No-body has it better!

"Acceptance is the act of embracing what life presents to you with a good attitude. Our bodies are among the most willing and wise teachers of this lesson. Unless you spend a large percentage of your time engaged in out-of-body experiences, your body shows up wherever you are. It can be an everpresent benevolent guide or a lifelong cross to bear. The decision is yours." —Cherie Carter-Scott, "If Life Is a Game, These Are the Rules"

Well, I don't know about you, but watching the 2008 Olympic Games really allowed me to focus on how perfect the chiseled hard bodies of so many of those athletes are and how imperfect mine appears to be.

There is no better place than the Olympics to observe the finest physical specimens on the planet. I actually caught myself contemplating how inferior I was feeling as I enviously watched those volleyball players towering over the net.

Who wouldn't trade their body in a heartbeat for one the likes of an Olympic sprinter, diver or gymnast? Can you imagine how great that would be?

But really, when was the last time you stopped to consider what a blessing it is to have a body at all?

This blessing becomes even more poignant when you can see your body as the tool for your evolution as a spiritual being. It is the device with which your soul touches earth, and this amazing instrument has direct access to an inherent wisdom all its own.

If you listen to your body, it will teach you much of what you need to know in order to accomplish your mission here on earth.

How so? Your body is the intermediary between your emotions and the world in which you live— it is always trying to tell you what's going on at "headquarters" within, in the mind and heart.

Our job is to deepen our skillfulness in listening to what the body is reporting to us. The challenge lies in understanding that we can't do that until we learn to accept, honor and love the body in which we live.

So, how can you learn to accept, honor and love your body? Start by being in awe of it: You don't have to be an Olympian to do that. Just acknowledge what an amazing gift has been given to you.

The fact is the body you have is the only one you're going to get this time around.

So, given the alternative, the body with which you were gifted isn't all that bad, is it?

With this nugget of knowledge, the wisdom that Cherie Carter-Scott shares with us is quite accurate: Wherever you go your body also goes. So perhaps you might want to make peace with your body and accept that it must be the perfect, one-of-a-kind instrument of the Infinite's expression, custom-designed for you (and the lessons you were meant to have), or you wouldn't have been given it in the first place.

Maybe it's not your calling or mine to swing or spring from the Olympic high bar this time around. That doesn't mean that your body or mine is any less the perfect vessel for the Divine to use.

So, depending on your perspective, your body is either a burden or a blessing. Which is it for you? Accept and embrace that which life has presented to you with a grateful heart.

That is when the richness of being alive really kicks in and every breath you take becomes a blessing. So smile . . . it's good to be alive, yes? Dennis Merritt Jones is a local life purpose coach and spiritual mentor. Contact him at www .DennisMerrittJones.com.