As more and more people reach out for enlightenment and expand their spiritual lives, there is a seeming rift that occurs for them. The physical aspects of many people’s lives become far more problematic if they don’t find a way to bridge this gap.

Meditation and study help us to allow the conflicts and issues we carry around in our spiritual and emotional lives to fall away.  The perceived gap in our lives is actually a leftover conflict that we can and should bridge, leading to a far healthier and more satisfying life. Doing so is quite simple with many of the principles and methods we use in strictly spiritual pursuits.

It is key to remember the axiom that: “All Conflict Is Illusion”

Even as we learn in our interpersonal relationships and inner dialogs that the conflicts that we play over and over again in our minds are not real, the dialog that we carry on within our bodies is just as illusory.  The same concepts will get us to a full understanding of this.

That old NLP chestnut comes into play again here: “Everyone is doing the best they can with the resources available to them.”

Our bodies are no different.  It only seems that we are at odds with our bodies because we haven’t applied what we’ve learned about how we look at others to how we communicate with our bodies.

The dynamic physiology of our bodies is an amazing thing.  Unfortunately our food and the environment (physical and emotional both) has become quite toxic to our physical wellbeing.  Our bodies respond to this onslaught continuously.

We may however, have a remnant of our former emotional patterns interfering with this.  Millions of people today suffer from chronic health problems that are simply loops of information the body is trying to send to their central nervous systems.

Consider any form of chronic pain.  When you have any type of injury, your body sends a message made up of Neuropeptides conveying information about the nature and severity of the wound.  The pain itself serves two function.  The first is a protection against further injury.  You favor the injured area to prevent more of the same.

The second function is as a signpost to your central nervous system announcing the arrival of the complete message.   This is where many chronic problems start.  It is very easy to start viewing our physical bodies as being just as separate from our true selves as we are from any other individual.   And then it is a very short step to reacting to our bodies messages in a dysfunctional way.

This can put you in a state where you constantly try to deny what your body is telling you about it’s condition.  If you are trying to deny one of these messages that has a pain based announcer, your central nervous system will essentially act as if it hasn’t received the message.

The systems that govern how these messages are sent then reacts the way you do if you don’t think you are being heard.  They turn up the volume and play the announcement again and again until they are sure the complete message is being heard.

Take a moment now to think about that old NLP assumption mentioned above and apply it to your own body: “Everyone is doing the best they can with the resources available to them.”

What that means here is that the human body is not working against you.  On the contrary it is doing it’s level best to protect and heal all that is problematic for you.  Meditate on that for a while.

If you have any chronic pain problems try a simple experiment:

• Meditate as you would with any other session to begin with.

• Allow your awareness to rest gently on the affected area.

• Simply listen to the pain non-judgmentally as this will allow your central nervous system to accept the entire message being sent.

Approaching this with the thought that you and your body are working together toward a common goal, you should notice several things in a very short time.

You will first notice that the pain itself doesn’t feel nearly as constant or severe as before.  Then most people feel a change in the nature of the sensation almost like a fluttering.  Shortly thereafter, if you simply allow each of these to happen naturally and seek to simply listen to what is occurring in this, there will be short periods of complete relief.

Over time and with repeated sessions, it will become easier and faster for you to tune into the message your body is sending.  The periods of relief will start to come faster and last longer as well eventually allowing for complete cessation of pain and discomfort.

Just as allowing illusory conflict to fall away between ourselves and others, we can likewise improve the quality of our lives if we do the same with our own bodies.  This doesn’t just bridge the gap between our spiritual and physical lives.  It eliminates it.

Jim Patterson

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