I am a Spiritual Being having a Physical experience
By The Awake Aware Alive Team
Let’s be honest with each other for a minute.
Most of us wake up feeling like a human trying to have a spiritual experience. We fumble for our phones, we drag ourselves to coffee machines, we wrestle with traffic and deadlines and awkward small talk. And somewhere in the middle of all that noise, we try to squeeze in a meditation, a yoga class, or a grateful thought before bed.
But what if we’ve had the equation backwards the entire time?
What if you aren’t a physical body learning how to be mystical? What if you are, in fact, a spiritual being—vast, ancient, and boundless—currently enrolled in the wild, messy, breathtaking crash-course of being human?
I don’t mean that as a bumper sticker slogan. I mean it as a radical shift in identity.
The Temporary Vessel
Look at your hand. Really look at it. Notice the lines, the knuckles, the way the light hits the skin.
That hand will eventually age. It will wrinkle. One day, it will stop moving entirely. But the you that is aware of that hand—the silent witness behind your eyes who notices the texture and the warmth and the fleeting nature of it all—that version of you has no age. That version has never been born and will never die.
That is the spiritual being I’m talking about.
Your body is not who you are. It is the space suit you put on to walk on this particular planet. It is the instrument. The guitar is beautiful, but it isn't the music. You are the music.
Why Forgetting is Part of the Design
Now, you might be thinking: If I am truly a spiritual being, why does it feel so hard? Why do I get road rage? Why do I crave sugar and doomscroll at 11pm? Why do I feel so... physical?
That is the genius of the setup.
If you landed on Earth fully aware of your infinite, cosmic nature, the experience wouldn't be real. You would walk through fire unscathed, eat without tasting, love without risk. There would be no stakes. It would be a video game with the invincibility cheat code turned on—boring within five minutes.
So you agreed to forget.
You traded omniscience for curiosity. You traded eternity for the heart-stopping thrill of a ticking clock. You traded invulnerability for the exquisite vulnerability of a hug, a heartbreak, a sunset that makes you cry for reasons you can’t explain.
You came here to feel the rain on your skin as if for the first time. Every single time.
The Two Witnesses
Every day, you have a choice about which identity you feed.
The Physical Identity says: I am my resume. I am my mistakes. I am my bank account and my reflection in the mirror. I am fragile, finite, and running out of time.
The Spiritual Identity says: I am the awareness behind my thoughts. I am the one who notices the anxiety but is not the anxiety itself. I am the sky, and all these problems are merely weather passing through.
Neither is wrong. The physical experience is real—stubbing your toe hurts, grief is heavy, joy is electric. But the spiritual truth is truer.
When you operate from the spiritual identity, suffering doesn't disappear, but it becomes manageable. You stop asking, "Why is this happening to me?" and start asking, "What is this experience trying to show my soul?"
How to Live the Inversion
If you want to stop trying to be spiritual and start remembering that you already are, try this on for size:
1. Treat sensations as data, not disasters.
When pain or fear arises, pause. Instead of spiraling into "My life is falling apart," simply note: "Interesting. This is what anger feels like in a physical body. This is what loss tastes like." You become the scientist of your own existence.
2. Look for the sacred in the mundane.
A spiritual being having a physical experience doesn't just find God in a cathedral. They find it in the first sip of coffee. In the way their child's eyelashes flutter during sleep. In the sound of rain on a tin roof. The physical world is the sacrament.
3. Stop taking your thoughts so seriously.
Your thoughts are not commands. They are suggestions from a very anxious mammal brain trying to keep you safe. You, the spiritual being, get to choose which suggestions to vote for. You are the President; your thoughts are just noisy advisors.
4. Death is a comma, not a period.
This is the hardest one for the physical mind to grasp. But if you truly are a spiritual being, then "death" is simply the moment you take off the space suit. You don't cease to exist; you just stop renting this particular body. Living from this place doesn't make you morbid—it makes you wildly, ferociously grateful for every single breath.
The Invitation
So tonight, when you brush your teeth, or lie in the dark, or stare at the ceiling unable to sleep, whisper this to yourself:
I am not a human trying to be spiritual.
I am a spiritual being having a human experience.
Notice how that feels. Notice the relief in your bones. The permission to stop performing and striving and perfecting.
You don't have to earn your divinity. You just have to remember it. And then, with immense tenderness and courage, you have to go back out there tomorrow and stub your toe, and pay your taxes, and love the wrong person, and laugh until you cry—fully aware that none of it is permanent, and all of it is sacred.
Welcome to Earth, fellow traveler. The physical part is temporary. But you? You are eternal.
Enjoy the ride.
With thanks to Trarete on Pexels.com for the great image