What are we?

If we have been searching for the answer to this question for any length of time, we have probably at some point in our life heard the phrase “We are not a physical being having a spiritual experience, but rather a spiritual being having a physical experience.”

Well which is it? Surely, considering this as absolute truth can be enlightening when you first consider it. But then again, anything heard for the first time may make you feel all enlightened inside. There is a problem with this thinking when your reality smacks you in the face. For example when you open the mail box to find it stuffed with bills, or get into a gnarly argument with a close friend or spouse.

What happened to our satori experience of just a few moments before?

What happened is what often happens to us when we are on the path to discovering ourselves or the meaning of life. We run into the part of life we were trying to ignore. Stay with me and let me see if I can make myself clear on this. I promise you what I have to say is not mere rhetoric.

The whole truth is that we are physical beings. We are spiritual beings. We are emotional beings. We are intellectual beings. We are many beings. We are what we are in the moment. None is more real than the others. What is fast without slow to compare it to?

The subtitle of my book states it is a guide to discovering your higher self. At a recent book signing the question was asked of me, what if someone doesn’t believe they have a higher self? What I was hearing in my head was what if someone doesn’t believe in their whole self?

My answer to the question became first a clarification that I am not referring to the higher self as some kind of separate entity that we must somehow discover. My idea is that we exist on what we may consider to be different levels: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. My reference to the higher self then is only an understanding of the multiplicity that we are.

We see examples of people who become so wrapped in any one of the aspects of our being that they somehow become separated from the “real” world. Please don’t be offended if you in any way relate to one of the following; I am only generalizing here with common examples to make a point.

We’ve all heard of “nerds.” Those who are so smart on an intellectual level or on a technical level but their social skills seem to be nonexistent. Or we have been witness to the “holier than thou” ones who cannot seem to have any real fun in life, lest they be hypocrites (which they almost invariably are). How about those who just can’t seem to take anything seriously and wind up ruining an event for the rest of us? And, finally, there are those who are obviously only out to get what they want without any seeming regard for others.

What you have in these four examples is extremism in the intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and physical realms of the human being. None should be catered to exclusively, or even predominantly.

A word of warning here also would be not to attempt to even out your focus at every moment either. Balance is not to be achieved artificially. There will be times when you are called to be more spiritual or more physical or whatever. That is fine for the time, like waves on the ocean. Focus moves freely and does not stay in one place for long. Relax in your search, and understand that whatever you feel is your truth for that moment. The key words being your and that moment.

We move through life and our beliefs may change. This is what life is about. When we realize this is when we begin to see the triviality of believing anything as absolute. When we realize that truth is not absolute, even after we had validated it on so many occasions, we see the underlying fundamental truth that we actually create our own truths. When this happens, the fun begins.



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