Maybe you've seen me in recent days. Maybe you know. Yes yes, I'm very, extravagantly, enormously tall :) Something that seems to keep surprising visitors. But also! I am sometimes a bit tough on myself. People offer to pick me up by car because of the rain... and I refuse to give up my idea to bike there. Or my body whimpers that it would enjoy some sleep... and I force myself to continue on because hey, it's not like it's bedtime yet! I was at the sauna the other day. I'm not usually a sauna kind of person, but I thought it might be good for once. So there I was, feeling (literally) HOT, and having noble thoughts. I, and many others with me, seem to have a strange thing going on. Existence is divided into two: the outward body and the inner spirit. The body and everything out there is pretty unimportant. It's nice if it works, but if it doesn't? Ah, you clench your teeth, be tough on yourself. Because the inner spirit, that's important. That's where the real stuff happens, that's the realm of the spiritual. But being at the sauna made me realize that this is not true. 1 Corinthians 6 (in the Bible) speaks of the body being a "temple of the Holy Spirit". Of course temples are treated with care! At the sauna, I saw very clearly that the outward body definitely has effects on the inner spirit. That the two are NOT separated, supposedly having nothing to do with each other. When the outward body is at peace and is treated well (food, sleep, healthy habits, etc), this works SO positively for battles that the inner self has to deal with. Signals that my body gives are signals of a deeper self, not 'annoying signals that need to be ignored'. The other day I thought at 10 in the morning, "Boy am I tired. But this is ridiculous. It's 10 o' clock, for crying out loud! Dear body, please!!" And a friend said to me, "So what did you learn there in the sauna huh? What was that about peace with your body, accepting the signals your body gives, deciding that ignoring these signals is also bad for the inner self?" Accepting signals is hard. This last weekend, I had an exasperating stomach flu. Seemingly out of nowhere, seemingly with no cause, wildly NOT handy. I was trying sailing for the first time. But again: my body seemed to be shouting at me that I needed to stop. My body and mind needed rest, although my mind didn't think so, and my body decided to force it on me. Let me tell you, accepting this kind of stuff is not my strong point. Accepting this kind of stuff is not my strong point. I went sailing anyways, on Sunday. And it was beautiful, of which the above picture is the proof. Yes... it definitely drained me.
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Mattanja OosterhuisHaving grown up in diverse places on earth, I suppose I've learned to make the best of what comes my way. Such as a hemorrhage. After this bleeding in my head occurred in dec. 2010, my life has come to look different. On my blog I write about some of this. Archives
March 2018
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