels like when it is free of excess tension, and is a free-flowing extension of God’s Will.  What does this mean?  When you allow the Holy Spirit to use the body for Her purpose you become a conduit for miracles. In other words, your body is experienced as an energetic transmitter of Loving Light.  God’s wisdom (you could say “good vibrations” or “energy”) runs through your body using it like a clear instrument. Your body becomes a hollow flute for God to play with His Fingers.

If you are sponge-able, you allow yourself to receive God’s formless, timeless Love, and then you effortlessly give that Love through your natural radiance.

If you are not sponge-able, you can give, give, give to the people around you and it’s still ego-driven. Giving without sponge-ability (the ability to receive) is just another form of ego control.

Sponge-ability connects your will with God’s Will.  You are illuminated with His Great Light, absorbing and squeezing out (to stick with our sponge metaphor) the radiant Great Rays that Great Light creates.

*ACIM supplement: Psychotherapy: Purpose, Process and Practice.

**I’m using the Divine Feminine to refer to the Holy Spirit, as modeled in the Hebrew version of ACIM (read Shekinah, Divine Feminine and the Holy Spirit).

Check out my series: How to Use the Body While You Think It’s You and http://facebook.com/acimbodyimage

How to Use the Body While You Think It’s You

How to Use the Body While You Think It’s You was originally a workshop which I gave at  the “Who Are You Really?” Course in Miracles conference in Cleveland, Ohio in 2012. Little by little, it has grown into a library of articles, essays, video, a Facebook page and other stuff (as it keeps growing).

The topics (see list below) include how to use the body to practice forgiveness, facing fears about death, not having to have perfect body health to spiritually awaken, how falling apart can be the best thing you can do, and more.

Here are some tantalizing quotes about the body from A Course in Miracles:

“And you have done a stranger thing than you yet realize.  You have displaced your guilt to your body from your mind.”  ~T-18.VI.2:5-6

But luckily, ” … the body is a learning device for the mind.”  ~T-2.IV.3:1

So, “The body is beautiful or ugly, peaceful or savage, helpful or harmful, according to the use to which it is put.”  ~T-8.VII.4:3

Reassuringly, “Health is the result of relinquishing all attempts to use the body lovelessly.”  ~T-8.VIII.9:8

Last but not least, “The body is the means by which God’s Son returns to sanity.”  ~W-5. What Is the Body?

Topic List:

Are You Sponge-able?

Take Yourself Less Personally

The Purpose of the Body (essay) and The Purpose of the Body (video)

Death Is Just A Belief (essay) and A Happy Conversation About Death – Interview with Jon Mundy (video)

Coming Apart at the “Seems”

Body Health Is Not a Measurement of Unfolding

The Spark Is Still As Pure As the Great Light

Flossing and Feldenkrais

A Course in Miracles and Body Image (Facebook page)

God Is In Your Smile

A Better Way to Say, “I Miss You”

This Is the Best Moment Of Your Life

Ask Amy: Forgiveness – Am I Doing It Right?

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/ACIMBodyImage/

Living the Language of Love, Harmony & Beauty (work-in-progress)

ACIM teaches us that the Holy Spirit’s purpose for the body is to use it as a vehicle for learning, as a communication device.  After many years of working with the Course, the body feels less like “me” and more like a beloved car–a great vehicle in which to get around; a “thing” that I do my best to treat well and maintenance regularly.

In my personal curriculum, yoga has been one way the Holy Spirit has reached my mind through the classroom of my body.  Through my personal trials and tribulations with the body, I have tried all kinds of alternative healing.

On the physical side, there’s been cranio-sacral therapy, myofascial release, visceral manipulation, Feldenkrais, every kind of massage you can name (yes, I’m a massage junkie).  Body-oriented psychotherapy has included what I call expressive-release work (see bioenergetics based on Wilhelm Reich’s work, emotional somatic healing, and EMDR (uses eye movement).

Spiritually there’s been qi gong, tai chi, Afro-Cuban motion, belly dance, Indonesian latihan, EFT and much more.

How to Use the Body While You Think It’s You is a fascinating subject, especially since the Course tells us the body isn’t even real.  But while we identify with the body, happily there is a way to use it for true healing, miracles, and the Holy Spirit’s pure loving purpose. I call this practical mysticism and embodied spirituality.