Today we explore the idea that the body has a purpose in the giving and receiving of unconditional love. And good morning! Welcome to our final online practice of June. We will be meeting in various locations throughout the city of Calgary over July and August and are looking forward to practicing with you!
This practice today arose during a conversation with a friend recently, where I said something like "The body has no meaning." She misinterpreted that to mean that I was critical of people who exercise or care for themselves to feel better. How quickly we fall into these false dichotomies or Puritanical-style guilt in placing time and care in the body. Of course it's important to take care of the body so we feel healthy and can do our best for self and other.
But whether the body is considered beautiful in the shallow, worldly gaze of popular culture, or whether the body is considered "ugly" according to this (impossible, false) standards, eg, in being heavy, unattractive, old, sick, gender, race, and so on, what the body cannot do is make any meaning. Our true value and worth cannot be interpreted via the body. Our appearance has no meaning on our true value and worth.
I speak from real and painful experience: both the men I've dated in the ten years since my divorce were consumed by shallowness and vanity to the point where they could not make any real meaning of people and circumstances. To live this way is such an unstable house of cards, and I feel such sorrow for both of these fellas, being trapped in this world and not wanting to choose differently! If you have followed my work for a while, you can imagine how terrible it was for someone like me to be a willing participant in ego-driven, vicious relationships. To these men, I had no value unless I fit their definition of perfection, which was shifting and unstable like their own sense of self worth. I was too tall, too short; too fat too small; too logical, clinical, emotional, not dressed up enough, too dressed up, and so on. Their list of defects about my body, the outside, the inside, what I wore, what I said, how I said it, and my mind, my personality, was basically endless.
How could someone like me, dedicating my life to service of the community and to spirit, have manifested and chosen something so wrong for me, and so empty and lacking in any loving-kindness? Eek!
Right now I understand that I these circumstances birthed in me a very strong desire to speak and practice the unconditional love of the body and thus... the body's purpose! Here's where we can be all or nothing. There is no fuzziness about this job: the body is a vehicle for the expression of love and forgiveness. That's how we do God's work in the world, and that's how we are the imago Dei, the image of God. It is very empowering to know and do, to have clarity, purpose and to be able to make real meaning that cannot be changed with circumstances and people. This is how the body makes meaning. This is the ONLY way the body makes and has meaning.
Where do we start? Self acceptance and self compassion; check out today's meditation for some tools! Hoping you can join with me for our summer practices in YYC. Kind regards, Rosanna
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