EMBODIMENT

Embodiment = Being + Doing.

Both are important. An interaction between the two is necessary.

Keeping something in your mind – ideas, thoughts, images, wishes, dreams – doesn't manifest them.?This is a loss to the world, and more importantly, a loss to you, because you don't get to manifest your life to its full potential. It can also result in regret and resentment, because you look around and see others living their potential while you are not.

The only way that your life will be fully inhabited, the only way that your purpose will reveal itself, the only way your life will have meaning, is if you do it !

Be and do ! In fact: do,be,do,be,do. This isn't the background vocals to a song, this is a mantra I use to remind myself to embody life ! Do, be,do, be,do !

Embodiment means exercising your threefold action: thinking, speaking, and physical deeds. This is the path to manifestation.

'Think and Grow Rich' is a famous book by Napoleon Hill. It's a catchy title, but if you read it, you'll see that there is more required than just thinking.

Intention and thinking are important, yes. Flour and yeast are important ingredients, but on their own they don't make bread. You need to bake them in the heat of the oven. They require energy. Likewise, intention and thinking are important ingredients in life, but without baking them with a good dose of embodiment they don't become anything.

Embodiment is such a simple notion. It seems ridiculously obvious. You don't expect to get fit by thinking about the gym. So why do we expect to reveal our purpose and manifest our dreams by thinking about them? Or doing stuff that's unrelated to them; like working in a job that you hate?

Knowing about something and executing it are two different things.

Many procrastinators (and I am sometimes one of them) have amazing ideas that never see the light of day. Others just embody their ideas into reality without even thinking too much about them.

Sometimes, those that had an idea but didn't embody it feel angry. That's part of the regret I was writing about. Why? Because they just thought about it and didn't embody it. This also results in the resentment I wrote about earlier. They resent people who actually manifested their life, their dreams, their vision. And I'm not talking about material stuff (although this can certainly be part of it), I'm talking about living your potential.

Spiritual practice is also about embodying. I've written and talked about this ad nauseam and I will continue to do so because it's important. Spirituality is not a philosophy, its a practice. Put another way: it's about embodiment. Thinking about spirituality, philosophy, religion, anything … doesn't help you. It might make for great dinner conversation, it might be a great way to temporarily escape your problems, but it doesn't change your life for the better.

I never get into debates about ideological ideas, its futile. It leads to intellectual masturbation. I have studied many systems. Christian Mysticism. Zen Buddhism. Kabbalah. Sufism, the Vedas, Greek Philosophy. Transpersonal Psychology. Shamanism, and many more. They are all amazing roadmaps, but they are only useful when they are embodied. I have gained immense insight from them, but mainly through my experiences of them not my intellectual understanding of their concepts.

I have a little 'formula' that I speak about in my public talks: Information + Knowledge = Wisdom

There's a lot to be explained here (I do an entire talk around this little idea), but for the purposes here I'll just say this. Information is data. Knowledge is understanding the data. Both are important. But ultimately the most important aspect is to gain Wisdom, and by wisdom I mean experiencing what you have learned. In Greek Sophia is wisdom, and to me, Sophia is embodiment. Knowledge is not power, it is only potential power. It only becomes power once it is embodied.

A few thoughts and things:

Embodiment is a process of trial and error. You do, you fall, you get up, you fall again, you do, you learn. Anyone who can ride a bicycle knows that this is how it works.

No one I know has learned to swim from a book. They had to get into the water at some stage.

Courage is necessary in order to embody life. That's because there's a risk of failure, there's potentially pain. Perhaps that's one of the main reasons why people don't embody life – they're scared of the pain. But please note, you would not be walking if you employed this approach.

Sometimes we are simply lazy (I know I am). It takes effort to embody life. It takes energy. It takes discipline too.

Comfort is the enemy of embodiment. When we are super comfortable, many of us don't want to move. And if we don't move we don’t embody

Embodying life results in change. Many of us don't like change. It makes us uncomfortable. But change is going to happen anyway, whether you like it or not. Embodying life makes you an active participant of that change instead of a passanger. It's better to be the driver than the passenger, you get to go where you prefer.

No birthing ever comes without pain. No profound change comes without the pain of embodiment.

When we detach ourselves from life, we do it to avoid pain, and in the short term, maybe it works. But in the long term, the unembodied life is the most excruciating pain we can experience because it is a life unlived. It is a living death sentence.

Quite literally, we live in a body. I don't know anyone who disputes that. Quite literally our brain and our body embodies our life. Our Spirit experiences this life through our body, yet we are not always present with it. We live in the mind as if that's all we are. We are not our mind, we are much more. The body is the point of intersection between the Mystery of life and the physical realm. It's where we should be living.

Mindfulness is one of the great keys to embodiment.

I'll finish with this: While developing some content for a workshop some time ago I was using large pieces of white paper on a cupboard to map out the material with marker pens. On one of these sheets I wrote in large bold letters: EMBODYMENT. A few days later I looked at this and thought to myself, “That doesn't look right! I think I mispelled that word. Isn't embodiment spelled with an 'i” not a “y”? And indeed it is.

This was more than a lesson in spelling for me; it came with a subtle but important insight. This is what it was telling me: When we embody something we don't ask why? (y) we simply proclaim I (I) ! We become it and it teaches us. We become it and we really come to life ! There's no better way to absolutely know something than to experience it. To embody it !

? Steve Tsakiris