I read a book in the 90’s titled “Wholeness or Transcendence”
I remember little more than the title
And having thought, “Transcendence. Obviously.”
Transcendence was my spiritual path to unity with all of life
And conceptually, I could get so close
But the world and circumstances refused to cooperate.
While striving for transcendence, I experienced distinct separation in my body
“I” lived behind my eyes and “had” a body
Which, while handy for carrying my thoughts through space, rarely behaved as I wanted it to
Weight, shape, gracefulness, abilities
My mind had notes
What turned out to be fortunately for me, my body had notes for my mind, too
And sort of went on strike through physical disability
Which shifted the dynamic dramatically
The elusiveness of transcendence and the reality of life in a painful body
Made me much more inquisitive about wholeness
And over time, as my body morphed from servant to jailor to teacher to field
Identity went from centralized in my head to distributed throughout a dynamic system
I became more of myself. Literally.
Intelligence is acknowledged more broadly and has more space
And often, especially when a part of my body hurts quite a bit
Recognizing it’s not the only thing happening in the body is quite helpful
Anchoring my sense of self in the multitudinous harmonies that keep me alive
Heart and lungs, stomach and liver, muscle and skeleton all coordinating like sections in an orchestra
And the conductor, who I previously considered the thinking mind
Turns out to be the pulse of life itself
Moving through this gift from earth and ancestor
Fluent in the ancient languages and the fragrance of the present
I believe the body reads the breath the way the mind reads a newspaper
And would be fascinated to have cognitive understanding of the multitude of exchanges in each breath
But, it’s too much information for cognition
And just the right amount of information for evolutionary participation
So in expanding identification of self throughout the fullness of the body
Distinction between self and world becomes more fluid
I have come to experience identity as a relational exchange more than a structural constant
And the more I play with it
The more I can notice subtle, unconscious tensing in my calf
Or bask in the expansion in my chest when I encounter a flower
And how that echoes down to my toes and beyond
It feels ironic that the physical aspect of life which for so many years I considered an impediment
Became my threshold
