"My higher power wants me to look beyond the body. God asks me to see love everywhere."

Larissa Kaye Batten (llbeara@aol.com) writes "Soul Food," a weekly column for SpiritSite.com.  

Larissa is a prolific writer whose work has been featured in several publications, and is the Director of Miracle Animal Rescue (site will open in a new window).

"Look beyond the body today, my child. See the love in each human. That is what I have given every human. At the core of every soul is love." - guidance received in morning meditation

Prayer. Quiet time. Breathing. Looking around. Still quiet. Pen and paper. The message begins.

Silence. Listening. Will I receive more guidance in my quiet time this morning?

A little more. Then I reread the guidance.

More guidance.

For months and months now, for years perhaps in my unconscious, I have received a message about love.

My higher power wants me to look beyond the body. God asks me to see love everywhere. How do I look beyond the body?

When I walked beside Dan as he carried his father’s ashes down the side steps of the crematorium, I experienced an awakening.

"Is this why I spent so many years of my life obsessed with the size of my body?" I exclaimed aloud. "So I could end up as ashes? My life has nothing to do with my body!"

Dan was probably not particularly interested in my epiphany. After all, he had just lost his father.

A year later, as Dan scattered more of his father’s ashes in the wide creek near our house at the time, my black Labrador retriever Winchester accompanied the ashes as the tide took them to their new destination.

I laughed. Only Winchester would so deliberately remind me that the spirit conquers all. Winchester, swimming along with the ashes, reminded me to love. To love the spirit of Dan’s father. To love the spirit of Winchester. To love the spirit of life. When the ashes scatter, the spirit lives on.

I laugh even now. My dog knew better than I. Life did not end for her with the scattering of ashes. My dog played on.

I am dressed in faded blue jeans with yellow and white paint blobs to mark a memory of yet another paint job poorly performed.

I wear a short-sleeved, olive green shirt. Green is my favorite color.

Some might call my body slim. I don’t know. It’s just my body. I try to focus on my soul today.

One day I will be ashes. Yet I choose to regard myself in the mirror several times a day. Do I watch my soul in the mirror, too? Do I remember to live from the soul?

What do my blue jeans have to do with my soul?

My spiritual mentor always wears blue. Blue jeans, a blue denim shirt. A baseball cap tops off his self-made uniform. Do I see inside his soul? Or do my eyes rely solely on the vision of blue before my eyes?

Maybe he wears the same clothes over and over to remind me where love lies. His spirit is always so present. His life is not about his clothes.

How do I look at you?

What do you wear? Are you big? Are you short? Does your hair turn grey faster than mine?

Granny Jeanne died with a legacy of love. I cannot imagine a greater legacy. Her spirit would not slip away until she knew all of her loved ones were alright.

She left on Good Friday to be with the God of her understanding.

I do not reminisce about the nightgowns she wore in the bed where she rested every last day of her life. I do not begin my thoughts of her by remembering how her body disappeared day by day.

Nor do I recall how often her hair was newly brushed.

Granny Jeanne let me see inside the soul of her. I witnessed in her everything I want to leave with my ashes. Her soul touched me. Her soul touches me still.

How do I regard the world around me today?

It is simple for me to look at the outside of everyone. I am grateful when I let myself see inside.

"The God in me and the God in you," a friend told me once. "When you are having difficulty with someone you love, imagine the God in that person. The God in me and the God in you," she repeated.

When I am nothing more than ashes, when my soul has separated itself from my body, I know how I would like to be remembered.

As love.

"My body is none of my business," a friend has often told me.

Love is.

The love in me and the love in you.

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