Embodiment: Awakening Occurs in a Body
Today I’ve been thinking how very esoteric the terms ‘waking up’ or ‘enlightenment’ often sound, and how very divorced from our bodies and our human experience they are ‘advertised’ to be. One of my early fantasies about being ‘awake’ was that all physical and emotional distress would somehow disappear with ‘waking up.’ With my 13 year old nephew suddenly and currently fighting for his life, I can tell you that the latter is definitely NOT true. There were other ‘enlightenment myths,’ some passed down via spiritual traditions and religions, and some made up by my own fantasy-oriented mind.
One thing that most people who ‘wake up’ know for sure is that the way we ‘sense into,’ intuit, or ‘feel into’ Awareness is through the body. The body can be perceived as a ‘receiver’ of Awareness, a ‘transmitter’ of Awareness, or perhaps both. The Absolute or Awareness or Consciousness takes form in, as, and through these bodies. The body isn’t something that needs to be ‘wrestled into submission’ as if it’s the origin of sin, or starved into submission (starved either from food, or sex, or human contact), or treated as an ignorant and destructive ‘thing.’ It is a living form of The Absolute.
Just as it takes the perception of the body to begin to intuit Awareness or The Absolute, so it takes listening to the body, its physical sensations, and its emotions (a subset of physical sensations, entirely composed of them) to live an awakened life. Though the body is temporal (most cells are being replaced at some regular pace), it is more reliable than the ego-mind in terms of the accuracy of its reporting. It is also the vehicle through which The Absolute serves and knows Itself in Its many other forms (animals, plants, inanimate objects, human beings).
Waking up, doesn’t produce freedom from physical pain, disease or death. It doesn’t automatically produce freedom from all deeply held traumas (such as in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), or from physiological reactions to physical dangers. It doesn’t produce physical perfection, in short. Perhaps a few mythical human beings have moved into some exalted and perfected physical state but, the vast majority of people who wake up are still subject to every human, physical limitation. Some of the well-known masters even died of cancer. It does, however, offer a brilliant, clear, unobstructed view of Reality….much to be appreciated and grateful for.
May all people who read this ‘wake up’ in this lifetime: it is possible!