This Is My Body

"This is my Body, given for you." ~Luke 22:19

The body is my ashram, my guru, my path. I only become aware of who I Am through this body.

I know "God" through incarnation. My awareness locates itself through an object of perception, refines the object to its subtlest veil of otherness, then transcends the object, resting as Self-radiance.

Grace caresses me, not when I am out of the body, but when I cherish the faintest sensation as a door, and step through it to pure consciousness.

Zen-master Dogen wrote, "Those who gained enlightenment by seeing blossoms or hearing sounds, achieved it through the body."

Breath brushing my sternum, like a mountain stream glittering over a stone, suddenly, I Am the sky!

Through all my sensations, aches, ecstasies and sorrows, I arrive at this moment of awakening: awareness of the body becomes awareness itself.

The vast blue firmament pervades every cell, dissolves the fractal edges of my atoms, overflows my human outline, enfolding the moon and stars, and the space beyond.

Are there "higher worlds"? Yes, but the star-gates are in my body. My flesh is woven from dark tangled pathways to Light.