The fortieth bead on the blessing cord is the blessing of Body. This is the blessing of earth in Malkuth. Our bodies—no matter their condition—are a true blessing. Many religions discount the body and the physical, seeing them as impure expressions of our nature. They either seek to deny the body or to detach from it. They seek to be of pure spirit or to cast aside the illusion of the body in pursuit of a “higher” experience.
It is my belief that we are incarnated in bodies for a reason. There are lessons to be learned on this plane and our way to learn them is through the body. It is both a vehicle of our journey through Malkuth and also a great teacher of our lessons. The body is our vehicle and medium to experience the pleasure and pain of the physical world. It is the vehicle born of desire and destroyed by it. It is more then just a vehicle of our worldly experience, it is also our teacher in this lifetime.
Our bodies are sending us information all the time. Pleasure and pain tell us more about how to survive in this world. Our heart races when we meet a special someone, or beats uncontrollably as we escape from an attacker. Our body relaxes when we meditate, giving us better ability to tap into the flow of spirit. It tells us when we need healing, rest, nurturing, love, or even to fight back. Each message the body sends us has layers of meaning. A pain in the neck tells us we are working on something that annoys us and we need to take a break. A pain in our back tells us we should ask for help and not try to solve it all by ourselves, carrying the weight of the world. Hearing loss asks us to examine what it is we don’t want to hear and to be more open. There are hundreds of different messages that our body gives us that can help in our healing process and our great work. We have only to listen deeply to get more of the message.
This conversation is not just one-sided though. We can ask our body questions to gain more insight in even our day-to-day problems. Think about an issue you have been struggling with. Tune into your body and feel how these thoughts affect your body. Do you feel warm or cold when you hold this thought? Does your heart beat faster or slower? How is your breathing? Where do you feel tension within your body? Asking yourself what you feel in your body can give you information when you know how your body talks to you. Warm and cold can tell us if something is agreeable or not, expansive or contractive, inviting or scary. Your heart and your breath can gage how excited you are or how peaceful something makes you. Where you feel tension can tell you where this issue sits within you. It can give you symbolic information about the issue. A pain in the neck for me is an annoying trial, a sore foot is not wanting to take the next step, and tired eyes can tell me there is something I don’t want to see. These are just a few examples.
The body is part of our evolution in this lifetime, by beginning our discussion with it we can learn our world’s lessons faster. It is important that we also take care of our vehicle and teacher. By caring for our bodies we get to stay in them longer, learn more lessons, and our bodies can channel more of the energies of the spirit. Eastern spiritual traditions combine physical exercise with spiritual work. Yoga, qi-gong, and tai chi all are used to balance our body with our spiritual work. Yoga “yokes” the body with the work of the spirit. In our western traditions we seem to ignore the body and we need to bring it back so we can find balance. It is the combination that makes us stronger. With exercise and diet we can make our bodies stronger to help us channel our spiritual work.
In the following meditation we use our awareness to connect deeper to the body. In this deeper connection, we tune into the body’s wisdom to receive it’s messages and to ask about situations and get the answers of sensations.
Meditation of Body
Hold the fourtieth bead on the blessing cord. The blessing of Body, the bead of Earth in Malkuth.
Count yourself down in to a meditative state.
Allow the screen of your mind to expand out around you, forming a sphere. Feel the slight shift as a garden begins to grow up around you in the sphere of your mind. Resonate the god name of Malkuth: Ah-do-nai Ha-ah-retz
