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I think most of us would agree that our culture is INSANE when it comes to women’s bodies. One year, it commands we should all be curvaceous and the next year bodies that look like stick insects are the rage. The media gives us our marching orders and if we don’t live up to its capricious ideal standards, we suffer. But the root of our suffering is not just “I look this way and I should look different;” it stems from body identification. In a nutshell, if you believe the thought, “I am my body,” you will suffer.
At a concert the other night, I’m ashamed to admit that when the artist walked out, my first thought was, “Gosh she’s plain.” Sadly, I’d been conditioned by our culture to expect singers to look like fashion models and she didn’t measure up. Incredibly, by the end of the evening, enamored by her music and her presence, she looked beautiful. Her comfort in her own skin and her inner radiance took center stage and she became beautiful, inside and out.
Have you ever had an experience like this? Or have you had the opposite experience? You see a stunning woman, she opens her mouth, an ugly comment escapes, and poof, her beauty vaporizes.
How did we become so lookist? It’s simple. We’re bombarded by images of the young and the beautiful, hundreds if not thousands of times a day. They come up on our computer screens, televisions, billboards, cell phones, and magazines. Idealized airbrushed images are omnipresent.
This visual onslaught has conditioned us to:
• Assume that we’re supposed to look like these images. This conditioning leads us to do exactly what I did at the concert: instantly judge people based on their appearance.
• Hitch our self worth to the culturally sanctioned body image wagon. In other words, we base our self worth on how closely we measure up to the images of movie stars and models.
Why do we want to be beautiful in the first place? Isn’t it because of the admiration, love, happiness, or security that we think beauty will get us? If we miss the mark, if we fail to measure up to society’s idea of beauty, we imagine that we are doomed to a joyless, loveless, impoverished existence. No wonder we blow the importance of physical beauty way out of proportion! No wonder we flock to make-up counters, fill our closets with the latest fashions, go on cabbage soup diets, and work out like fiends!
But can beauty really give us the things we want? The happy truth of it is: nothing can give us happiness, love, or security because we are those things already. Yes you read it right; you ARE those things. You have the power to feel love and happiness in any moment, no matter what is happening. Test this for yourself. Ask yourself, “Is happiness present in this moment? Is there something that is at peace and in joy already?” By doing this, you will connect with your spiritual nature and feel a connection to the life and joy that you have always been and never can be taken from you. Make it a point, as you move through your day, to step back into awareness. Ask yourself, “What is it that is aware of this moment?” This question will connect with the spacious feeling of beingness – the subtle enjoyment that comes from simply being alive.
Hence, happiness is something to be noticed rather than attained. Our fundamental mistake? Believing that the joy we seek is outside of ourselves and we have to do something to get it. Everything that we always hoped for and dreamed about is inside us already.
This body that you fret about is a meat suit. If you tether your identity to it, you’re chaining yourself to the Titanic. There’s no doubt about it. The ship you call your body is going down and if you believe you’re it, you’re going to suffer. If you’re lucky, your body will get old before it dies. But it will die. I’m sure you’ll agree identifying with something that is mortal and can taken from you at any moment, isn’t the wisest choice.
In his book, The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle quoted Jesus, “Don't lay up for yourselves treasure (identification) with things that rust and are consumed by moths. All forms are temporary. Die to the self in the form before the form dissolves and discover that there is no death.” In other words, if you want to be happy, don’t identify with your body. You are a spiritual being having a human experience rather than the other way around. What you really are can never wrinkle, grow cellulite, need liposuction, gain weight, get old, or die.
What great news! So, by all means look after your body and do your best to keep it healthy. Treat it like the faithful servant that it is, but don’t obsess about how it looks. Don’t spend hours looking in the mirror lamenting its flaws, unless you enjoy making yourself miserable. Do what you need to do—brush your teeth and your hair, but then move on.
Rather than focusing on the image you see in the mirror, connect, align, and identify with the radiance that is emanating from your eyes. That is the only thing that’s real and doesn’t pass away. When you meet people, rather than be seduced or repelled by their appearance, look deeper. Look into their eyes and connect with the spirit that’s encased in their meat suit. Connect with that ageless, timeless oneness that is the same in every human being. In this way you will identify with the true self that you share with all of humanity.
So what will you focus on: the inner or the outer?
Laura Katleman-Prue, author of bestseller Skinny Thinking, is a graduate of the Theravion Institute for Transpersonal Psychology in Boston. After an awakening in 2006, she began teaching meditation and self-inquiry. Laura has successfully counseled people about their eating issues, both individually and in Skinny Thinking workshops. Skinny Thinking grew out of her desire to share the techniques that permanently healed her eating, weight, and body-image issues.
Check our Laura's sites for more inspiration:
http://www.skinnythinking.com
http://twitter.com/skinnythinking
http://facebook.com/skinnythinking
http://blogtalkradio.com/skinnythinking
http://youtube.com/user/skinnythinking
