Healing is so beautifully and deceptively simple with the body. It is deceptive because it is often viewed through the lens of the mind that punishes, judges, and demands an earning of our way back when it has been offended. The body is only thrilled by our return—to the extent it has enough power to express this delight. If our reentry into the body is anything other than joyous, it is because the body is in a severe state of disrepair. If we do not understand this, we will view the experience of return through the lens of the mind, often blaming the body for any discomfort. If the body feels cold and tight, it may be at the craving/depression level. If it feels hard to reenter—like we are being rejected—the body now sees the mind as a taker, as it has been coming home only to rob resources and go back out. It has hit a point where it cannot maintain basic health and any additional burdens. If we enter the body and it has various symptoms, we can be sure there is much repair to do, or face the fact that it may be beyond the point of repair.
In all but the worst conditions, the mind still has a choice. It can remain and face the now terrible conditions it has created by running away in the first place. Or it can perform its usual routine and abandon the body, becoming like a ghost of automated programs and behaviors, always having to deal with the people who would demand presence.
If it chooses to remain this time, there is a path it can take: The mind returns to the body without its usual righteous indignation and justification, blame, and story of “poor me” about how difficult it was out there while it left the body without resources, care, and defenses and operated against the body. It can return with true humility and admission that having tried everything—from the holy, to the disciplined, to gluttony, to relying on others (including a partner)—there is in fact, nothing other than the body that can bring gratification. It is the only source of true power. The mind agrees to forego all pursuits other than tending to the body until the body gives not just consent but endorsement. Until that time, all attention is focused on assessing the damage, learning the process of listening and hearing the body while slowly and consistently making reparations. It must also abstain from the usual temptations toward withdrawal, justified (pride-based) separation, consumption, and neglect. The mind commits to being here with the body on the body’s terms.
The body will likely be an uncomfortable place to be as a result of the neglect it has withstood. The mind may not have the clarity it has when separated, or the ease of movement, or the lack of pain and discomfort. The mind agrees to use its resource of attention to tend to the discomfort by not merely demanding marching orders, but proactively learning what the body needs and how to fulfill those needs. Through this connection between the mind and body, the heart is formed.
The mind relinquishes all rights in terms of what the body can and should produce, from joy to security, comfort, peace, turn on, awe, or freedom. It recognizes that those states are the natural outgrowth of a body that has been nourished and tended to, and agrees that it can only be free with the body, not in spite of it. The mind stops trying to outsource responsibility for the body to the medical world, experts, partners, body workers, and teachers, and instead agrees to tend to it from the only place it can: itself.
The mind learns to listen to the body on the body’s terms. It agrees to fully incarnate and inhabit the body, abstaining from leaving that first time, recognizing that if it does not leave, it does not have to face the challenges of coming back. Now inside of the body, the mind can begin—with humility—to use its resources for study and exploration on itself. It can chart how its belief that it was superior shaped the ways it operated, justified disconnection, neglect, and lovelessness, and the repercussions this has had on the mind, body, and world. A clear assessment of operational tendencies of the mind is made with a list of justifications, rights, and obscurations. This is because a mind that is not clear on how it operates will continue to operate in the same way.
It agrees to learn the language and the way of the body, and it feeds the body what it needs until it is flourishing. We become fluent in the language of Eros, creativity, connection, play, and desire as our tumescent identity dissolves and we open to reality. The mind allows Eros in with relish and enthusiasm.
At some point, the body will want to employ the mind to express in the world the unique gifts of this body. It will first need to liberate through play until it is fully switched on and becomes a source for others to light up from. Then, it becomes connectable, usable, and available. Once liberated from the habits of the old way, the body will be prepared to fulfill what is crucial for other bodies. Through its humanity, it comes into connection in such a way that power is shared, where what is full is emptied and what is empty is filled.
Then—through this process— it becomes a collective source that transmutes the tumescence of separation into love and connection. With joy at having returned home, we serve the edicts of the body creating in the world what has occurred in our own lives in an everexpanding way, where the meek inherit the earth in every dimension.
