Light body

We are all building a life in a material sense – money, house, possessions, the chance to travel – and a life in an internal sense – narratives around our improving sense of self, our identity.

We are like beavers, hurriedly building physical things for our physical selves. This is all fine; we will continue doing this while we are here, because it feels intuitive. Yet we may be neglecting a hidden world, far larger, filled with silent forces that will endure long after all the burrows we have dug and the stores we have accumulated are available to be enjoyed.

In other words, this is both a body of flesh, which is finite, and a body of light, which is eternal. We may be wise to also work on the thing that lasts forever...

How do we tend to this body of light, and why would we want to?

Being honest, as much as we possibly can. This means acting without the masks we carry for social acceptance or gain, because these masks attach us to a false world that will disappear. They are clothing; they are not real.

Practising non-attachment is another approach. Walking away from things that do not serve our growth. If we feel something is pulling us deeper into the world of things and unhelpful desires, we can distance ourselves from it – things and people that inflate our ego rather than cultivate our divinity. The ego can become an incredibly heavy thing if over-indulged, weighing us down and fixing us to the finite world. We want to surround ourselves with people who recognise us as divine creators, not worldly workers.

Equanimity is another. This was a word that came up frequently during the lectures on my ten-day Vipassana retreat in California a few years ago. It means developing a character that is not altered by criticism or praise. These forces are fine, but we should not attach ourselves to them. They should never become the wind in our sails. In this way, the world becomes a thing observed rather than a thing we cling to.

Spending time in our awareness every day is essential. Identifying as the conscious observer of sensations, thoughts, and events, rather than the things themselves. Our true nature is the awareness in which all things appear.

A few other practices include shadow work – identifying the parts of ourselves that are hidden and suppressed, which sometimes ‘act out’ randomly, impulsively, or cruelly. Taking ownership of these and recognising their value. Acts of selflessness – helping others from the understanding that they are of the same substance as us. This dissolves the illusion of separation.

I believe this is how we build a body of light, a light body, which floats seamlessly away when our worldly frame disappears. In the following Sonnet, Shakespeare asks why we spend so much energy on outward things, while the soul starves:

Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth,
Feeding these rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body’s end?
Then soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more.
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And, Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

(Shakespeare, Sonnet 146)

Here’s a modern English translation:

My poor soul, the centre of this flawed, earthly body,
Why are you feeding these rebellious urges that surround you?
Why do you starve on the inside and suffer such emptiness,
While painting your outer walls in such expensive, bright colours?
Why spend so much, when you have such a short lease on life,
Investing everything in a mansion that is already fading away?
Will the worms, who inherit all this physical excess,
Simply eat up what you’ve spent? Is this how your body ends?
Then, Soul, begin to live off the losses of your servant, the ego;
Let the body go hungry so that your inner storehouse can grow.
Buy eternal truths by selling off these hours of useless dross;
Be fed from within, and care no more for being rich on the outside.
Thus you shall feed on Death, the very thing that feeds on men;
And once Death itself is dead, there is no more dying then.

---

I hope you enjoyed this piece. If it resonated, please share it with someone who might like it too. Thank you to everyone who reads, likes, comments, subscribes, and supports my work, it truly means a lot. I always appreciate hearing from you in the comments and by email.