Embodiment: The Wedding of Creature and Spirit
Based on Jeannie’s opening talk from the Embodiment Essentials Retreat in April, 2021.
When we float in presence, without requirement to figure out or handle anything, resting as noticing awareness, we let our breath slow, our bodies soften, as we dissolve into oceanic being. From there we let everything be idle as we soothe and soften, unincorporated, a field of vibrating isness. The simple fact of our own existence, the simplicity of “I am…” allows us to vacation from everyday concerns, enjoying our existence for itself.
As we notice the feel of breath, the sounds, thoughts flowing through, we can see that everything washes up on the shore of noticing presence. Everything arises in it effortlessly and we have a front row seat to creation, as it is displaying itself, an alive miracle. We expand, we fly, we rest as knowing essence, as light. We glimpse who and what we are. And before we know it, it’s time to get up. Off the cushion we go, into the clatter and triggers of everyday life. How do we embody this that we love the most, this that we are?
We use the word embodiment like we know what it is – but embody what? Many of us have those special moments where we feel like we're floating free of a personal self, as rich and exultant presence. Essence bugling out its glory through our hearts. We are here to embody THAT, to the tips of our toes–every breath, every activity–and to embody its beauty, its peace, its kindness, its innocence, its wonder, its unity, its tenderness, and its clarity here on earth. Our bodies: the pen in the poet’s hand, the voice of the opera singer, the chisel of the sculptor. The body is a sacred instrument for the purpose of bringing light to Earth.
This is no drive-thru, snap-your-fingers kind of thing, as the body has been conditioned to be used for many other things besides this effortless expression of Holy love. For most of us it's been the pack animal of conditioning, unconsciously driven, attempting to be a good one, staying one step ahead of potential harm and blame, listening outside to the din of the world and its commands and threats. What we long for is to listen to and live from the shine in the heart, to the Holy whispering “beauty, beauty, beauty” in a never-ending song that many of us forget how to tune into with the challenges of daily living.
So one aspect of embodiment is to turn toward this inner voice, to get to know–not in the mind, but in our experience–who we are. Who is this who eats this tofu? Who is this who brushes these teeth? Slowly, we can question and loosen the ancient ideas of who we are as we free ourselves to float in the unknown, in the free, in the simple, and begin to see ourselves as we are: beautiful, free, wildly creative, innocent.
To tune into the process of embodiment, you might imagine resting in the womb, experiencing the beginnings of life on earth: the tiniest sense of weight, of sound, of feel. Gestation is a slow entry into the world, a couple cells joining and gradually forming a complete flesh house of the spirit. Nine months of a beach vacation without the beach, fed, hydrated, protected, carried, so that consciousness can slowly find its way to marry flesh as a paradoxical wedding of heaven and earth.
Unless there's intervention or disturbance, that whole process is managed by the organic flow of life at a natural pace. And if it's going well, everything that we need for that developmental period of spirit coming to earth is given. Very little is asked of us in the first nine months–just to exist as flow. Then, starting with birth, there is so much more for our sensitive little bodies embodying consciousnesses to handle. We come out into a world that is often overwhelming. Loud, harsh sounds, weird energies to meet and digest, limbs to experiment with and use, gravity to get to know. And still the organic movement of our development is unfolding us, our curiosity leading us, as we get used to meeting things on the outside, as we get to know need and the gap before the world responds to our need–sometimes a small gap, sometimes a huge gap, sometimes a devastating gap. We get to know relating and the nature of that. Our body, and its relationship to the world.
As long as we think of awakening and embodiment as a fast-food drive-thru, to press a button and be fully formed, free and functional, we are going to be flogging ourselves for where we actually are. The complex, multifaceted nature of being a lit, soft, living force in this world, of growing legs under our open and tender hearts, is stunning. The task of learning to walk as light and openness in a place that is so assaulting to the senses and often so insulting to the heart is a mighty one. Faced with so many tasks and human brethren who are largely asleep, awkward and harsh, and ignorant of what we are and what we need, never mind unable to deliver it, and what we are for and what we are here to be, it’s a wonder any of us come fully to earth as embodied light.
So part of embodiment is sobering–and we must apply noticing presence, mercy and forgiveness to where we are as we dream of what is possible. We start to sail our ships into the very building blocks of becoming a developed human. Part of what is needed is to bring spiritual teachings down to the ground, to the elemental level where they can be integrated at the pace of nature, at the pace of the body. The pace of the mind dictates that everything should happen as soon as it can think of it and that the manager of our embodiment is the separate will rather than the organic wisdom we share with the rest of nature. The embodiment process is replete with places where we get to see things as they are, burn off the shame and mortification, apply mercy, and find a way to be supported to truly and deeply and thoroughly arrive here as embodied essence.
On the way, we may be denied what we need, and given more to handle than our systems could possibly address. And this is not necessarily a mistake. It seems this is how things happen here on earth. We came to earth school – we didn't come to utopia. We came to this clunky planet where people beat each other over the head with sticks and stones, where gravity holds us to the earth, where bodies get sick and die. Only an idealizing mind would claim it should not be this way. We've come to earth, and, as far as I can tell, we've come here to have an earth walk and that walk generally has some level of challenge to it. And what assignments each of us gets here is a great mystery. Yet one thing is clear–the way that these creatures build capacity to live here wide open is by experimenting and being supported in this experimentation to unfold and develop at their own pace.
It was amazing to watch how many times my baby girl would repeat something with her mouth, or with her hands, performing the same movement again and again. She would sit in her high chair rolling her friend Rivala’s name over and over on her tongue in a chant: Walla, Balla, Walla, Balla – getting used to her mouth, her sounds, her love, her play. She would shake her rattle back and forth, back and forth, or play with her fingers as though her fingers were the only thing in the universe. Watching her have new experiences, I could see she wasn’t ready to learn something new until she had digested what she had already taken in. Emotional response, rest, integration time supported her forays into exploration.
It's a big deal for spirit to come to earth. There is so much to digest, to learn, to make sense of and to master. And a huge part of the work of spiritual embodiment is to reintroduce and honor the sacredness, beauty and goodness of the creature of the body. Spiritual embodiment does not consist of skipping over the body as though it doesn't exist or abusing it to get somewhere good. We have built into our conditioning an almost complete disconnection from the corporeal and often we carry that right into our spiritual seeking, as though the point of evolution is to leave here rather than fully arrive here.
Those of us who turn towards spirit sail our boats toward a realm outside the mind that is largely unacknowledged in our culture. “All my life I have been looking,” sings Donovan, “for that which I cannot see.” We have trouble putting words to it and long to be seen as essence in a world that considers this vital part of life as beside the point. Many around us are suspicious of this hard-to-express realm that matters more to us than anything external.
When we persist in this exploration, we come to see that the creature of the body is also systematically devalued–its feelings, its knowing. We are discouraged from digesting our experience through the body’s natural pull to weep or shake or pause to make sense of things. A bad baby is a baby who feels a lot. A good baby is one who smiles. No wonder we stuff our feelings and shut down our natural processes in order to be approved of.
When we come into the world, we are squishy, soft and open. All we know is presence and felt experience. Our culture leaves spirit largely unacknowledged, except for church on Sunday, and devalues the brilliance and needs of the creature of the body, and so we develop a middleman, the ego, who can pursue happiness, who can be evaluated. We are set up to run in the wrong direction, toward building and investing in and thinking about and talking about and celebrating something that is mostly irrelevant.
To walk toward embodiment is to walk away from conditioning, from outdated patterns, from identification with a personal self, with our identity as a good and well-performing one, and to walk toward exploring essence and the simple, innocent, felt experience of the creature of the body. And to watch how consciousness and felt experience move of their own organic accord when we stop fueling our activity with fear and an addiction to becoming. This is the field outside of right doing and wrongdoing that Rumi spoke of, where noticing presence simply notices felt experience and, organically, learning and creating and loving happen. As we are allowed and supported to be the learning animals that we are, we dance freely here as love.
And this happens only right here, right now, as we discover what's true and what's not true, for ourselves. We shed the limits that we have been fed by the culture and discover what our actual limits are.
You are a beautiful hybrid and, as you sit where you are, I invite you to acknowledge the noticing presence that you are. And see how this being notices the signs of creature-ness that are found in the felt experience of weight, breath, heartbeat–basically, what you have in common with an orangutan. Creatures have a genius. Creatures need kindness in order to thrive–safe space within which to learn and unfold. So I invite you to take a few moments noticing your own presence, and the felt experience of the body’s creature-ness. And then you can notice the conditioned mind, as it butts in with its evaluations and grading system.
Ibn ‘Arabi, the amazing Sufi sheikh, calls us a wedding of heaven and earth–paradoxical beings. He describes being human as a perplexity, which is another way of saying a mystery. That we can both experience ourselves as vast oceanic light in our highest spiritual moments, and then walk into a cabinet door or have trouble tying our shoes. This perplexity is a paradox. Whenever we approach a paradox, he says, we have to shift from one foot to the other, because the mouth can't speak paradox, except through poetry. And so we have to talk about the creature, and then we have to talk about light and move back and forth between them, but they aren't two. They are the Holy’s beautiful game as the coin spins with its two “sides.” I am, and it’s like this. And so it's possible to sit here as a human, to feel creaturely and simultaneously, and paradoxically, live as light.