My body rules
my life
like a tyrant. For example, it and only it determines my physical
location (I have no say in the matter). Even when I consciously move
around, I always and only end up exactly where my body locates itself.
My body determines
my health.
I have no say in the matter. Even if I consciously do things to improve
my health
(or unconsciously do things which diminish
my health),
my input is at best only interimly required. Ultimately it's my body
that decides what's
healthy
for it, or not (my body tells me what works, and if I ignore it, I do
so at my own peril). My body determines
the way
I
communicate.
It operates
my mouth
and
my ears.
If it won't co-operate with me, then I'm left incommunicado. The
tyranny of my body is unlike anything else in
my life.
Try this on for size: I relate to my body as if it's my
body. You do too - that is to say, you relate to your body as if it's
your body. And
listen:
don't we all? We relate to our bodies as if they're ours
ie we relate to them as if we own them. And yet ... maybe our bodies
aren't really ours after all - even if we're
responsible for them. Our tyrant bodies determine where we are
located in
time and space.
Our tyrant bodies determine
our health.
Our tyrant bodies also determine our
communicability.
And if you don't get that, you may have some naïve and possibly
erroneous notions about what your body actually is, and the role it
plays in your life. Realizing what your body really is*
will totally and assuredly alter all your notions about who or
what is really running your life.
This isn't just clever semantics. It's a new, concept-breaking idea, a
boundary-stretching idea. I really do have it that it's
"my" body. But my "I / me", and with it my "my / mine", have been
recontextualized
(I
love
that
word),
so I'm not sure anymore if it really is my body - it's
just ... here. It seems as if it simply goeswith
(as
Alan Watts
may have said) my experience of being here (and we all know when
there's no body, there is no experience of being here).
This gets even more
interesting.
Regarding my body, the idea that "it's here, yet it might not be mine",
clearly alters
the way
I relate to my body. But that's only the secondary impact. The primary
impact is this: it alters
the way
in which who I might be really,
shows up
for me. Now
watch:
maybe it's
true
that my body is not "my" body, and maybe it's not.
Whichever it is, it's a place from which, when I stand and look,
there's a new
view
of who I might be really for myself. Inquiring into if my body really
is "my" body, is an
access
to transformation - said another way,
my relationship
with my body is
transformative.
Now
consider
this:
something happens when we
die,
which some assert to be the soul leaving the body.
And so we have to tease out two things: first, our deployment of "soul"
is merely a pointer to the experience of who we are really, and is not
sustained as fact. Second, what may be
true
is that the soul (or whatever we
consider
the soul to be) doesn't leave the body when we
die,
but rather that it's the body that leaves the
soul when we
die.
In other
words,
we got it backwards. The "soul" is a euphemism for who we are really.
What we know is
true,
is the body sustains the experience of what we
consider
who we are really, to be. The two are intricately interconnected.
Without the tyrant body, we have no experience of what we
consider
who we are really, to be.
In reality there's no split between them ie no "tyrant body / who we
really are" split. Yet I'm willing to present them split to simplify
distinguishing the two.
