Not the Body or the Mind.

I am not a body.  I am free.

-ACIM-W-219:1

You are not the body, you are in. 

Do you know that?  I mean truly know that?

I think if we knew that, knew that we were so much more than confined to these physical forms we would feel the freedom ACIM, Patanjali and so many other wise masters teach about. We would realize our unbound nature...and understand that it cannot be confined to  a finite vessel anymore than space can be confined in a map or the ocean confined in a glass of water. How do you put 'physical limits' around something so immense?

Yet so many of us feel trapped by these layers of muscle and bone that we call our bodies. We believe we began when the body took that first breath of air and that we end when it takes its last. We believe that who we are ...are these physical forms with marked expiration dates.... nothing more.  Because we see, hear, smell, taste and feel with the body's senses we believe our experience through it is all there is.  How can that be? 

You are not the mind that controls the body

Our sense are always bringing us things that keep changing and they are deluding us into believing it is all real. It is not the body that truly limits us then...but the mind. We prepare for that expiration the moment we perceive that these bodies and minds are limited by time and space.  If the bodies are limited, and we are the body, than we are limited too.

The notion of time and space is just a mental construct, an idea ...not reality.  If time and space are not real how can we be confined to these forms and limited by them?

Yoga can help to take us to this understanding.

Sweet and bitter, hot and cold, sun and earth, the whole objective universe of matter and energy does not exists independent of the mind  and senses. Even time and space are nothing but the power of the mind. There is nothing to limit man in time and space if there is no mind.  All limitations and barriers disappear with the disappearance of the mind. - (Swami Vishnu-Devananda; 1988, page 257)

If we can put aside our over identification with body or at least be willing to see beyond it, we will become aware of these delusions created by mind and we will sense an awareness, a quiet, still awareness that exists beneath it all that doesn't change like our sensory information does.  That awareness, that consciousness is who we are and it cannot be limited by physicality or by time, space or mind.

When the mind is still, there is no idea of time and space, which means there is no external consciousness except an awareness of self where there is no change. ( page 277)

You are not your body and you are not your mind.

Mind cannot exist independent of time.  Nor can space and time exist independent of mind. Mind, time and space are like the three points of a triangle. - Swami Vishnu-devananda; 1988;page277

And how do we live outside the triangle? How do we find this never changing Self that is not limited by body, mind or this idea of time and space?  We 'Be still" ....

Be still, my mind, and think a moment upon this.- ACIM-W-219:1

All is well

References:

ACIM

Swami Vishnu-devananda (1988) The complete Illustrated Book of Yoga. New York: Three Rivers Press