WHAT WE ARE NOT

We are not our bodies.  As long as we identify with our bodies, we can never be content.  How can we be?  Our bodies are in a constant state of change, not one thing.  

Western religions believe that we are our bodies, hence the reason for burial.  We need our bodies for our resurrection.  This, of course, is absurd, for when we die our bodies turn to dust.  A lot of good dust will do us in the afterlife.

Our bodies, if anything, are a possession.  "I have a body," we say.  We are aware of our bodies, as when we feel well and when we feel poorly.

A saying these days is, we are not a physical person having a spiritual experience, but a spiritual being having a material experience.  

In Vedanta temples, we are taught every day, "You are NOT your body, you are Spirit," a message that works its way into our consciousness until, in time and in some way, we know it to be true.  This is where our spiritual life really begins.

After we have heard this message enough and have absorbed it, then we must make it a living reality.  We do this by consistently inquiring of ourselves, "Am I this body?  What is this 'I AM' that wants to know?"  

We normally are fully aware OF our bodies, our senses, and our minds, but then must turn this awareness around to that which IS awareness.  A person has to be Aware of Awareness itself, in other words. This is what Ramana Maharshi referred to as abiding in the Self, pure consciousness. 

Our time here is limited.  Not one moment of it can we buy back.  Why should we waste the few years we have here believing that we are our bodies, and trying to satisfy our bodies’ senses?  Even the most common animal can do that for himself.  Better that we do that which only humans can do.  Be aware, be spiritual.