not "my" body

I am learning a powerful, albeit challenging lesson. Over the years I have realized that my identify is not my mind, not my emotions, not my thoughts. My next lesson seems to be that I am not my body. This is very challenging for me to realize as my body produces physical sensation that make me identify very strongly with it. I have been releasing my identification over the last months with the physical experience of my emotions, noticing how emotions have a very visceral component without linking myself with those sensations. Now my next learning opportunity is about understanding how I have misidentifying myself as my body.

To be honest, I am not fully onboard with this one yet it is happening anyway. Two months ago and again two days ago I was in agonizing pain deep in my belly. Whatever it was, when the pain took me over I felt incapacitated and my mind started freaking out. I was scheduled to teach the last class in a series and have a party afterwards with my students. That fact made it even harder for me to accept the pain I was in and the way it did not fit in with my plans. I made it through the class and actually we did a session on me in class to help release the pain if possible. No such luck. The message I got in the session is the one I am writing about, that I am still identifying myself with my physical form. I missed the class party. I had to crawl into bed and just allow the pain. It got so bad I threw up. I finally fell asleep but during the night I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep.  My mind was trying to run away from me again but I was reining it in, not running worst case scenarios or future negative fantasies. I did what I often do which is flip open my Course in Miracles. I ended up turning to the same page I had turned to when this happened two months ago, the exact same page from a book with well over a thousand pages. Coincidence? Me thinks not.  The page talked about falsely believing ourselves to be our bodies. It is the primary identification of the ego and keeps us limited, bound by our physical experience, able to be terminated by death and basically victims of our flesh. If that is the truth of who we are, we will end up as dust, not a pretty or liberating thought.

But is that the truth? It sure felt like it when the pain was ripping through my gut. My mind was awash in fear. Yet a small part of me was observing and not buying it totally. I continued to explore and to be willing to believe that I am more than this corporeal form. My mind can barely grasp the concept yet the pain made me very willing to explore the possibility that it might be true. I prayed that if this pain had taught me all it had to give, that it be lifted from me. The last time the agony lasted two days and nights. Miraculously, after sleeping on and off for twelve hours, I woke up pain free. Miracle!!

I am left reeling a bit. I am having myself checked on the physical level and there is no doubt that stress is a factor in what is happening. How much control over this do I have? Can it be mind over matter? Is it a question of a spiritual awakening where I learn to break my belief that who I am is this skin suit? My mind can hardly bend itself around this. My body seems so real and true and it is who I have always known myself to be. My mind feels disoriented even as I write this. At the same time, during the session I had accessing the excruciating pain in my gut, I became highly motivated to know the truth. I had a deep sense of clarity during the session and again in the night that I am more then my physical form  and that this is just a temporary container my Essence has poured itself into. 

Other times I have known without question my own unlimitedness. The body did not even enter into the equation. There was an expansiveness, a euphoria and joy without containment. I have no answers at this point, only curiosity and an intense wondering. If any of you can enlighten us on this question, please chime in. For now, I must file this away in the mystery category.