on leaving our bodies

the body is a vehicle for the soul, for awareness, for “me” yet it is also a cage, a room, a  house that holds in the spirit. without the body we cannot seem to experience and see things and travel, yet due to the body we cannot move faster and we have to compromise and take care of aches and pains. no wonder our relationships to our bodies seem forever paradoxical, loving and strained, punitive and rewarding, all at the same time.

our bodies have limitations, they hurt, they age, they become infected, they stop working… in a spiritual sense perhaps birth and death are coming into and leaving from the body.

consciousness and awareness seems to be ahead of the body, it is not separate, yet it seems to be able to transcend the body. we can imagine running even when we’re not, we can fantasize about intimacy even when there is none physically, we can invent scenarios and react to them.

yet we suffer when our mind is where our body cannot be or our body is where our mind doesn’t want to be. suffering happens when we are in a place we don’t want to be.

so it makes sense that when we get caught in suffering, we want to abandon our bodies. we want to abandon “reality”- the solid material-ness or is-ness of things that cannot seem to change as easily as our souls can dream. perhaps that is what suicide is.

yet it is this act of  wanting to leave parts of ourselves, of fighting with out inner selves, of abandoning either our souls or our bodies, seem to create even more suffering. after all a civil war always depletes the country and leaves it weaker, or split into multiple parts. integration, with all parts intact, is what jung would call individuation. embodying our bodies and materializing our souls seems to be the spiritual quest.

From world weary woman,  

 

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from the world weary woman

a beautiful excerpt from World Weary Woman: her wound and transformation by a Jungian analyst- Cara Barker. let the soulful inner voice be respected, expressed and heard…

“we forget that these weary ones are not the pathology they wear. they are experts themselves in this approach. they have made it a full time job to change, alter, cut away, suck out, like liposuction, anything which seems imperfect, too human, too ordinary, too plain, too small. so here they sit across from me… mirror mirror on the wall. part of them only too willing to take on another project. yet another time willing to do whatever the outer world asks… willing to prove, prod, produce more competence, exude more charm. willing to please, perform, just one more time.

meanwhile outside in waiting room, the Other one, their woman number two, sits silently and invisibly. she knows how to wait. she knows how to hear again the theory, the idea, the expert opinion, the terminal judgment of her as “case.” she sighs grown weary, she the neglected one fatigued by the other’s penchant for perfection is tired. pure and simple exhaustion. sinking back into the couch with weary achy bones and muscles, not to mention heart and lagging spirit, she sighs once more. the spiritual fibromyalgia runs deeper than any diagnostic code. maybe this time. if only this once the door would open for her turn, her movement, her chance, her niche, her voice and mark. if only there would be a place for her hands and feet, her belly and breasts, her backside, to wiggle and shimmy, to rock and roll, to bump and grind, simply because it pleases her.

woman. sheer unadulterated woman. instincts. good reliable instinctual nature gone dormant for too long. not a blasphemy to god but a blessing of creation. absolved at last from a sin that never was: the one of owning her original innocence.”

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it’s worth it

emerald lake

we visited the rocky mountain national park this weekend. it was our first trip to Colorado. we had heard stories of altitude sickness, and being neurotic hypochondriacs, we were sure we will be nauseated and dizzy. so we went to the park, drove to bear lake, and we were done with no plans to hike, we’re city people and we’ve never really been “hiking.”

but something kept calling me to explore. there was something about the place that required a deeper level of connection and intimacy, not a touch and go but a real visit.

the names “nymph lake,” “dream lake”  and “emerald lake” enticed me. if a place is called “dream lake” there must be something about it that inspires the spirit. so wearing flip flops and with no plans to hike, we started following the signs and trekking up.

(the 2.5 miles was a very short hike in relative terms, but…) we were getting short of breath, tired, dehydrated, and ran out of water. and it was all uphill. my husband, more cynical than me, was not impressed by my whim to follow these names. he wanted to turn around and return. his fears included running into wild animals, getting lost, getting sick. my fear was he’d be right or it would really not be worth it.

the journey was quite beautiful all the way. there was a view of the mountains everywhere we turned, there were random water falls and streams, there were little carpets of snow that did not melt yet for the shade… yet our impatience to get to the lakes and back, kept us in a bit of a hurry and the bickering didn’t help.

as we kept walking, and it seemed like we’d never find the lakes, we asked people returning on the trail whether the lakes are up front. and twice, two different parties coming back said “keep going, it’s worth it.”

sometimes we would just hear the sound of water and believe we are close. sometimes we would reach a particularly steep area, look up, be intimidated and want to turn around. sometimes we felt lost and almost convinced ourselves we’d never find it.

nymph lake

and when we reached, it was PEACE.

the pictures and the words do not describe what you see for yourself. perhaps if i go again searching for “it,” it may not be the same again. but this time it was pure oneness. like plopping down on the sofa after a long day, it made sense to be there and it didn’t matter how hard it was to get there. it was like a big exhale and reaching home. it was pure wonderment and gratefulness and awe at the universe and all the secrets it holds if we seek to find them.

to state the obvious, this seemed very much like the spiritual journey or what joseph campbell called, the hero’s journey. there was a call that demanded to be answered, there was struggle, difficulty, wanting to turn back. there was impatience about wanting to get to our destination and a lack of appreciation of the beauty that was already around. there were people who had seen “the view” and encouraged others on their way, there were people who were skeptical and it all made sense.

lookout on the way

in fact the return was archetypal too. i’d have loved to pitch a tent and just stay there. that’s what it felt like in the moment anyways. but we couldn’t just live there. we had to come back and on the way it rained and stormed and we told some other people “it’s worth it.” i had to smile about how glorious that rain felt, being refreshed by a cool mountain rain in the forests was the perfect end to the trip.

when i wonder about what would have happened if we just stayed there… what comes to mind is how we get accustomed to bliss if we stay there long enough… it’s not a “high” anymore. in fact if we stop growing and our energy starts getting bored and dormant, we may even start finding faults with bliss. if i pitched a tent there, i know i would have complained about the mosquitoes.

in the end, answering such calls of spirit seem to be worth it, all the way, even when it does not seem like it. as joseph campbell said “follow your bliss.”

dream lake

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