The Skin-Bag as Container

In an earlier post, I shared how I have come to understand that my body is just a "skin-bag" that my spirit is identifying with for a short time.

Today, in one of my infrequent meditations, I had an insight.

As long as I choose to be alive in this world, there are certain realities that come with that choice.

The first is that I must give up control over breathing, and allow the skin-bag to be breathed by some life force I don't really understand.  In other words, in every moment that I choose to live, I give up trying to breathe, and allow this life force to breathe air into and out of the skin-bag.  Luckily for me, I rarely interfere, and as a result I get to stay alive.

I don't smoke, so I am at least giving the life-force a chance to continue doing what it's doing for some time, without getting in the way. I notice that it pulls air in, and pushes air out, and I never have to think about it.

What is less obvious is that the life-force also pushes thoughts into my mind.  Again, I have no control over this, as they come and go whether I am awake or sleeping.  It looks as if this will keep going as long as I am alive.  It also seems to me that I should not try to interfere with it either, and to do so is to cause stress to myself.

In other words, the life-force is using my thoughts to think me.  Thoughts come in, and then disappear if I allow them to.

Now and then I forget all this, of course, and in moments of tension, I hold my breath, and sometimes try to hold my thoughts.  The result in both cases is dis-tress and I imagine that if I kept this going  I would end up in dis-ease.

Perhaps the same applies to eating, perhaps?

But anyway, in my medidation this morning I came to see that while I was meditating, and allowing thoughts to flow freely, it was as if  I was sitting here as a container of thoughts, witnessing them coming and going, as if on a light breeze.

What makes meditation special, is that it's an opportunity to identify with the container, rather than with the thoughts.  Everyday life is where I easily get lost in the thoughts, forgetting who I am (spirit) and instead becoming the thoughts themselves.

It felt good this morning to return to being the container, (or, more correctly, having the experience of being the container) and hopefully more of this experience will carry over into my daily living.

Now, what does this all have to do with Moving Back to Jamaica?  Perhaps nothing, except that the violence and murders that are part of life here (151 as of yesterday in 2008) pushes me to think seriously about who I am, as I think it would for many people.  Of course, I could take my skin-bag and park it safely back in Pembroke Pines (FL), and take it out of harm's way.

But then what would I have to write about?  LOL