WHAT MY BODY WANTS ME TO KNOW

I’m not a regular “Lovelet” (as Elizabeth Gilbert calls her Substack readers), but my best friend is. And recently, through her, I received a kizuki—a spark of realization—that invited me to pause and reflect.

Liz had offered a prompt to her readers: “Dear Love, what does my body want me to know?”

Something about this prompt tugged at me. I couldn’t not respond. So, with gratitude to Liz for this opportunity, and to my bestie for the intuitive invitation, I sat down, opened my journal—and this is what came through. These things ... it's never from the mind, but from somewhere much deeper. A knowing voice. A remembering voice. A voice I haven't been able to name, besides calling it "The Plurality." But I think ... This, is what Liz Gilbert and her Lovelets call Love.

Here it is:

Dear Love, what does my body want me to know?

“Gooood, I have been through a lot,” says your sweet body. And not even just the circumstances that come to mind for you—the Grief period, the stress, sleeplessness, and the diagnoses. Sweetheart, you know now, how much you have put your body through, of your own accord. Dare we point out, your relationship to your body has been much like the relationship between a racehorse and its owner—not kind, shall we say. Not humane. Toned, worked, designed, calculated to precision, but yes, as you know, with a price to pay.

Your body wishes you to know, that though you humans speak of your bodies as though, yes, it is “your bodies,” in fact, they are borrowed vehicles, much like your horse. And yes, much like your horse, the body is a gentle organism, with a sentient consciousness of its own. Yes, you heard that right. Your body is actually, more accurately said, Our body. The Big body. Part & parcel of the Oneness body. Not separate body.

’Tis the greatest illusion of the human experience, that though you come to realize your SPIRIT as One, you may very well never realize that in fact, your bodies are One. Much in the same way that your body is a holistic whole comprised of trillions of cells, so too, is your body an irreplaceable piece of the totality of the whole Organism. And we’re not even talking about just Earth.

We don’t mean to scare you with the magnificence and huge expansiveness of it all. But we do wish for you to take this one instruction back:

Gentle does the trick.

It’s the same as your wild horse trainers say. Listen deeply and carefully to its wisdom, as though IT IS a sentient separate organism from this sense of “I” that you let control your life.

In fact, we see you, and we know that even your relationship to this “I” is most elegantly in change. And we celebrate that with you. Even that is beyond “your” understanding. Because yes, you are, and you always have been, much Bigger and Greater than you’ve ever imagined yourself to be.

Now, may we gently suggest… that you begin to get used to that. Begin to see yourself as That Big. That Powerful. That Mighty, even.And yes, we do mean, your EMBODIED DIVINE BEINGNESS.

In Eternal Love and Grace.

Love.

Prompted by Liz. Penned by me. Spoken by Love.

May this letter return you to your own Deep Listening.

With Tenderness,

Mae