Listening for the Unspoken

 One of the assignments during this second week is to view yourself naked and to notice what there is to notice. I don’t mean noticing any particular feature about your body. I mean noticing your own mind as you observe your body.

As you are noticing your thoughts and feelings about your body, notice also how the feelings translate into the way you breath. How your posture is affected. How the feelings can become mood. Notice if you want to avert your eyes. Notice if you feel more comfortable NOT looking at yourself.

The reason for this exercise is to listen for the unspoken. You are examining the products of your mind that are not given to language. One of the greatest benefits of cultivating a quiet mind is the ability to notice when your mind is not quiet.  As you begin to notice all of the different type of disquieting messages- words, moods, feelings, images- that your mind uses, you will begin to understand what you are actually up against, when you determine to make a permanent life change….which is in reality, a  permanent “thinking” change.

The thoughts you think of AND BELIEVE ABOUT yourself are not all thought in words. They are what showed up when you looked at your body. If the experience of looking at your body, was one bit negative, then there is a potential problem….lack of acceptance. “Accepting what is” is the single most powerful antidote to stress.  Accepting where you are; accepting your body for what it is at this very moment, allows a space for gratitude, appreciation and compassion.  While self-loathing can generate thinness, it cannot generate health- the presence of wholeness and balance.

The first Beatitude from the Sermon on the Mount begins a journey of “thinking” change.  Being a master teacher, Jesus the Christ, fully accepts where his students are. Yet, he looks out at the crowd, gathered on a hill side and calls them Blessed. He tells a group of people who are weary on so many levels that they are connected to God. He speaks to a deeper part of them, a part that will recognize his words as the truth, despite the outer circumstances....and from that knowing, the Word will cause a shift.

Sacred and Fit^© -Every life is sacred. Each body a temple.