Body Autopsy: Dissecting the Illusion of Your Physical Self
Your body is not yours at all.
That fleshy container you call home houses no permanent resident, no sacred self waiting to be discovered through gentle awareness practices.
Traditional body scans trick you into believing you’re making progress while reinforcing the very prison they claim to transcend. You relax, breathe, cultivate “loving awareness” toward your toes, your spine, your chest—all while cementing the false idea that these sensations belong to you.
A true body investigation isn’t about finding yourself in sensation but seeing that no self exists there at all. This isn’t spiritual spa treatment; it’s forensic demolition.
Time to stop pampering the patient and start the autopsy.
Cut deep, find nothing…
…that’s where freedom begins.
Raw Sensation Without Owner
Sensations arise, but who claims ownership?
The standard meditation practice tells you to “feel your foot,” but that instruction smuggles in a lethal assumption—that there’s a “you” separate from “your foot” who can observe it with detached benevolence.
Picture yourself on an operating table, not as the surgeon but as the patient. Steel tools poking at nerve endings, creating pressure. Cold air washing over skin. Sharp pain in the lower back. Now ask: does that pressure have your name on it? Is there a tiny “me” embedded inside that pain? Or is there simply pressure, pain, cold—raw data appearing in consciousness without inherent ownership tags? The sensation itself contains no possessive pronoun, no hint of “mine-ness.” That’s all conceptual overlay, added after the fact.
Direct investigation reveals these sensations don’t come with built-in identity claims. They flash into existence, persist briefly, then vanish—impersonal events in a borderless field.
Watch closely as each sensation arises. Notice how “my backache” dissolves into pure experience when stripped of the story.
No owner required…
…just phenomena swimming in awareness.
Boundaries That Don’t Exist
Where does “you” end and “world” begin?
The conviction that you inhabit a discrete body-container separate from everything else is the foundational delusion—the original sin of consciousness splitting itself in two.
Conduct this experiment: close your eyes and map the exact boundary where “you” stop and “not-you” begins. Is the pressure of the chair against your skin “inside” or “outside”? Is the air touching your face “you” or “other”? The truth is there’s no definitive border, no cosmic DMZ separating self from world. There’s just sensation arising in awareness. The body isn’t a solid fortress but a permeable cloud of shifting experience—tingling here, pressure there, warmth elsewhere—with no inherent unity beyond the conceptual wrapper you’ve placed around it. Like trying to grab a handful of fog, the more closely you examine this supposed boundary, the more it evaporates.
This investigation isn’t meant to make you feel good about “your body” but to recognize there was never a “your body” to begin with.
The solid container disappears under scrutiny…
…leaving only borderless awareness containing all experience.
The Autopsy’s Revelation
No corpse was ever found.
The forensic investigation of your supposed physical self reveals not the location of your essence but its absence—a stunning case of mistaken identity.
What dies in this autopsy isn’t your body but your identification with it. The body continues—breathing, digesting, aging—but the belief that it contains, limits, or defines “you” gets sliced open and found empty. The sensations remain exactly as they were, but the narrative collapses. Pain still hurts, pleasure still pleases, but neither happens to “someone.” They’re just weather patterns in the atmosphere of consciousness. This isn’t spiritual theory but direct experience available right now if you’re willing to look without flinching, to investigate without the comfort blanket of preconceived conclusions.
Drop the gentle meditation teacher voice and pick up the coroner’s scalpel. Cut through layer after layer of assumption.
What remains isn’t you at all…
…it’s everything.
