‘[w]e are somatic creatures, living in bodies, having emotions, bathed by sensations, at times bubbling and simmering, at times dawdling and eddying, hot and cold, nervous and calm, fearful and yearning, hungry and satiated.' Arnold Weinstein in 'A Scream Goes Through The House'.
'Consciousness is essentially a matter of having bodily sensations rather than of having higher level thoughts' Nicholas Humphrey in 'A History of Mind'.
Body is just slow mind. Locating our awareness in our body requires slowing down and slowing down even more than is normally comfortable for the mind. Slowing to the pace at which we can know the sensations that underlie our thought process takes a lot of practise, or involuntary paralysis, or a near death experience. Best of all, considerable good fortune in growing up in a family and culture that supports body awareness and a balanced brain. So its practise for most of us, and lots of it.
When asked to meditate the temptation for a busy, acquisitive mind seeking calm is to go out of body, chemically alter the mental state, become disembodied like kids watching TV, or dissociate entirely. Meditation cannot arise without a body. Disassociation happens without a body. You're not associated with anything, not even with intimacy. Just as break throughs or the turning points in a previously stuck intimate relationship occur with embodiment of a sense or feeling, so too is meditation entered through sensation and feeling. Mental experiences of beauty, awe and wonder are incomplete unless accompanied by the body.
So that's the good news. The hard part is that the body is a store house of unfinished experience. Because it is slow, the mind can hide parts of itself there and if the person is busy, the mind can know it won't have time to examine those recesses. In the practices that lead to meditation, the mind gets a chance to notice its own hidden contents. Mind is as vast as the imagination and creativity that nurtures us. Consequently, being embodied means feeling physical and emotional pleasure and pain. The road to meditation leads through those places without craving for relief or delight. Thoughts and dreams may arise as well as long forgotten memories or body sensations. Some of these are delightful full bodied recall of childhood wonders or the not so delightful lack of them. Being embodied in meditation requires a dispassionate witnessing of the unfolding process of body/mind as it grows toward balance.
'The body is not the ultimate truth and attachment to the body causes suffering .... yet if we inhabit our bodies with the finest degree of awareness, we experience the body as permeable, borderless, empty space...' from 'Being Bodies - buddhist women on the paradox of embodiment'. 'In love, the paradox occurs that two people become one yet remain two' from Erik Fromm. 'The paradox of the word 'cleave' which means to join together and to break apart.' OED
'Being Bodies' is a collection of women's stories of the struggle to stay with the body and not leave it behind, even under the extremes of experience from birth to death. "The absolute is here in each embodied moment - when we breathe, when we sweat, when we bleed, when we feel desire"
Observe the principle of obliquity applied to happiness by John Stuart Mills - 'those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness'
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