Your body is not the ego.

Equating the ego with the body is one of the biggest misconceptions in spirituality, and it only happens when one’s realization is very shallow. If someone tells you they have transcended the body and wants to teach or guide you, run away from them.

It’s not possible to transcend the body, you only “transcend” the body when the body dies. When you die a physical death (not ego death), you “transcend” everything, so nothing is left. That’s not enlightenment, that’s just death, enlightenment is transcending the ego and living happily, peacefully and joyfully as the body in human form until your death. Everyone dies, but not everyone lives an enlightened life.

Ego exists in the mind, it is your unconscious. It makes you think that it controls the body, and it uses and abuses the body for its own means that have nothing to do with your happiness and contentment. Rid of the ego, the body flowers and becomes healthier than ever before.

Never reject the body. Listen to the body, love your body, the body is literally what you are. You are not the ego, the ego is a very small part of you, but you are the body. Loving your body is loving yourself. Rejecting the body or wanting to transcend the body is rejecting yourself.

Yes, consciousness is infinite, and the experience of your own infinity arises on the spiritual path. But that’s only due to the fact that your body is a part of the infinite Universe, and there is no exact “border” separating the body from it, magnify it to the level of cells, molecules, atoms, quarks, and the border becomes increasingly vague. But it doesn’t mean you’re not the body. The body is what you are, consciousness cannot speak, eat, move, or make love. If you want a happy life and not a semi-transcendent delusional state, do not forget this. Mature teachers speak of “embodiment” of the realization, and that’s exactly what they mean.

So, in your spiritual practice, your love for yourself as the living, breathing organism means paying attention to your body, giving loving awareness to its tensions and discomforts, as well as all emotions which manifest as bodily experiences. The more you are aware of your body, the more you are aware of yourself, and vice versa. The more you become aware of your mind, the more you will become aware of your body, how it feels, what it wants, and how tense it really is due to the presence of the ego and all the past abuses your body suffered from it. It happens automatically.

Witness the mind and give conscious attention to all bodily sensations in meditation, pleasant and unpleasant alike, and you will begin walking the path to the authentic realization.