Separation Of Spirit & Body

In its true nature, the body is the manifest aspect of spirit*, and capable of existing in far less density and limitation than we experience it. The body is only limited by what it is ‘holding’. The body holds the subconscious, which holds all the places of karmic separation. This fractured nature of the soul** creates the internally fractured state of egoic personality.

The body then is holding these karmic experiences of separation, including those which have the lowest and slowest vibrational frequencies, our deepest pains and fears. As a result the body’s own frequency is slowed to their level – hence the body’s density and limitation. Because the body holds these places of limitation, it is mistakenly seen as the cause of the limitations rather than simply what is holding them. Spirit is at the other end of the polarity, holding the highest and fastest frequencies where we can experience expansive states of consciousness.

Whole spiritual traditions, philosophies and practices are based on this illusory separation and its judgments of the body/world. We’ve seen the development of traditions where the body is to be disciplined, overcome by penance, controlled, transcended. Also monastic traditions where spiritual pursuit is separate from the world, separate from worldliness and all it’s ‘temptation’. This separation between spirit and body is so old that no written record exists of a time when it was not so. Separation between spirit and body – and how that has become manifest and interpreted through our entire culture – is the fundamental cause of why things have perpetuated to their current level of separation and disconnection. It is increasingly apparent that as human culture has become more and more materialistic we have become increasingly disconnected from the consequence is of how we do things. We have taken this so far now that we have begun to imperil life on the planet as we know it.

In the religious traditions that dominate our belief systems, we find this separation between the spiritual and the worldly, sacred and profane. There is judgment/denial of both the profane and of the body, which are viewed as illusory, unspiritual, even unclean. The body/world are seen as the means of our downfall and the cause of separation, needing to be transcended to attain the true nature, which is pure spirit. The other polarity is the profane/materia, which is viewed as the only dimension of our existence and spirit is denied.

In this fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the body, it became seen as something that had to be overcome to attain liberation and freedom of spirit.  Or seen as a transient existence in a random universe to be exploited for sensual pleasure. As a result of this separation, we have become disconnected from both body and spirit from each side of the polarity – and consequently from the planet that supports us.

Because many of the spiritual traditions reside inside this equation, they do not have the complete answers – they hold one polarity and reflect the separation. That is not to say there is not immense value in them and a huge body of knowledge from which we can draw, but we need to be clear as to what they can offer us and the areas where they are limited. In the past this transcendent model has been the primary spiritual evolutionary model. Liberation has been believed to be a progression of ascendance to higher planes of consciousness with the body/world being left behind. Using the chakra system, we can see this as ignoring what is held in the lower three chakras and only focusing on developing the upper four. Spiritual systems of strictly disciplined and dictated ways of life developed to facilitate spiritual development in the model of these misunderstandings. In  the potpourri of today’s spiritual materialism there are innumerable distortions and interwievings of pieces from either side of the polarity. The great danger today is the DIY spirituality that is a pick and mix of beliefs that suits us at the time.

*(true nature – eternal, timeless immutable)
**(soul as the vehicle of spirit that carries karmas from life to life)

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