We human beings like to think we are such amazing animals. And we are. We carry forward with us the successes of eons of creative trial and error, a spectacular inheritance that enables us to act with deep wisdom and freedom in our ever more complex environment. But being human, becoming truly human, is also the greatest challenge of our existence. Because we are not at ease in these evolved animal-selves, this amazing body-self we have inherited. Why not? You’d think it would be the most natural thing in the world to feel at home in our bodies—not even to feel at home, but just be at home in our bodies in that wonderfully unconscious or innocent way most children have and some graced athletes retain as they mature.
But most of us don’t experience this natural grace. It’s not even that we’re not at home in our bodies. We seem to be ill at ease in our bodies, or even at war with our bodies. Why?
Answers abound—sin, Platonism, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, Greek Christianity, Christianity, Calvinism, Roman Catholicism, dualism of all kinds, spiritualism of all kinds, gender stereotypes, the media, the Freudians, our mothers, our fathers, those who have abused us physically or sexually. Whatever truth there may be in these answers, I want to look beneath them for a moment.
Look at how we’re built. Lumps of clay animated by some kind of breath who then go on to some kind of restless existence. Whatever you think of creation stories, all those observations, from so many different times and cultures, point to a deep truth about our existence here on earth. Whatever you make those stories or our interpretations of them, it’s hard to deny that we’re an unstable union of two different ways of being, matter and spirit, body and mind, and instinct and consciousness. The terms don’t matter; it’s the relationship between them that’s what trips us up. We want to resolve that instability once and for all, so we deny the part of it that we understand least and live with what is more comfortable for us. For some of us, that means landing in our bodies, tending to them, following their lead always, and ignoring anything beyond the realm of the physical because it is beyond our reach or comprehension. For others of us it means living the life of the mind or the ethereal life of the spirit and just plain ignoring the body, giving it its due, but treating it as a second-class citizen at best.
So we live as if one side of this difficult and de-stabilizing experience we call human be-ing doesn’t exist or doesn’t really matter. That’s one way to live out the challenge of what I like to call, using the language of physicists, “the “coexistence of incommensurates.”
But what if we took this unstable and difficult two-at-onceness of our being seriously? What if matter is coming to consciousness through us, the human creature, as many scientists, philosophers, and mystics have argued? What would our task as human beings look like then? The Sufi Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan puts it this way: “the reconciliation of irreconciliables.” Our job here on earth is not to give ourselves over to the needs and limitations and desires of our bodies and the physical universe, to just sink into it, whether by addictive behaviors or ordinary habits. Nor is our task here on earth to transcend matter by leaping into the spiritual realm, escaping the limitations of the material world by getting “high” through prayer or meditation or other spiritual disciplines. Our task is much more challenging: it is to live in such a way that these two irreconcilable ways of being are reconciled in our every feeling, thought, and action.
Why are we here? For this, says Pir Vilayat Khan: “the materialization of spirit and the spiritualization of matter.” It’s not enough to stay low or get high. We have to bring that animating force of the universe to our limited, cloddish, friable existence here on earth, to make it a thing of true beauty. And we have to incarnate that animating force, bring it to new beauty, a beauty never before seen on earth until this moment, now, in our lives, here on earth.
Forget alchemy. Forget fairy tales of dwarves spinning straw into gold. That is all child’s play compared to this task we have each been given: incarnating spirit and breathing life into our bodies and the world around us.
Our bodies are not our enemy. They are not the “prison-house of the soul” or second-class citizens. They are not simply the vehicle for higher purposes.
Our bodies, their jumble of needs and limits, desires and pleasures and pain, are not the whole of human existence.
Our bodies are the meeting ground where spirit is materialized and matter is spiritualized—a moveable tabernacle we carry and that carries us as we wander through the wilderness.
Showing posts with label body. Show all posts
Showing posts with label body. Show all posts
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Monday, August 1, 2011
Mudballs That Glitter: More on the Body/Spirit
Near the opening of her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston refers to human beings as “mudballs that glitter.” For over thirty years I have carried this image with me as a kind of shorthand for the spirit-flesh embranglement that we call “human being.”
Hurston’s image came afresh to me last week as I was walking along the rocky northern shore of the Atlantic Ocean. I looked up out of my reverie and everything was shining. Everything. Even the rocks. I looked more closely. It wasn’t reflected light. The grains of sand, the waves, the seaweed, the skate purses, the rocks weren’t reflecting the light of the sun; they were shining from within, with their “own” light, a light answering the light shining from the sun, a resounding antiphony of light. I looked more closely. It was as if everything was made of light, formed of light—not simply the sentient beings, but every being, even the rocks, and I remembered my Ojibwe friends in Minnesota arguing (against the vocal disbelief of other students) that rocks, too, are alive.
Even the rocks on this beach I was walking through were alive. I could see, feel the light enlivening them. That light, that energy, that creative power, that palpable generativity was one, One shining in and through them all, each separate being. The shapes and colors and density of each individual shining was no more than and no less than a declaration of the infinite variety of the One that was even now bringing it into being, fashioning it, sustaining it, accompanying it faithfully on its journey of coming into being and perishing.
Walking through this riot of light, I thought of the many circles of mystics from all religious traditions—both orthodox and heterodox, both those I am at home with and those whose dualistic or other doctrines are far from my experience of the world—who have witnessed to the light in the creation. The Hebrew scriptures (Psalm 97:12) say “Light is sown for the righteous,” leading many who came after to cultivate and reap that light. Gnostics of many sorts speak of light/spirit trapped in the matter of our created world. The Zoroastrians focused on the path to a world all of light through purity and righteousness. Augustine reports that the Manichees ate cucumbers and melons to imbibe the great amounts of light trapped in these foods. Lurianic Kabbalists speak of the breaking of the vessels at creation, which scattered sparks of light throughout the created universe, and of repairing the world (tikkun olam) by gathering up these scattered sparks. The Hasids, too, speak of our task as human beings as finding the One everywhere one looks and gathering the light shining in all that exists.
Whatever the differences in their worldview—dualistic, non-dualistic, theistic, nontheistic, atheistic—these mystics have seen something, something real in our world, a vision that often bears fruit in a moral life that recognizes the connection among all things and all peoples, and that draws one away from forgetfulness and self-absorption and cruelty and toward humility, justice, and compassion. This insight, whatever its (sometimes wild) accompanying imagery or concepts, invites human beings, beings of flesh, mudballs, to live in such a way that we, too, shine. It invites us to remove the veils that cover that light in us, to stop hiding the light in us from others, to stop trying to extinguish the light shining in us because we cannot bear it, or cannot bear its often confusing and disturbing coexistence with our fleshly selves, to become more and more transparent so that it shines through us the way it shines through the rocks on the ocean shore, through all being, gracefully, naturally, joyfully, for anyone walking by with eyes to see. To become not simply mudballs that glitter, but mudballs that shine.
Even the rocks are shining
Shining with the glory of you
Passing through
from this angle and this one and
this
lost in ourselves
we miss their offering
speckled, pocked, pooled
scarified with light
alive
declaring the wonder of being
If these, too, can shine,
why not this battered tent of flesh?
Hurston’s image came afresh to me last week as I was walking along the rocky northern shore of the Atlantic Ocean. I looked up out of my reverie and everything was shining. Everything. Even the rocks. I looked more closely. It wasn’t reflected light. The grains of sand, the waves, the seaweed, the skate purses, the rocks weren’t reflecting the light of the sun; they were shining from within, with their “own” light, a light answering the light shining from the sun, a resounding antiphony of light. I looked more closely. It was as if everything was made of light, formed of light—not simply the sentient beings, but every being, even the rocks, and I remembered my Ojibwe friends in Minnesota arguing (against the vocal disbelief of other students) that rocks, too, are alive.
Even the rocks on this beach I was walking through were alive. I could see, feel the light enlivening them. That light, that energy, that creative power, that palpable generativity was one, One shining in and through them all, each separate being. The shapes and colors and density of each individual shining was no more than and no less than a declaration of the infinite variety of the One that was even now bringing it into being, fashioning it, sustaining it, accompanying it faithfully on its journey of coming into being and perishing.
Walking through this riot of light, I thought of the many circles of mystics from all religious traditions—both orthodox and heterodox, both those I am at home with and those whose dualistic or other doctrines are far from my experience of the world—who have witnessed to the light in the creation. The Hebrew scriptures (Psalm 97:12) say “Light is sown for the righteous,” leading many who came after to cultivate and reap that light. Gnostics of many sorts speak of light/spirit trapped in the matter of our created world. The Zoroastrians focused on the path to a world all of light through purity and righteousness. Augustine reports that the Manichees ate cucumbers and melons to imbibe the great amounts of light trapped in these foods. Lurianic Kabbalists speak of the breaking of the vessels at creation, which scattered sparks of light throughout the created universe, and of repairing the world (tikkun olam) by gathering up these scattered sparks. The Hasids, too, speak of our task as human beings as finding the One everywhere one looks and gathering the light shining in all that exists.
Whatever the differences in their worldview—dualistic, non-dualistic, theistic, nontheistic, atheistic—these mystics have seen something, something real in our world, a vision that often bears fruit in a moral life that recognizes the connection among all things and all peoples, and that draws one away from forgetfulness and self-absorption and cruelty and toward humility, justice, and compassion. This insight, whatever its (sometimes wild) accompanying imagery or concepts, invites human beings, beings of flesh, mudballs, to live in such a way that we, too, shine. It invites us to remove the veils that cover that light in us, to stop hiding the light in us from others, to stop trying to extinguish the light shining in us because we cannot bear it, or cannot bear its often confusing and disturbing coexistence with our fleshly selves, to become more and more transparent so that it shines through us the way it shines through the rocks on the ocean shore, through all being, gracefully, naturally, joyfully, for anyone walking by with eyes to see. To become not simply mudballs that glitter, but mudballs that shine.
Even the rocks are shining
Shining with the glory of you
Passing through
from this angle and this one and
this
lost in ourselves
we miss their offering
speckled, pocked, pooled
scarified with light
alive
declaring the wonder of being
If these, too, can shine,
why not this battered tent of flesh?
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Are Mystics Anti-Body? Befriending the Body-Self
The meaning of the body or the body-self has fascinated me for decades. Perhaps because I am female, and the culture that nurtured me never let me forget that for me, existing in that time in that place, the body meant everything, that I could not escape the limits of my body. Perhaps because I am one of those people born feeling at ease in the body, at peace with it—a lovely genetic inheritance. Perhaps because I experience emotions in my body strongly, so the fundamental integration of body-self and what is not body-self was always apparent to me. Perhaps the body intrigued me because early on I experienced blessing through the natural world, its beauty, its grace, its calm, its unselfconscious joy of being, its vastness, its inclusion of me in a larger whole, its oneness with and in what was beyond. Perhaps because I always wondered what the Paul meant in his first letter to the Corinthians when he wrote, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body," (1 Cor. 6:19-20).
No matter the reason, I was intensely interested in the body-self, disposed to like it, and aware of its intimate relationship with the spirit or spirit-self. That’s why many of the metaphors and theories of the body, especially in relation to the spirit, that I encountered did not appeal to me or seem true. For example, I found the Neoplatonic view of the body as the prison house or tomb of the soul insulting. The Gnostic view of the body (and all matter) as evil, a hard shell one must destroy to let the light free, seemed an even greater affront to the beauty and gift of the body and its dearness to the spirit. This put me off mysticism and mystics for a long time: I thought all mystics denigrated the body-self in this way, to elevate the soul or spirit, and I wanted nothing to do with what I felt was a false view of the oneness of being.
Contemporary views of the body among those who are not mystics were no more appealing to me. For many people, often those suffering illness, injury, or the pain of oppressive labor, the body is more a burden to be endured or the intimate companion who has turned traitor and betrayed one. For others, it is a mere hindrance, an obstacle to one’s success, while for others it is but a tool, a vehicle to accomplish one’s desires—nothing more, nothing less. Of course for some, it is the pride and goal of their existence, their riches, their identity, their all—until it fails them. For many human beings, consciously or unconsciously, the body is the enemy one battles every day—that which inexorably drags one toward decay and death.
Recently I came across a metaphor for the body and its relationship to the spirit that surprised me with its freshness and depth. In his book In Search of the Hidden Treasure: A Conference of Sufis, a conversation among Sufi masters of all ages, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan offers to the gathering of mystics this view of the physical body: Think of it as your favorite tunic, he counsels. You put it on, you take it off, you put it on again. You wear it next to your skin. It grows softer and more flowing with age. It absorbs your scent, conforms to your shape. Daily you care for it, nourish it, wash it, mend it, fold it hand it up carefully when you take it off—all lovingly, for without it, there would be no life, no action in this world.
For the first time in many years my heart stood at attention when I heard this original and rich, rich metaphor for the body-self. It says, we do not denigrate or try to escape the body. We do not mourn it as a burden or treat it as a mere tool. Nor do we identify with it. We care for it lovingly, delighting in it and grateful for it as a gift from our Beloved (my interpretation).
For me, the body-self is a gift to treasure, the dearest of friends. Friendships are complex—they encompass many ways of relating, all grounded in love, care, and respect, and they elicit constant gratitude for the joy and support they bring to our lives. For many years I have said that when I come to the end of my life, I hope that I have a chance to thank my body, my friend, properly, with love, before we part. Thank it for carrying me through crises, for supporting me every moment, for opening me to possibilities otherwise closed to me, for its faithfulness to me, its forgiveness of my neglect and abuse of it, its acceptance of me, its refusal to let go of its embrace of my spirit even when I tried to cut it away completely and finally in some vain attempt at transcendence, for delivering to me a son and a daughter, for enabling me to experience so much joy. One day before then I will write an ode to my body, this unsung wonder of a companion that I so often take for granted.
Perhaps this metaphor of body-self as friend is close to what Paul meant when he reminded the gathered community in Corinth that the body was a temple of the spirit. It is a dwelling place one enters for a time, a sacred space in which spirit encounters spirit. We must care for it lovingly and inhabit it in gratitude.
Some mystics (and non-mystics) are anti-body. Certainly not all. And some know and love the body-self as friend.
No matter the reason, I was intensely interested in the body-self, disposed to like it, and aware of its intimate relationship with the spirit or spirit-self. That’s why many of the metaphors and theories of the body, especially in relation to the spirit, that I encountered did not appeal to me or seem true. For example, I found the Neoplatonic view of the body as the prison house or tomb of the soul insulting. The Gnostic view of the body (and all matter) as evil, a hard shell one must destroy to let the light free, seemed an even greater affront to the beauty and gift of the body and its dearness to the spirit. This put me off mysticism and mystics for a long time: I thought all mystics denigrated the body-self in this way, to elevate the soul or spirit, and I wanted nothing to do with what I felt was a false view of the oneness of being.
Contemporary views of the body among those who are not mystics were no more appealing to me. For many people, often those suffering illness, injury, or the pain of oppressive labor, the body is more a burden to be endured or the intimate companion who has turned traitor and betrayed one. For others, it is a mere hindrance, an obstacle to one’s success, while for others it is but a tool, a vehicle to accomplish one’s desires—nothing more, nothing less. Of course for some, it is the pride and goal of their existence, their riches, their identity, their all—until it fails them. For many human beings, consciously or unconsciously, the body is the enemy one battles every day—that which inexorably drags one toward decay and death.
Recently I came across a metaphor for the body and its relationship to the spirit that surprised me with its freshness and depth. In his book In Search of the Hidden Treasure: A Conference of Sufis, a conversation among Sufi masters of all ages, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan offers to the gathering of mystics this view of the physical body: Think of it as your favorite tunic, he counsels. You put it on, you take it off, you put it on again. You wear it next to your skin. It grows softer and more flowing with age. It absorbs your scent, conforms to your shape. Daily you care for it, nourish it, wash it, mend it, fold it hand it up carefully when you take it off—all lovingly, for without it, there would be no life, no action in this world.
For the first time in many years my heart stood at attention when I heard this original and rich, rich metaphor for the body-self. It says, we do not denigrate or try to escape the body. We do not mourn it as a burden or treat it as a mere tool. Nor do we identify with it. We care for it lovingly, delighting in it and grateful for it as a gift from our Beloved (my interpretation).
For me, the body-self is a gift to treasure, the dearest of friends. Friendships are complex—they encompass many ways of relating, all grounded in love, care, and respect, and they elicit constant gratitude for the joy and support they bring to our lives. For many years I have said that when I come to the end of my life, I hope that I have a chance to thank my body, my friend, properly, with love, before we part. Thank it for carrying me through crises, for supporting me every moment, for opening me to possibilities otherwise closed to me, for its faithfulness to me, its forgiveness of my neglect and abuse of it, its acceptance of me, its refusal to let go of its embrace of my spirit even when I tried to cut it away completely and finally in some vain attempt at transcendence, for delivering to me a son and a daughter, for enabling me to experience so much joy. One day before then I will write an ode to my body, this unsung wonder of a companion that I so often take for granted.
Perhaps this metaphor of body-self as friend is close to what Paul meant when he reminded the gathered community in Corinth that the body was a temple of the spirit. It is a dwelling place one enters for a time, a sacred space in which spirit encounters spirit. We must care for it lovingly and inhabit it in gratitude.
Some mystics (and non-mystics) are anti-body. Certainly not all. And some know and love the body-self as friend.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Cars, Bodies, and God
My 1994 stick shift is not as reliable as I'd like. About three years ago, it just quit in the middle of the street. No warning, no noise. Just quit. Turned out it needed a new engine. My mechanic put one in. Last year it often wouldn't start, even with a new battery. This year it started stalling at the most inopportune times. You might say, Get rid of that beast already! If I could, I might. But right now I can't, and since I prefer walking to driving, and I don't drive much, I've developed a driving practice: I am grateful every time I arrive somewhere I need to be safely and without incident, and every time I arrive back home safely and without incident. I actually lean forward, pat the dashboard and say, "Thank you!" or "Alhamdulillah" or something similar. Every time. My car--with its litany of problems--has taught me how to not take things for granted.
I try to apply this practice to everything in my life, especially my body. I had whooping cough as a child, was anorexic in high school, and had chronic bronchitis and colitis in college and graduate school--all of which have left. They taught me to remember to be grateful every morning I awake and every evening when I go to sleep that this complex vehicle gets me safely where I need to go and then home again, that this loyal friend has carried me through the day. One of my favorite morning prayers in the siddur (Jewish prayer book) helps me give voice to this gratitude:
Would I be so thankful for arriving safely if I had a brand new car? Would I be so grateful for my body if I had not experienced illness and pain? Would I remember God now and be so grateful for that presence, if I had not felt God's absence and abandonment in my life before? I'd like to say yes to all these questions. I wish I weren't the kind of human being who has to learn to recognize the good by experiencing the absence of good. But I am.
I was reminded of this the other when I went to buy groceries. I said "Isn't it a beautiful day?" to my friend David, who sells Real Change outside my neighborhood Trader Joe's. I was thinking, How great that it's sunny and not raining, What a day to rejoice in and be thankful for. It's true--any day in Seattle that the sun shines is cause for dancing in the streets. But David's reply reminded me of a larger truth. "Any day I wake up alive is a good day!" he said with a smile. Rain or cloud or storm or shine, gratitude is the response.
For Jews, as well as for Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists one of the central spiritual virtues is gratitude. The ancient rabbis define gratitude as hikarat ha tov, recognizing the good. If we can't see the good beneath us, standing in front of us, all around us, how can we be grateful for it?
I want to learn to recognize the presence of good, more and more--with fewer and fewer, and smaller and smaller reminders of it through its absence.
I try to apply this practice to everything in my life, especially my body. I had whooping cough as a child, was anorexic in high school, and had chronic bronchitis and colitis in college and graduate school--all of which have left. They taught me to remember to be grateful every morning I awake and every evening when I go to sleep that this complex vehicle gets me safely where I need to go and then home again, that this loyal friend has carried me through the day. One of my favorite morning prayers in the siddur (Jewish prayer book) helps me give voice to this gratitude:
Praised are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who with wisdom fashioned the human body, creating openings, arteries, glands, and organs, marvelous in structure, intricate in design. Should but one of them, by being blocked or opened, fail to function, it would be impossible to exist. Praised are You, Lord, healer of all flesh, who sustains our bodies in wondrous ways.
Would I be so thankful for arriving safely if I had a brand new car? Would I be so grateful for my body if I had not experienced illness and pain? Would I remember God now and be so grateful for that presence, if I had not felt God's absence and abandonment in my life before? I'd like to say yes to all these questions. I wish I weren't the kind of human being who has to learn to recognize the good by experiencing the absence of good. But I am.
I was reminded of this the other when I went to buy groceries. I said "Isn't it a beautiful day?" to my friend David, who sells Real Change outside my neighborhood Trader Joe's. I was thinking, How great that it's sunny and not raining, What a day to rejoice in and be thankful for. It's true--any day in Seattle that the sun shines is cause for dancing in the streets. But David's reply reminded me of a larger truth. "Any day I wake up alive is a good day!" he said with a smile. Rain or cloud or storm or shine, gratitude is the response.
For Jews, as well as for Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists one of the central spiritual virtues is gratitude. The ancient rabbis define gratitude as hikarat ha tov, recognizing the good. If we can't see the good beneath us, standing in front of us, all around us, how can we be grateful for it?
I want to learn to recognize the presence of good, more and more--with fewer and fewer, and smaller and smaller reminders of it through its absence.
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