Sacred Body, Sacred Soul
I speak a lot about the individual being sacred, but not exactly what that entails.
We are holy, body and soul. (of course, so is everyone else). How we treat ourselves directly affects how we are able to treat others and how well the Divine flows through us. When we treat ourselves as though we are garbage, we lose the ability to improve ourselves or the Universe around us. When we treat ourselves well, we can grow and improve the Universe.
How do we treat ourselves well? Part of it's obvious. We need to eat right, we need to exercise, we need to care for our bodies. A sickly body is a time sink, one that requires us to take effort to care for our body at the expense of things we'd rather be doing. We take preventative maintenance for our cars, but we sacrifice our bodies for things we see as more important. Pounds and inches aren't what's important. Health is what matters. We need to find a place where our bodies are healthy, not losing that last five pounds or getting that perfect sixpack of abs.
Our minds are also sacred. What we are, in many ways, is our mind. It's how we define our personality. And how we treat our minds is important. It's easy to fill our minds with garbage, to focus on nothing of substance because it's too hard and to treat ourselves as though we didn't matter. But that's harmful, just as harmful as trying to live off nothing but potato chips. We need to nourish our minds, to give ourselves things to think about that aren't just easy. That doesn't mean we can't do anything but read great literature. But it does mean that we need to be aware of what our minds focus on, and to take care that we don't spend our days thinking about things that cause us harm. We can control our inner chattering voice, if we're willing to learn to try. And what we let that voice say has a big impact on our lives.
It's difficult to realize how much our minds can be controlled by ourselves. What we believe, what we think the world should be like, it affects us. We see the world as we wish it was, as we fear it is, as anything but the truth. We fill our minds with casual violence, with casual pain and hatred. These things are poison to us. The more we think about anger, about pain and hatred, the more our minds become programmed to think of pain and anger and hatred. This is not to say these emotions are bad, they are not. Emotions simply are. But choosing to dwell in them (and it is a choice) can destroy a person.
We are worthy. We are loved. We are sacred, and of the Divine. We need to treasure that.
Questions:
How do you take care of your body? your mind?
Do you think you do a good job celebrating your sacred nature? Why or why not?
How do you love yourself (keep it clean, folks!)? How does that self-love interact with your sacredness?
We are holy, body and soul. (of course, so is everyone else). How we treat ourselves directly affects how we are able to treat others and how well the Divine flows through us. When we treat ourselves as though we are garbage, we lose the ability to improve ourselves or the Universe around us. When we treat ourselves well, we can grow and improve the Universe.
How do we treat ourselves well? Part of it's obvious. We need to eat right, we need to exercise, we need to care for our bodies. A sickly body is a time sink, one that requires us to take effort to care for our body at the expense of things we'd rather be doing. We take preventative maintenance for our cars, but we sacrifice our bodies for things we see as more important. Pounds and inches aren't what's important. Health is what matters. We need to find a place where our bodies are healthy, not losing that last five pounds or getting that perfect sixpack of abs.
Our minds are also sacred. What we are, in many ways, is our mind. It's how we define our personality. And how we treat our minds is important. It's easy to fill our minds with garbage, to focus on nothing of substance because it's too hard and to treat ourselves as though we didn't matter. But that's harmful, just as harmful as trying to live off nothing but potato chips. We need to nourish our minds, to give ourselves things to think about that aren't just easy. That doesn't mean we can't do anything but read great literature. But it does mean that we need to be aware of what our minds focus on, and to take care that we don't spend our days thinking about things that cause us harm. We can control our inner chattering voice, if we're willing to learn to try. And what we let that voice say has a big impact on our lives.
It's difficult to realize how much our minds can be controlled by ourselves. What we believe, what we think the world should be like, it affects us. We see the world as we wish it was, as we fear it is, as anything but the truth. We fill our minds with casual violence, with casual pain and hatred. These things are poison to us. The more we think about anger, about pain and hatred, the more our minds become programmed to think of pain and anger and hatred. This is not to say these emotions are bad, they are not. Emotions simply are. But choosing to dwell in them (and it is a choice) can destroy a person.
We are worthy. We are loved. We are sacred, and of the Divine. We need to treasure that.
Questions:
How do you take care of your body? your mind?
Do you think you do a good job celebrating your sacred nature? Why or why not?
How do you love yourself (keep it clean, folks!)? How does that self-love interact with your sacredness?
posted by Vieva @ 11:42 AM
4 Comments:
At 2:21 PM,
Vieva said…
no almost about it. it is a responsibility.
both because we are ourselves sacred, and because we cannot improve the world around us without coming from a place of ability .. and when we are broken, our ability to do things is broken as well.
At 7:02 PM,
Anonymous said…
+++and when we are broken, our ability to do things is broken as well.+++
I'm having a problem with the word "broken." I have a disability, does that mean I am "broken?"
If I have found a way to live my life and contribute to the divine, then shouldn't the disability be irrelevant?
Shayla
At 9:45 AM,
Vieva said…
I clearly misworded, then. :(
I have some disabilities myself .. not horribly severe, but enough to make life tricky sometimes. I understand both how they limit, and how they don't .. at least in my life.
I don't think a disability that you've learned to live with is being "broken" as I used the word. When you've adjusted and accepted, you're not "broken", you've just got something to work around. (gods, words here aren't working. I'm afraid I may be being more insulting, and I REALLY don't mean to!).
But the period of adjustING, the time when you are "broken" .. then it's difficult to do anything but concentrate on yourself, on healing and adjusting, on finding a new balance for ourselves. On getting past the "why mes" and the screaming. (or at least as past it as we ever get).
I guess I simply don't see someone with a disability as broken. I see someone that sees themselves as nothing BUT the disability as broken, but that has to do with the mindset and not the disability. I've known far too many people with disabilities that lead full lives (including my mother, who would CRACK me if I called her broken!) to DARE think a disability made a "broken" person!
At 3:15 AM,
Anonymous said…
We are on the same page here - which is why I had a problem with the word "broken" in the first place.
I agree the process of going through the emotional stages, not unlike the Kubler-Ross grief scale, can lead to times where one feels broken and it is hard to see a positive future. People can and do get stuck in stages - anger, denial, self-pity, etc.
I have had to work through the ups and downs of my disability (Multiple Sclerosis. Maybe it is because I can find the only rose in a mountin of manure (and if it isn't there, I'll plant the sucker), I look back upon the process as a time of amazing personal growth. While I would prefer not to have learned the lessons I needed to learn quite the way I did, I think I am ultimately a much happier and fulfilled individual than I would have been without the personal growth.
Now I am in a position to combine my experience as a person with a disability with my knowledge of emergency management and act as a bridge to bring both communities together to work toward a better understanding of how to plan for and prepare for a disaster.
It goes back to those interconnecting cycles of Flamekeeping.
Shayla
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