Last class we began a two-part series I'm calling embodied spirit and it's really the

basic teaching is that to realize freedom in this life the body needs to be the

ground and what I mean by that which is that if you really want to have some

understanding or realization about what's true if you want to experience love

the aliveness of love if you want to love life serve life then and in the

deepest way you want to sense that spirit that stillness or silence that's

really underneath or behind it all the portal is through this living body

we really can't be here for our life if we're not awake in our bodies so I like

to often through the cycle of the year come back to how do we wake up right

here in this very as the Buddha said this fathom alone body and the challenge as

we know is that as we begin to say okay I'm gonna come into my body there's this

huge wash of intensity sometimes it's very pleasant but sometimes it's very

unpleasant like the weather our emotional weather just can unfold in ways that are

really difficult to be with and in the most basic way when we're really awake in

our bodies there's a sense that in some way we really can't control life we're

living it but that's scary to us we try to control things so there's a lot of

conditioning rather than really inhabiting our bodies and you might just be

trying it as in speaking just to really occupy and inhabit this aliveness

there's a lot of conditioning to leave and I often liken it to being on a

bicycle and the more stressed we are the faster we pedal away from this

present moment and away from this living body so it's a way of trying to

control what feels like too much we all have our own strategies but we're

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