Am I Body OR Soul?

Author: Rekha Gupta

Chapter -2

Who am I? If one was to ask who am I? My answer would be: the image I see in the mirror of my body, perhaps my name, my family, my caste, my position etc. everthing that is outside, physical and seen to all. But then who is ‘my’, as in, when I say “my body, my name , my family etc”? whose body is this? The owner of this body is the divine Aatma/ Soul. Aatma : is ‘energy’ that governs the body.

Aatma is on eternal journey of life after life.

According to sacred ‘vedas’, the cyclic period of time is not restricted to days and years but goes beyond and divides the universal time cycle into 4 yugs (each yug spanning several hundred years) which on completion is again repeated. In the begining from the 1^st to  2^nd yug : satyug & treta yug, we lived in complete soul conscious state thereby using only Aatma’s original sanskars. Dwaparyug onwards energy started to discharge that caused spiritual amnesia, thus we forgot that we are Aatmas & hence started believing that ‘we are a body’and with it we gained acquired sanskars of body consciousness and by the time we came to kalyug, we fully identified ourselves as body thereby carving the path for our sufferings.

Acquired sanskars of the body consciousness are: ego, lust, anger, greed, attachment, competition, hate, envy, lies, deceit, cheat, anxiety, fear, anger, stress, tension, depression, manipulation, revenge…etc.

The first wrong belief is that I am body whereas it is Aatma / soul that acquires a body. Now I have clarity that I actually am a divine Aatma and this body is a costume or a dress of this life and the body (costume) will change in every life and I will have a new different costume. Aatma has acquired the body to use, to do karm.

Aatma/ Soul is eternal, imperishable and indestructible.

Everything that aatma acquires is very important as the acquired are a result of the past and present karmic account.

Atma / Soul first acquires the body then acquires parents, family, caste, name, country, qualifications, position, riches, power and so on… and somewhere we get attached to all that we have acquired, believing all these to be our real identity. Everything is for me but not mine and where there is attachment there always will be fear of losing it even though we subconsciously know that one day we all have to leave everything even this body. We are responsible for this fear as this is spiritual amnesia, wherein we have forgotten ‘who I am, why I am here and what is the purpose of my life’.

I started to live in body consciousness and with it came many wrong beliefs that my identity is my body, my name, my family, caste, religion, colour of the skin, position, riches and so on….hence each one’s identity became through all these parameters and this is when each one started to live in ‘ego’.

When in body consciousness : each one’s interactions are based on the above false identity– that is one behaves with another according to one’s name, position etc. using acquired sanskars of the body and this is the reason of all sufferings.

Since I believed myself to be this body, I took care of only the exterior, that is, my body. If I gained weight, I tried losing the extra weight immediately as I knew the consequences. But my mind is heavy with layers of toxicity, held onto it and accumulated over many past lives. I have to remove these layers as both my inner and outer beauty are suffering because of which my acquired sanskars come to the forefront, that is, being irritated, anxious and unhappy and playing the blame-game. I remain in this state without realising this is not the state I am meant to be in. Without knowledge, I remain unaware that these sufferings are the consequence of using the acquired sanskars of body consciousness. The more emotionally disturbed I am, more is the depletion of energy. Negative and painful interactions that I have with several people during the day turns into toxic waste on my mind, affecting my health that further declines my powers. By holding onto this toxic waste, my mind has gained excess baggage.

I thereby have to first create space by getting rid of toxic waste, then only I’ll be able to create something new.

Aatmas innate sanskar is bliss yet I am not able to feel bliss because I am living in body consciousnness. I seek for happiness in outside stimulants such as – shopping, vacations etc. but all very temporary & superficial, because I am living in make -believe competition with all others, restless and striving to reach where? I do not know myself whereas the truth is that there never can be any competition with anyone as each ones destiny is completely different according to each ones past lives and present life karmic account.

Now, that I know there never can be competition – anger, lust, ego, greed, envy, jealously, hate, manipulations, aggression, lies, deciet, all the acquired sanskars (vices) should be out of the window.

Now that I understand that I am living in body consciousness (hence the sufferings), this realization should help shift me to being my original soul conscious self. To be pure, feel light and in bliss again. I have the knowledge now that to be aatm conscious again, I have to submerge my acquired sanskars and start using my divine sanskars again. Where focus is right, energy flows and your manifestations happen.

Having said that, I should not be in a hurry to reach to my original divine sanskars as I have been using the acquired sanskars of the body for several births, so it will take sometime to submerge the acquired sanskars. It will require all firstly, the awareness, patience, will power, mental strength and lastly the ability to create only pure and positive thoughts for one and all, no matter what life has in store for us.

I am happy that my journey to becoming a pure soul (divya aatma) has begun.

I am a pure divy aatma , I’m already feeling light and bliss, I will become pure and bliss again.

Om Namah 🙏

Next post : power of thoughts

Author: Rekha Gupta