The most challenging aspect of Embodied Enlightenment, of allowing spirit to reside in our bodies and our lives, is the mind.  Our relationship with our mind has been, for the most part, a relationship based on survival.    Not so much on joy.

We have felt safest residing in our minds for a very long time here on the planet.  Consequently, the mind and the heart have been at odds with each other.  And in this process of becoming more conscious, we have been shifting our attention from the mind to the heart.  In response, the poor mind has been sending out alert after alert, trying to maintain its status as the control center.  Every survival issue imaginable has been triggered, from health, to financial, to relationships, and everything in between.

The mind has been trying to protect us, and itself, from harm or even complete annihilation.  And it drives us, at times to distraction.

But many of us have been noticing something:  the mind is relaxing a little more.  It’s beginning to witness new experiences.  It sees that we are making more decisions based on joy, and not on fear, and that terrible things do not happen to us.  In fact, often our lives are more synchronistic.  More fluid.

So dear mind records that in its databank.  It now has hard bed evidence that this new experience of trust and allowing does work.  That there are real, tangible benefits.

So mind begins to trust spirit.  We begin to trust spirit.  We begin to let go more of our clenched fists.  Of trying to control everything.  Of worrying about our future.  And we begin living more in the now.

SLOW DOWN, YOU MOVE TOO FAST

I have noticed that when I take my walks, I walk much slower.  Not because of my age, but because I enjoy savoring it.  Walking slower gives me the opportunity to see more, to smell the flowers and foliage as I pass them, even to touch them.  While it may not be as good for my cardio workout, I get much more benefit from that walk than an hour on a treadmill.  Although I couldn’t prove that factually because I have never spent any time on a treadmill, other than the metaphoric one.

When we live our lives being in the now moment, with our soul present, life is delicious.  We could be doing any activity, or not doing anything in particular.  We are not worrying about our past or our future.  We are not trying to fix anything.  We are not feeling guilt, sadness, fear, anger, doubt, boredom or hopelessness.

Now, to someone who is not interested in a relationship with their soul, they may believe we are burying our head in the sand.  That at the worst, we are in denial. That we are not facing reality.  And at the very best, we are not being productive.

But when we are in that state of consciousness, we could care less what anyone else thinks about us or what they think about anything else.  When we are in that place of joy, we are not aware that most of the rest of humanity is in a very different place than we are.   That there seem to be few we can relate to, or even that our connection here to the planet has shifted.  What matters is that we are, in that now moment, connected to ourselves.

If that’s not a state of freedom, I don’t know what is.