I am.  I have a body.

I hear this said from time to time, and I believe it, but—-can I practice it?

Almost from birth, I am treated as if I was my body, by people who are identified with their bodies.   This is the unspoken basis of my early education.

So when I first hear this idea that I have a body, it’s an unfamiliar one, not one I have already tried to practice for decades.   So at first, I practice on my physical body.

And when I make a little headway about my physical body, I still believe that my thoughts reflect objective truth, and that my feelings show the true color of the world.

This error of education, this identification with my body and its thoughts and feelings, prevents my connecting with the Higher.   Until I can let go of “I am my body”, I cannot observe the body, and I cannot have real and relaxed sensation.

Much of my inner talking and “noise” is a direct result of this illusion.

Often, I cannot even have the sense that I’m identified.

So——-I have to start further back, or to put it even better, stop further back.

Today, I make hundreds of tiny pauses, ones that perhaps no one else notices.  I pause for half a second when I feel rushed, or when my spoon is on its way to my mouth.  I don’t care about whether others are doing this or notice; I need to collect  my own data.

I will only watch to see what actually happens. I will not inwardly put up posters saying “Wanted: identification with the body and its thoughts and feelings.”

This will not be easy.

[“If we knew what it was we were going to find out, it wouldn’t be research, would it?”*]

.                     *from the ad for the first Paper Airplane Contest of Scientific American Magazine   

.                    Lou Gottlieb                                9/14/2011