Dignity - Living the Spiritual Path in the Body I Have Now

I didn’t expect a conversation about firearms instruction to open something this deep in me. I thought I was following one small practical thread, something about safety and confidence and learning how to move through the world differently as my body changes. But the more I stayed with it, the more I realized it was touching something much larger.

At first, I thought I was writing about confidence. My body has changed. My steadiness, strength, eyesight, stamina, and sense of physical authority in the world aren’t what they once were. I can’t pretend otherwise, and I don’t want to keep measuring myself against a version of me that no longer exists.

When I started thinking about learning how to handle a firearm safely and well, it wasn’t about violence or becoming someone hard and defended. It was about wanting to feel capable again without measuring myself against some imagined version of me who is stronger, healthier, steadier, and easier to trust. I wanted to begin with the body I actually live in and support her from there.

After I wrote about it, the responses surprised me. One woman told me she bought herself a Tesla because her eyesight had changed and she wanted to feel more confident driving at night. That stayed with me because it wasn’t really about the car. It was about trust, independence, and recognizing what had changed so she could give herself what she needed instead of letting her life become smaller because of it.

That was when something clarified for me. Confidence was the word I reached for first because it was easier to understand, but it didn’t go deep enough. What I was really reaching for was dignity. The kind that matters when the body begins to change in ways we can’t ignore, when we can no longer count on the same strength, steadiness, stamina, eyesight, or ease we once took for granted. There’s something painful in that, something that can make us feel as if we’re losing not only capacity, but authority over our own lives.

That’s where dignity feels so important to me. It begins with acknowledging the reality of where I am in my life now. What my body can and can’t do, what it needs to feel alive and free, and all that I’ve had to leave in the past as a result of the changes I’ve experienced, without turning any of that into shame. It means I don’t have to hide the truth of who I am so no one else has to notice. I don’t have to apologize for needing more support, more care, more time, or a different way of moving through the world. I can tell the truth about the body I live in and still hold my head up, unembarrassed and unafraid.

Dignity is different from false confidence, the kind that tries to prove I am stronger, steadier, or more capable than I actually feel. Real confidence comes from knowing who I am, knowing the reality of what I can and can’t do, and trusting myself to meet what comes from there. Dignity gives that truth somewhere to stand. It lets me acknowledge this body and this life without shame, without apology, and without making myself smaller because my capacities have changed.

Someone asked what any of this had to do with the shamanic path, and my answer was immediate.

Everything.

Everything has to do with the path because there’s nothing in my life that’s separate from it.

Ceremony isn’t something I step into and then leave behind. It comes home with me. It shows up in how I live, what I choose, what I let myself receive, and what I stop forcing myself to tolerate. It is there in the ordinary moments when I listen to my body and choose what feels real instead of what only looks acceptable.

The path isn’t separate from ordinary life.

The path is the way ordinary life becomes truthful.

And the body is where that truth keeps showing itself.

I know this now in a way I can’t disregard. Spirit isn’t somewhere above me or outside this physical body I’ve spent so many years trying to understand, heal, argue with, and survive. It’s right here, in the body that has carried my life all along, even when I didn’t know how to listen to what it was trying to tell me.

My body is not separate from my path. It’s one of my clearest teachers along my path.

My mind can explain almost anything. It can reason with the truth, soften it, delay it, and find very convincing ways to keep old patterns alive. But my body is much less willing to go along with that now. It shows me what’s true when I want to look away, and I feel the cost almost immediately when I’m settling, overriding myself, or pretending something is safe when my body knows it isn’t.

I’ve been circling this for decades, working with the body in one form or another, trying to understand what it carries, what it remembers, and why it speaks in the ways it does. But now, at this age, with this body and all of its challenges, I can’t keep turning away from the very place where the truth keeps showing up. I can’t treat the body as secondary to the path or act as if wisdom lives somewhere else.

That’s why the choices I’ve been making lately feel so important to me. The black car, the diamonds, the Soul Wrapture, even saying no to visiting my husband in the hospital when my body knew I needed something else — none of it is random. These aren’t indulgences I’m trying to dress up as meaning. They’re places where my body recognized something before my mind could explain it, places where I felt myself moving closer to what was real.

This is what I mean when I use the term “the real thing.” Not more things, more expensive things, not comfort as escape, but what truly brings me closer to myself. What lets my body exhale. What feels aligned with the life I’m actually living now. That doesn’t mean they’re all physical objects, but many of them are and that doesn’t mean they aren’t part of the spiritual path. 

The shamanic path isn't only in ceremony. It’s in how I live after ceremony, in the ordinary choices where I either listen to my body or override it again. It’s in letting myself receive what nourishes me, saying no when something in me knows the cost is too high, and learning to honor the body I have instead of treating it as a lesser version of the one I used to have.

This body hasn't failed me. It has stayed with me through illness, grief, trauma, fear, exhaustion, and every version of survival. It has carried memory, warning, desire, shame, pleasure, and truth. It has been the map all along, even when I didn’t know how to read it.

So when I speak about learning to use a firearm, or choosing the black car, or wearing the diamonds, or wrapping myself in something that feels like medicine, I’m not moving away from the spiritual path. I’m living it in the only place it can actually be lived: here, in this body, in this life, with the truth of what is.

That's what dignity is for me now. Not pride, not independence at any cost, but the way I meet the truth of myself without turning away. It’s the way I give this body what she needs to move through the world with trust, freedom, and grace.

This is the work now.

Not leaving my body to find spirit, but letting spirit teach me how to live inside my body more truthfully and knowing that spirit is right here, in each step I take. 

If this reflection stirred something in you, perhaps it is simply another thread asking to be followed.

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