The ego takes as its allie the body......

This sentence which comes from A Course in Miracles is what I am going to discuss in this blog entry. It has struck a cord, that the ego takes the boady as an 'ally' and not as a friend. What is it taking an allie against? It can only be the mind. The ego senses that there is a part very close to it that is out to destroy it. It needs an ally, something to help it to defend itself against this powerful 'other' so it takes the body. It recognises the body as something external to itself. But it has no love for the body. It's well known that the body can never heal the mind but that the mind can heal the body. Yet it is not the ego mind that does this healing but the spirit mind that bypasses the ego.

The power of placebo drugs has been well researched and documented. It is not the body that heals but the mind that believes that these placebo non-effective means of medication can heal. It is the mind that then heals the body. The ego is bypassed in all of this when the spirit mind is strong enough. What often happens though is that the conflict caused by an ego that is dimly aware of a presence that is not for its good plays out this conflict in the body. I assert which is not saying that it is true that bodily sickness and symptoms is the playing out in the body of the conflict caused by a split mind. Heal the split by choosing to reconnect with spirit and automatically the body will be healthy. I assert this based on my own experience but I am not saying it is the Truth, only something to consider.

However this is not to say that the body does not have its own way of being nurtured. It does. For many years I neglected my body because I thought that the most important thing is the mind. Understand and control that and the body will fall into line. In many respects I still believe that. But I also know that the body responds to treatments in its own right. Every so often I will go for a course of acupuncture treatments just to acknowledge the part that the body plays in holding blocked energy that needs that extra push in order for it to be released. When those needles go into my body I immediately feel the release of built up energy. These sessions leave my body relaxed and energised, if that paradox makes any sense....

Thought for today.....notice all of the thoughts that you have today. Buddhists assert that every feeling no matter how complicated it can appear is either one of three things. It is either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Every thought and feeling can be classified into one of these three. Today when a thought comes label it as one of these three and then let it go. Notice how easy or difficult it is just to label and let go. There may be a tendancy to add all kinds of things to the thought i.e. a story about the event that led up to the thought, a justification for action arising from the thought. Just watch all of this mental activity like a compassionate and dispassionate observer. From this it may be possible to see just how little we allow thoughts to be as they are i.e. pleasant, unpleasant or neutral without adding anything else to them. In this noticing be careful not to judge it as something bad or wrong, it is just what it is and thus to be accepted. The exercise is aimed at increasing self-awareness. It is not an exercise in judgement......