Everything, Including You, Moves As Grace
But you have to see things differently to experience it.
Outside my window, there are four doves in the branches of the tree. Their wings lift and flex, stretch their necks, and fluff their feathers. Nearby, a chickadee scratches himself, and a few downy woodpeckers race each other around the yard.
At the suet feeder, three bluebirds sit patiently, waiting for the red-bellied and downy woodpeckers to break apart the frozen suet. Juncos walk the ground beneath both feeders, thankful for the falling suet and sunflower seeds.
The nuthatch hangs upside down to eat; the finches flit everywhere, twittering at each other, while the cardinal pairs take turns flying in for seeds.
Across the ravine, I can see tracks of a deer, the neighbor’s cat stretching, and the squirrels hopping from branch to branch.
Where the snow has melted, a few bugs rise into the air. A spider weaves its web, and a leaf twirls beneath it, caught by a single strand, dancing in the wind.
It’s obvious when watching nature that everything in the universe is moving together and independently, each unique but each dancing as One within and as the qualities of life.
However, when it comes to ourselves, we get a little confused. We don’t move. We exercise.
Actually, there is nothing wrong with the word exercise—the premise that we have given it gives us trouble.
Instead of moving or exercising as an expression of life within the joy of moving, we think of exercising to make something better.
However, we intend to remain within the point of view that we are already perfect as the expression of God.
So, if we exercise, aren’t we playing both sides of the fence?
Perhaps we forget that since everything present is the presence of God, Mind, or Spirit, then what appears as our body and all its parts are not separate from God.
If we remember this, we either won’t negate our bodies and turn away from them, thinking that someday we will vacate them and become spiritual, or try to make them perfect from a human point of view.
Instead, we recognize that what appears as a body has its substance in Spirit, the same as everything else we see and experience.
We all get confused when we divide our world into two parts. Spirit over here, matter over there.
From this separation point of view, we have to make up rules based on which part of the world we think we are in at each moment.
A separation point of view begins with something wrong that needs to be fixed.
A spiritual perception begins with the premise that there is nothing wrong now, in the past, or the future.
Everything is perfection because everything is God’s expression.
What appears as a body is not an illusion. It is a misperception of what we are looking at and experiencing.
We have all experienced at least one moment when the boundaries of our bodies seemed to disappear as the mist cleared, and in that instant, we knew the Truth that there is no separation and that dualism was an illusion that was dissolving.
What we perceive as our bodies is no different than what we perceive as a tree, birds, flowers, our income, or any other object that appears material to us.
The key is in the word “perceive.”
As we acknowledge and practice the truth of our being, what appears as material to us is seen for what it is: spiritual, whose substance is the qualities of the omnipresent “force” we call God.
It stands to reason that acknowledging and enjoying the qualities of movement is an excellent way to begin the experience of our bodies, not as a solid object, something we own, or something we are, and finally, not as our dualist thought perceives them, but as the consciousness of God revealed in another of Its infinite manifestations.
Imagine what a difference it would make if we approached movement with the perception that instead of fixing our bodies through exercise, we were moving as the grace of God.
We would no longer think of movement or exercise as a cure but as a way of being.
We could do yoga, walk, dance, run, climb, leap, swim, play baseball, football, stretch, or lift weights—our choices are endless.
We could do all of this because we are the expression of God, and we could celebrate that fact with each form of movement we make.
Our worldview education shuts us into a tiny, closed-in material thought process. We must take up the task of educating ourselves out a material point of view and into the infinite.
The universe breathes with the grace of life. We are one with it.
Take a walk with this open awareness of what is actually going on. Move muscles, flex joints, stretch out into space, breathe deeply, expand your vision, go within, see the universe and all it contains, be spiritual, and move as One.
Experience for yourself the truth of yourself within the natural grace of movement.