It's the time of Solstice reflection, so bear with me as I sit and navel-gaze for this post. All I can ever really know with any certainty is my own experience - so that's what I share, with the hope that it might be relatable in some way for someone.

The last 4 months for me have been deeply immersed in identity. I feel like I haven't had a real sense of identity in this body until I re-connected with my ancestors through ancestral healing work.

My mystical experience in early adulthood firmly solidified a primary identity with universal consciousness. I was shown and have remained inseparable from an identity with 'the whole'. The understanding and living a life from the knowing that we are all inseparable together in the Anam Mór.

It is a beautiful knowing, but quite inadequate when I live in a body. How do I express universal soul if I don't have a firm identity in this body that I inhabit while I'm here?

I don't.

I think this is why I see the ancestral healing as so valuable and BIG and necessary; because we don't know who we are, until we know from where we came.

Disconnecting from “Whiteness”

"Whiteness" and identity with "whiteness" is a block to true identification in a body for Europeans. "Whiteness" is an anemic identity because it lacks depth and richness. It is based in 'not-black' and has nothing to offer other than that.

If we want rich, nourishing identities in a physical body - we need to reconnect to our ancient and on-going ancestral connections.

The Trinity of Identity

Identification of self in a particular body has 3 parts. There's the DNA - the ancestral software programming for beliefs and trauma and worldview and place. There's also the hardware of the body that is made up by the land; by the place that provides the food for creating the flesh body our spirit inhabits.

Ancestors, a particular body & the land that creates the body. Ancestors, body & place.

Identification with the Body

Spiritual traditions encourage us to not identify with our bodies. That is valuable, of course, because identifying self solely with the body will lead to all kinds of suffering as the body decays and breaks down (as physical stuffs do), because identifying value and worth and self with a perishable body is doomed.

However, I don't think we can be truly present and allow the full expression of Anam Mór through this flesh unless we can connect to, and embrace the identity of the body. I see both as necessary for full expression of the self; identity with the Universal Soul AND the specific, particular body we inhabit and the ancestral history that physical body is rooted into.

The body is running on a software program of ancestral, ancient DNA, and the body hardware is being repaired and regenerated by the land that we inhabit. The food and water of the land we live on is literally what builds our bodies. We are the land. We literally express soul through the land throughout our lifetime. Our spirits express through the material of the Earth and form a body. Every expression of spirit through the body is expressed through a filter of the physical land. We don't exist without both working together.

I'm reading Anam Cara a Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O'Donohue. He was ex-christian clergy and speaks clearly and pointedly of the suspicion Christianity throws on the physical body.

The body/spirit dualism is harmful and mistakenly creates a good/bad value judgement scenario that messes with our ability to live in love and spirit in physical bodies.

They're the same.

It's all soul. All of it is spirit. The illusion of separation is an illusion. The whole of existence is soul; the physical world is just spirit slowed down enough to manifest in touch. It's still soul and it's still beloved wholiness.

Our bodies are spirit made visible.

The body is a miraculous tool for communication.

Our bodies are filled with inherent ancient wisdom of which we have been taught to be suspicious. The "authority" can't control people who are using their own sacred bodies to learn and experience direct wisdom from Creation.

Our bodies are finely tuned barometers of truth and wisdom. We have been taught not to trust them and have fallen out of the practice of listening to and understanding the language of our bodies.

To believe is to love.

Believe in your body.

Believe your body.

The body is not our enemy, even though the body will perish.

Believe in the body.

Be love in the body. Love the body.

This was not the post I came to write today, but it is the post I was given. Everything I tell you is what I need to hear.

Happy Winter Solstice of Introspection.

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