Not so long ago, when people asked me, ‘What do you do?’ I used to answer, “I am a lawyer.” As if my identity and my profession were one and the same, and none of my actions mattered beyond the professional. I was under the illusion that what I did for a living told you all you needed to know about me.

When I realised that, I was confronted at once with another question: “If what I do is not what I am, then who am I?” - and the sad truth was of course, that I didn’t know who I was. I hardly knew *what* I was! The person staring at me from out of the mirror, what did he have in common with the person I thought of as ‘me’? What I felt on the inside had no connection to what I saw on the outside.

This started me on a quest for another kind of identification - I needed to see who I was when I didn’t do anything. Who are you when you sit still and do nothing? Which is when I started practising meditation, because that is what meditation is all about. You sit still, so that you can’t really identify with being a body, and then you try to not identify with whatever thoughts come up in your head, either - and well, there you are. You’re a living being, and that’s all there is to it.

And as I practised this kind of meditation, I became aware of my connection to the reality that surrounded me. That is, I no longer felt that this everyday reality - the clothes I wore, the room I was in, the house where I live, the day job - I just no longer felt that all that was *real*. I mean, it was real - it is real - but these things lost their meaning. They are a part of everyday life, and as such they’re important, but they do not in and of themselves lend meaning to anything at all. Not even to my own life.

Gradually, I came to see that the thing that really does lend meaning to life, the only thing that really matters, is the connection between my being here as a person and the greater reality of the life force that has brought me into being. What I am, is a body that has materialised, and that materialisation has meaning, because it shows to the life force what it can be. Apparently, amongst many things, the life force can be this thing I think of when I think of me.

Which brings me to the question: does the life force care about me? And I think the answer to that is that the life force doesn’t care about me as an individual, but it does care about the connection between what I am and what the life force can be. And at that point I began to see that why it matters what I feel and what I do, is that through my actions and through my senses, I can become aware of the connection between this body of mine and the great, intangible reality of the life force.

So, what is ‘the life force’? If the life force cares about what it can be, does that mean it has a consciousness? Does the life force have desires and wishes? And I think the answer to that is, ‘Yes, it does’. The life force is a consciousness that pervades all things material and immaterial; the life force is a godhead that looks at itself in the mirror and wonders what it might be; and what this godhead sees in this mirror is all of creation, all of you and me and of all the other beasts, all that has been and all that will ever be, and all that might ever be. This godhead looks in the mirror of eternal possibility, and it sees me looking back at myself; just as it sees you.

That is when I realised that as people, we all need to be here, so that this eternal consciousness of the life force can see what it is and what it might be. But for me, as an individual, what truly matters in my life is that I *feel* deep within myself that I am connected to the life force; that I am connected to this godhead. That connection to the life force is what love is. It is pure love.

And that’s when I discovered meditative flogging as a spiritual practice.

You see, I knew about flogging in a more sensual context. You might even say, a more hedonistic context. I found those practices rather attractive, I won’t deny it. I was quite enamoured with whips and sticks, I loved treating the bodies of handsome men and gorgeous women to a fine beating. I would watch people’s minds drift off into faraway places as I whipped them, and I always felt I understood something, but I didn’t know what it was that I thought I understood. But I think that what I understood then - and what I understand now - is that you can use flogging as a spiritual practice. Through flogging, the body can lose its sense of being limited by its physical presence, and instead it can feel that it is connected to a greater reality through love. My body, your body - all these bodies make up the body of all creation. It is all connected, and not just in a theoretical fashion, all life really *is* connected to all other life. Our bodies are connected to the eternal consciousness of the life force, and we can *feel* this is so through flogging.

When I realised this, I stopped identifying with being a lawyer. I am not a lawyer, I never was. I am a living body, connected through love to all the other bodies as they are part of this eternal consciousness. And that is why I became a teacher of UM DA, or meditative flogging.

These days, I help people find a new insight into themselves. Through UM DA, I help people discover that their luscious, glowing bodies are in fact bodies of love. I can teach this to you, too. A body of love, that’s what we are. The body of the eternal I AM.