Am I A Body?

 

Am I a body?

this seems an important inquiry, and an important insight arrived through meditation, a reductive means of seeing a more true version of our nature. Yet often we are handed this insight too, reading from a sage who insists that we indeed are not the body, not the mind, nor the thoughts that occupy it. What this insight points to is our awareness of the body, of being witness to what appears and not an object alone. It feels right to hear this, intuitively so, and the belief is now ours. But is it true? Am I a body? 

yes, 

but not exclusively. 

this is reverse Neti, Neti meditation, after the insight of not this, not this - and finding myself in a more intimate holding, a refusal to even subtle insinuations of not being in the world. To say I'm not a body simply isn't so and to claim otherwise isn't true as well. It doesn't pay to argue this, my mind debating body of existence. So yes, at this point I investigate all my reasoning, dismissing everything I've ever believed myself to be, a thorough examination of an imaginary self and a body that feels solid- and no ownership of anything is found, what I am is not exclusive to a single thing.

yet all of it belongs as well.

what I am says yes to it all - am I a body? Yes. Mind? Yes. I find no reason to deny what appears, and nor do I wish to claim any ownership either. I am not exclusively one thing alone, as even emptiness is seen as my fulfillment, providing its capacity in holding all the world. There is no (longer) a debate for me as to what I am, and no interest in discussing beliefs in what I'm not. 

it's simple, really...

I am.

and nothing seen apart from this. 

~

Peace, Eric