How to get rid of body-identification as a woman?

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question: A woman seen just as a body, it hurts a lot. I am saying this from my own experience. How can this stop? When will it stop? How can a person be seen just as a ‘body’?

What is the root cause? Where does it start?

Acharya Prashant (AP): You answer it. You know already. You have attended enough sessions, and you have lived through enough life to know the answer.

Questioner (Q): What is the starting point?

AP: The beginning point is the birth of the being, driven by prakriti (nature). So it might begin with the birth of the body, but then it is exacerbated by social conditioning.

And when there is nothing beyond the body in your life,

you have no option but to consider yourself, as the body.

The ego needs something to identify with. And if the Great, the Tremendous is not available, then what else is there to be identified with? The body. And there is an incentive in getting identified with the body — the body offers a lot of pleasures.

What is the solution?

You know the solution. Just as a lot of conditioning brings a man or a woman to be more and more body-identified, similarly, rigorous spiritual education is needed to help get rid of body-identification.

And one has to remember that body-identification is not merely a spiritual matter, it is not merely an other-worldly concern.

Body-identification is the root cause of all evils in the world.

You name any problem, and you will be able to trace it back to body-identification.

Unless there is rigorous spiritual education, you cannot get rid of body-identification.

One needs an identity. If there is no other identity, then the body is the obvious identity; you cannot live identity-less.

The ego needs an address, a name. The ego has to be something or somebody.

The easy choice is — the body.

And when you are body-identified, then you have no option but to destroy the world…