07/06/2024
I love the poetry of David Whyte, and when he chooses to write this piece called 'Body', how could I not share?!
'The mind untethered from the body always tries to confuse the body in turn; tries to set it against itself: the abstracted mind, trying to protect itself, trying to compensate for its distance, asks simultaneously, for far too much and far too little from the body
BODY might be a word that represents something more miraculous than even the mind that can contemplate the bodyโs miraculousness. Perhaps the central and unchanging difficulty for human beings in remaining healthy is that the mind cannot fully contemplate, appreciate or understand the bodyโs thousands of interlocking inter-dependent connected systems, and the way those hidden systems connect with the world: the way the bodyโs never ceasing, beating, pumping, circulating, breathing in and out busyness, all combined with its inner restful autonomic guidance; needs no act of will or effort or management on our part to keep it going. The mind unanchored in the body is always trying to be something or somebody, the mind is always attempting to control the body: the body exists in its own form of freedom, always under the control of something far beyond the mindโs understanding.
The body when healthy, makes the busy mind uncomfortable in its astonishing rested complexity, asking for no immediate solution or help in its need to create another heartbeat or the next breath. The only part of the mind that can truly understand the body is the part of the mind that is, through silence and rest, able to be welcomed fully back into the bodyโs equally rested and gifted sense of presence, creating as its culmination, the deep undergirding consciousness, the marriage of a good sense of presence with a good thinking mind, a coming together that has always been revered in our ancient traditions.
The mind after all, only escapes its own false, manufactured reality, by seating itself in the unmediated reality of the bodyโs seeing, hearing and sensing. The mind seeing through the bodyโs eyes, learning through its ears, grieving through its wounds and through its extraordinary ability to touch and be touched.
The mind untethered from the body always tries to confuse the body in turn; tries to set it against itself: the abstracted mind, trying to protect itself, trying to compensate for its distance, asks simultaneously, for far too much and far too little from the body: the dislocated mind always asks it to eat too much, drink too much, worry and fret too much and then, at the same time, asks it not to feel too much, not to grieve too much, not to feel the wounds it has actually experienced, asking it in effect not to heal itself in ways that might undercut the surface life we have artificially manufactured through our distance.
No matter all this subterfuge to cover up the bodyโs vulnerability: the mind is actually ashamed of its distrust in the bodyโs willingness to be truthful in its experience and what it has experienced. Much of our outer forms of shame stem from this central sense of not measuring up to the very thing that houses all and any thoughts we might have on the matter. The fearful mind will not let the body move, not let the body dance, not let the body grieve or risk itself, as it was made to risk itself in the physical world and the vulnerable intimacies of that world.
The abstracted mind, separated from its absolute anchorage in time and space granted by the physical structure it was born into, does not know quite what to do with the body: which it would like to disown, with all its aches and pains, its wounds and its deeply honest memories of how and where those wounds were delivered.
The unanchored mind in its disbelieving of the miracle of the body, in its loss of faith in the portal that the body provides, in its lack of understanding of the way the body is constantly seeking its own psychological cures and remedies through both memory and anticipation and its heartfelt dedication. The disembodied mind is always trying to substitute another story for the bodyโs actual story, always attempting to manufacture other events and other interpretations, for actual events and actual consequences.
The mind cannot quite believe the way the body does not wish to be healed in ways that ignore, trample on or obscure its very own, hard earned, wounded experience of life. The unanchored mind wishes to live forever. The body knows it has already experienced an infinity of lifetimes by virtue of its essential vulnerability; the way it dies into each waiting passage of life: a vulnerability it shares with all other physical touchable bodies on this earth.
But seated in the body once again, through trauma, through grief, through the vulnerabilities of illness or the imminence of death: we find out just how much the body loves the mind when that mind has come back to live in the body: how much it has missed its intimate presence, how much it wants to invite it home again. A good death is always marked by the abstracted mind finding a welcome home again in the experience, the poignant physical memories and the vulnerabilities of the body, no matter how wounded the body might be, nor how wounded the mind that needs a home might be. No matter how long the mind has been away, creating its own tortured world, the body always wants the errant mind back, always, like a good father or mother, is waiting at the door, always, always always ready with a welcome home.'
โfrom the forthcoming Consolations II. The first 52 essays can be found in the collection, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
