Imagine yourself in a late 19th-century diving suit. You struggle to move the weighted boots and heavy canvas suit as you try to walk. Thick glass windows with metal reinforcements narrow your view and cloud your vision. A copper helmet muffles your efforts to hear and speak to others. And that’s all before you’re immersed in the murky water. 

In the suit, nothing is wrong with you. You’re strong and agile. You see, hear and speak just fine, but everything coming into your suit, or going out, is filtered, diminished and sometimes prevented altogether. The suit isn’t bad. It protects you and enables you to do things you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do, but it’s limiting and sometimes frustrating. It changes your perceptions and interactions with the physical world, but it doesn’t change who you are.

Now imagine yourself as a spiritual being, clothed in a heavy, slow, filtering physical body. Your vision is impaired, your movements greatly curtailed, your hearing muffled, and your speech impeded. Your body isn’t bad. It protects you and enables you to do and learn things you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do and learn, but it’s limiting and sometimes frustrating. It changes your perceptions and interactions with the spiritual world, but it doesn’t change who you are.

Never forget who you are. You are a divine being of infinite, eternal, unchanging worth. Your body is your veil, but it doesn’t change who you are.