by Elektra Porzel
When I was in grade school, the nuns would talk
about the body as the temple of the Soul. Even then I hesitated to buy
into that statement. It seemed too much pressure on my young body and
Spirit. The nuns used that terminology as a reminder of our
responsibility to care for our bodies, but most importantly, that we should ‘be
good’. Mind you, there was little health education in my grade school in
the 50’s, just recess, gym class, and everyone getting polio shots
together. We learned to memorize the catechism and the teaching seemed
more about a generic Soul rather than accessing my personal Spirit. My
experience was that it was more about responsibility than the joy of being in
connection with my God. I won’t go into the disconnect that I felt with
the old white guy on the cloud that seemed really into punishment!
I have come to define ‘Soul’ and ‘Spirit’ as
fields that are larger than just my own body. Just like the cells in the
human body are unique and essential to the whole of the body, our individual
Spirit is a unique and essential part of the Human Soul. It is a ‘one for all’
environment. I extrapolated this from my experience of my clients’ bodies
which was that their cells and organs were absolutely committed to the survival
and thriving of their body. Each cell plays its role to the best of its
ability for the survival of the body. Therefore, I believe that each
human Spirit impacts the health and capabilities of the Human Soul. This
in alignment with my experience of the ‘so above, so below’ relationship
operating consistently everywhere. Stated differently, the energetic
relationships on earth mirror those in the heavens. I apply the ‘so above,
so below’ relationship to the idea that each individual Spirit is an essential
and unique aspect of both the Human Soul and their Sovereign Nature of
Being. Their Spirit is that part of the Human Soul that resides in their
body. Each individual’s Spirit is also part of their Sovereign Nature of
Being, which is etheric; of a higher dimensional field than their 3D body; and
that which brings its uniqueness of experience and capabilities into this body
and this lifetime. As such, we exist energetically as a unique Spirit
that is both part of the conglomerate Human Soul and our larger Nature of
Being, which some people refer to their Higher Self, their divine nature.
It is also a ‘one for all, all for one’ environment. We exist in
relationship to others in the field. We cannot live whom we came here to
be or do what we came here to do without being in relationship with others in
the field. Together, as one human soul, we move humanity to its next
recursion of wholeness or into its extinction.
In my early adulthood, I wasn’t focused on the
body’s function for the soul. It was mostly about eating whatever was
considered healthy and especially being healthy while pregnant. Then in
my fifth and sixth decades, I studied massage therapy, energy work, and cranial
sacral therapy and used these skills in a healing practice for 15 years.
I worked with not just the body, but also with the energy fields generated
within and outside of the body as well as with Spirits and other energies
connected to it. My experience began to be of the limitlessness of the
energy fields and of the Spirits of my clients. One common observation was that
most people seemed to have too much energy stuck in their bodies. I
wondered, were they trying to contain their Spirit? Were they trying to
hold on to energies generated in trauma? You know, the old ‘if I freeze,
maybe I will stop the pain’ method of responding to trauma? I started thinking
of the language that we use to reference this Spirit/matter connection, i.e.
of the body as the house, temple, or vehicle for the soul. This led
me down the rabbit hole that the English language limits not only our
comprehension of the breadth and capacity of the human Spirit, as well as
determining the degree of our constriction response to physical/emotional
trauma. A human body cannot in any way hold a Spirit/Soul which, by our
standards, is limitless. Additionally, we create more problems for our
bodies by clamping down and holding onto the trauma energies. Our body’s
health is compromised when we hold these trauma energies and emotions in the
tissues. Our capability to experience our Nature of Being/our higher Self
is compromised when we believe that our Spirit must be contained within our
body.
What about this idea that the body is the
‘temple of the soul’? Frankly, that’s one analogy that starts a whole
string of constrictive thoughts and body holdings. The word ‘temple’
connotes a building with walls and a roof. In the western culture, churches
are the only place to contact God. Our brain then connects these beliefs
and acts on that connection – to try and hold the entirety of our Spirit within
our bodies so that we could protect our Spirit; to hold all the trauma energies
within our tissues in hopes that it would not impact the whole body. Both
these beliefs impact the body in exactly the opposite way. We cannot BE
our Spirit unless we comprehend its limitlessness. We cannot be healthy
if our bodies hold the constrictions and holdings of past traumas. As you
can see, our languaging of these relationships has hurt humans, well at least
English-speaking humans. My sense is that the body is more like one of
the points of the matrix that is our Spirit, our Higher Self, that part of the
Human Soul, our Nature of Being. That matrix is our unique and essential
Self. Without that ‘temple’ analogy, we think and therefore act on the
belief that we are our Spirit embodied and that we do not contain our Spirit in
its entirety. We act on the belief that we are both the Spirit and Flesh,
Energy and Matter, the Infinite and the Finite, the Alchemical and the
Biochemical. When we re-language this relationship of body and Spirit,
then our bodies can relax and BE the Spirit without the mental constriction of
thinking that our body must contain the whole of our Spirit, an impossible
task.
Relieving isn’t it! Continuing with this
train of thought about this whole Body/Spirit relationship, my sense of what is
actually occurring became even more expansive. Some of my ideas rest within the
framework of the limitlessness of our higher dimensional Self, our Nature of
Being. Some also rest in the idea that linear time, as we experience it,
is not the experience of our higher dimensional Nature of Being. Outside
earth, there is no linear time. So let’s play with another concept of
‘time’, i.e. the concept that all ‘time’ is concurrent so that you are young,
middle-aged and old simultaneously. That ancient Egypt, present time and
future time actually exist simultaneously, impacting each other. Given
that thought conjecture, our Nature of Being is a matrix of numerous bodies and
lifetimes with each body existing as a specific exercise in interacting with
humanity/the world in a specific format. I know that this can mess with
our minds as per our individuality, but let it sink in. Let me walk you
briefly thru my line of thinking. Let’s say that before you were born
into this lifetime, your larger Nature of Being chose as an experiment to live
in a certain family and place with certain skills and capabilities.
Additionally, this Nature of Being could have chosen to incarnate in other
families in similar or different linear time frames, so as to expand the
learning experiences and ability to impact earth and humanity. In each
lifetime, after birth, there is no memory of these intentional decisions.
There are innate capabilities and capacities that we are not aware of and that
impact the living of our lives. The experiment in consciousness begins.
For 99.999% of people, there is no memory of our Nature of Being, our
experimental parameters or even previous/concurrent lifetimes. So, now
there is a beginning concept of ‘me’, an identity which begins to respond to
what occurs around and within its body. Our thoughts and beliefs about
living and our identity are directed/formed by the family, culture, church,
society that we were born into in an interplay with innate capabilities and
capacities. So, the ‘I’ begins to form and coalesce. This coalescing
determines what we experience as our historic self. It determines how we
approach the world and others and is set into our bodies and our energy
fields. We believe that, what others have told us about life, are
our own thoughts. We think that our historic thoughts and habits are
‘us’, never to be changed. All these thoughts and beliefs are just not
true. Our capability to be more of whom we came here to be, to BE more of
our Nature of Being can also increase in capacity, coherence and strength.
What occurs early on in our lives does NOT have to impact how we
respond to later events.
Then as each of us grows older in this linear
time experience, we begin to think about the ‘why’ of living. Is it just
to procreate and survive? Or is there some other purpose? For me,
these questions required observation, research and trying on different
practices (health, spiritual, energetic) to see if there was some other way to
live this life that was more congruent with what I felt was humanity’s
capabilities and capacities. Was there some other reason, some other
purpose to live as a human on this earth? That is how I came to where I
am now. After 60 years of asking these questions and deliberately trying on
different practices, I am remembering and releasing early trauma patterns. I am
manifesting my cravings for another experience of this life where the world is
based more in unity than in separation. I am getting to know my Nature of
Being and how it impacts my desires for a better world and the ‘me’ whom I came
here to be. This ‘me’ is not my historic identity but something that no longer
holds most of my old constriction patterns of body, thought, and emotion. I am
living in a body over 70 years old and remembering all the advice about taking
good care of it. I have done better than some and much less than
others. Now I walk, I stretch, I mostly eat right. I pay attention
to the larger purposes of this existence. Yes, in my younger years, I
worked, I procreated, I raised children into good citizens and people.
Yes, I am still asking my questions and now I feel that I have tools to keep me
focused on getting the world and life I crave. I have friends that share this
journey with me.
What I am very clear about is that my Sovereign
nature of Being, my Spirit is limitless relative to my human body. This
body is a matrix point for my Spirit, and my Nature of Being to do their work
here on earth. We are one and this body does not fully contain these energetic
fields. I am opening up to whom I came here to be and what I came here to
do. It’s freeing for me to know that my Spirit flows thru me and I do not
have to hold it within my body. With the expanse of its field, and its
capabilities, my experience on earth is enhanced and expands as I am present to
more and more of who I really am. Yes, my body is like a temple of old.
It is a shared place of being with Spirit. It is within and surrounding this
body that my God/Goddess resides and loves humanity and the earth. So, yes,
dear Dominican sisters, I do agree with you that I should care for this body
because thru it I experience my alignment with my God/Goddess. My
embodiment of Spirit serves Spirit as it also serves humanity and earth. It
feels so expansive and supported to experience that I am both held within and
hold within myself a sacred temple of old. That I can consecrate my life to be
in alignment with my God/Goddess and the greater dimensional Beings that seek
to save humanity and the earth for a greater wholeness and unity that is our
birthright. I am here on earth to enjoy this beautiful planet
and to assist humanity to become all that these bodies and Spirits were
designed to be…expansive, whole, Spirit and flesh, infinite and finite, energy
and matter, living in unity with all life.