“You Are Not Your Body or Your Mind”

How about — “You are more than your body and your mind”

I understand the intention of the statement in the title of this blog post; to convey that we are deeper than the physical layer. We are the soul entity, a spiritual being having a human experience.

I’ve been steadily studying the Yoga Sutras for the past 6 years, as well as the Bhagavadgita and other sacred texts. They remind the reader that the body and mind are our outer layers, not the “true self.” Yet these texts also remind us that the body and mind provide important context through which to experience and witness the “true self” — also known as our spirit or our inner consciousness.

The highest way of living is not by forgetting the body in favor of the spirit. It’s by allowing the spirit to live through the body by way of compassionate actions for the benefit of others. The Bhagavadgita describes how action is a higher path of being than inaction. And hopefully, our actions can be aligned with our inner consciousness and/or faith in a higher power.

Yoga is the calming of the fluctuations of the mind (Yoga Sutra 1.2). Yoga is NOT the complete dismissal of the mind. The mind is in fact a tool. Unfortunately it’s a tool that we often misuse due to societal norms and pressures. But when used correctly, the mind can do some incredibly beautiful things — music, poetry, kindness, artwork, literature, and new inventions to name a few.

The spiritual journey is an interesting one. It’s always been a challenge for me to explore how to integrate the spiritual path into everyday normal life in a modern city in a capitalistic economy. Most of us don’t have the privilege of dismissing the mind and body in favor of a spiritual life, so it’s our work to integrate our soul entity and our faith into our grounded existence with our feet on the ground.

With love,

Ben