Exchanging Ego for Soul: Your Body is Your Oldest Ally
In Part One of this past chapter on Exchanging Ego for Soul, we talked about how obsession with our bodies and the physical form can expand our Ego, feed our obsession with how we’re perceived, and distract us from nourishing our souls.
Today, however, we’re going to give our bodies the credit they deserve. Because when we learn to honor our souls, the body can be one of the greatest sources of wisdom, working in tandem with our souls to direct us and lead us on the path back to our true selves.
Our bodies aren’t evil. They’re not bad. There’s a reason we’re not disembodied souls floating around a spirit world made of fog and twilight. But we’re often so busy telling our bodies what to be, what to do, and what to look like, that we forget to listen to their inherent wisdom.
Your mind will often lie to you about your body. But your body never lies.
When you’ve retrained your mind to trust your soul’s truth, your body becomes your best ally.
Let me tell you what I mean with a little throwback story involving a fourteen-year-old Jess.
When I was a sophomore in high school, a senior boy asked me on a date to the movies. I truly do not understand why or how I got permission to go on this date. First, because I had good, Southern, protective parents who didn’t have a very “just make sure she’s home by eleven!” vibe. And secondly, because I didn’t want to go.
I don’t remember why. Maybe I thought it weird that this near-adult wanted to spend social time with a freshly minted teenager, I’m not sure. It was almost thirty years ago! But what has stood the test of time, what I can remember like it was yesterday, is the sinking, sickly feeling I felt in my gut when I thought about going to the movies with him.
And guess what? I ignored it.
Maybe because he was older and therefore cooler and my ego’s voice was louder than my soul’s truth, but I went to the movies with him, and I sat there with a resting bitch face, arms crossed, legs drawn in tight. My body language was fully “stay away, I’m off limits!” At one point, he mimicked me and made fun of my crossed arms and grouchy face. Trying to play it off, I said, “I’m just cold!”
Wrong. Move.
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Best way to warm someone up is to put your arm around them, right? So that’s what he did. And I spent the rest of the movie praying for the credits to roll so I could get the heck out of there.
We never went on another date. I ignored my gut, and while nothing disastrous happened that night, I knew that I didn’t feel safe around this person. And I ignored it.
I think most of us have stories like this. Times when we’ve listened to other people’s advice or society’s expectations instead of honoring what our very bodies are telling us. And every time we do this, it’s like we’re whispering…
She can’t be trusted.
She can’t be trusted.
She can’t be trusted.
No wonder we feel like our bodies quit on us. We abandoned them long ago! And the stakes just get higher and higher.
When we damage a trusting relationship between our mind, our soul, and our body, we end up punishing our bodies because they’re the ones making all the fuss.
Some of us starve ourselves so we can prove to ourselves that our minds have control over our bodies. Some of us use, abuse, or harm our bodies through violence, drugs, or alcohol because it feels easier to manage what our bodies experience than to experience the reality of our bodies themselves.
We use food and medicine and drink to self-medicate because sometimes our bodies are just too loud. And we fear that if we start listening to them, we’d never be able to piece ourselves or our lives together again.
And sometimes, it’s easier for us to trust our bodies when they warn of something bad, but that same trust doesn’t apply when our bodies recognize something good.
Some of us are so used to being hurt that we don’t want to trust when something beautiful might be headed our way, because we don’t want to be duped.
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We don’t want to look foolish.
So we meet someone who feels like home. Who feels both safe and exciting. Every time we’re around them, we find ourselves scooting closer. Our eyes seem to naturally find theirs in a crowded room. We lean toward them when they speak, and our hearts start pounding with excitement when we think about seeing them again.
But we’ve been hurt before, and our friends warn us to take things slow. So we back off, or we talk ourselves out of it.
Or we are offered our dream job seemingly out of nowhere. It’s in a new city we’ve always dreamed of living, and before we can even think about it, we’re doing a celebratory dance in the car. But the more we think about it, the more we start talking ourselves out of it. Relocating is inconvenient, the job might not pan out, we don’t even know if we have the experience to do it.
Both of these are just as much self-abandonment as ignoring warnings our bodies give us.
And if we keep training our minds and souls to mistrust our bodies, our bodies rebel. We get hurt. We get sick. We develop chronic illness and inexplicable pain disorders.
Living a deeply soulful life requires trusting your body.
All day long, your body is talking to you. Will you listen?
If you want to hear other stories of learning to listen to a body’s intuition or need some practical tools to start listening to your body, come join The Path Back to You!
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