Some people love being photographed and others run away the minute they see a camera pointing at them. Which one are you? Last week I had a photoshoot for my new yoga and creative writing website and, believe me, it was a plain spiritual experience (which didnt actually start as a blissful one).

Esther Oromi, http://www.bookactorbarcelona.com

We have never been so photographed, never so captured, broadcasted, exposed. We are in the era of selfie sticks and social media craziness. For some, our digital world has produced the perfect breeding ground for vanity and falseness; for others a global marketplace like no other; for some a genuine means of self-expression. Like a blurry-edged parallel universe, there is our life and then our social media life. Who is who? Are pictures just authenticity barriers or true images of ourselves?

Social Media is indeed a complicated environment to navigate, which in my opinion, only reflects how complicated any human environment is with or without technological aid. Even if you show up in life with integrity and genuineness, you may be heavily criticised, no matter what environment you choose, digital or otherwise. Thats the way it works. We are caught up in a voyeuristic game, an unsure hide and seek exercise, an overwhelming riddle for anyone in search of authenticity. We are in love and in war with visibility.

If you are on any kind of spiritual path, you might find yourself secretly debating between virtuously rejecting being part of the vanity stigma attached to social media and reticently desiring you were more visible, especially if you have a business. At the end of the day, we can only love what we know and we all want to be loved at some level or other. And, of course, we want to serve (or do we always?). What do we really want? Human psyche is a maze.

Back to the point of being photographed and spiritual experiences, when it comes to social media spirituality we have also created a hierarchy, according to the type of images we show on our wall or websites. From more to less enlightened online persona (1 being more and 6 less), the list goes like this:

2. Attending events that reinforce the image we want to portray

4. Ruminations or own deep philosophical thoughts

5. Pictures of us taken by somebody else

I can see above a gradual progression which takes two parallel paths. The first goes from what others think about the world, passes by what I think about the world, ending in what I experience about the world, which includes the perception of my body. The second, from the collective mind, to the personal mind and to the body.

We human beings are multi-layered and I do not condemned the use of wisdom quotes or sharing of interesting events. It is fun, it can be so truthful and deep, I do it all the time. I love when my friends do it. But what I do condemn is the strong criticism that we all get or provide (and never appears on the comments) when what we show is our bodies, rather than our minds. Here we are again, getting caught up in the same old mind-body debate, injected over millennia by politics, religion and science, in summary, force-fed to us and tangled into our DNA by power and status quo. Navigating through the above list feels like a stripping act.

I have bought this bullshit for years. That my mind was better than my body. That identifying with my thoughts made me clever and interesting and showing my body made me vain and unworthy of appreciation. If you are a woman and you want to run away from becoming objectified, the first thing you do is running away from your body and any image of it. This running away made me literally ill.

And when I thought I was free of the above preconceptions about my body, after all those years of yoga, meditation and inner work, all came back last week in my photography session when, paralysed in front of the poor photographer, my mind started shooting in all directions all the contradictory poison that we have all been fed for generations.

But I dont, really. I dont want to hide. Luckily there is a yogini inside of me that I have been feeding for years. I do want to be seen for who I am, for how I can contribute to the world. What others see in me and my body is entirely their business and not mine. Their criticism is their journey. We are all mirrors of each other. My inner yogini, confronted by the bright light from the ceiling, gently smiled in front of the camera, gently pushed the bullshit away, tenderly took over my body and said YES to be me. The stiffness left, I softened (and the photographer sighed with relief!).

Esther Oromi, http://www.bookactorbarcelona.com

My body expresses itself in ways that my mind cant even imagine. It connects me to deep wisdom. My body is wisdom. Generations of concentrated evolution in each one of my cells.

My body is raw nature, and it remembers. It is star dust which roots to Life with the strength of trees, it flows in time and space with the power of rivers, it expresses itself with the freedom of four-direction winds, every second it feeds the Earth with breath as the Earth feeds it in return. An act of love. My body creates life, is part of it. What inside, outside; what outside, inside; what above, bellow and so on, we know the ancient song. I am so proud. I am here. I am in my body. I am. And in this body I can be of service, never otherwise.

If you ever question who you are to be seen, well, it might look this way, but this issue is not really just about you. Its about all of us, its about the world and how we create it every day.

If you need to be reminded, heres who you are:

You are the embodiment of The Great Goddess, Nature, (yes, men too), your body is scientifically a miracle, you are a dream of consciousness, which energy was so strong that manifested into matter and inhabited time and space. There is nothing in your body that is not sacred and beautiful and when we look at each other, and when we show up as spirit-infused bodies, we help each other remember.

Its our primordial duty and our privilege to deeply admire our body, whatever the mind, society, culture, economy thinks we look like (or we are supposed to look like). It is our duty to thank Her, to honour Her, to take care of Her, to respect Her rhythms, to celebrate Her, and to give the rest of the world permission to stop hiding behind empty words and ideas, and start showing up in full bodies, serving each other with what we are right now: feet to move forward, legs to sustain us, arms to embrace and love, hands to help, lips to kiss and communicate, ears to profoundly listen, eyes to see the beauty of being alive, breath to connect and inspire and yes, maybe a crazy hairstyle one day, or special make up, or yoga in heals, or simply a smile in a mobile photo can remind us of not taking everything, especially ourselves, too seriously. And thats what a photoshoot taught me. Who would have thought?

Esther Oromi, http://www.bookactorbarcelona.com

Have you ever had a similar experience with having pictures taken? Have you ever received a profound insight during a mundane activity? Please, share your stories in the comments. I cant wait to read them and connect.

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What a photoshoot can teach you about spirituality - HuffPost