Divining the Body

Jan Phillips

Description

Honor Your Body as the Instrument of Your Soul

This book is an attempt to undo the damage we’ve sustained living in a culture that thrives on our self-hatred. It is a sanctification of our human bodies, a consecration of ourselves as hosts to the Great Beloved. It is a journey of awe and reverence through the sacred terrain of foot and hand, back and breast, heart and brain. The path to peace is the pathway through ourselves, starting with the inward step, the brave, gentle step toward the Divine within.
—from the Introduction

Our view of the human body is always evolving. From the goddess-worship of civilizations millennia ago, to the strict social rules of Victorian England, to the modern feminist movement, the human body—particularly the feminine body—has always been a point of interest, mystery, and contention.

Discover an entirely new way to look at your body—as a pathway to the Divine. Award-winner Jan Phillips takes you on an energizing journey through your physical self, drawing connections between the bone, muscle, and sinew of your body and the spiritual teachings of various faith traditions, modern scientific research, and her own experiences. You will find yourself empowered to work to transform the world around you and overcome self-defeating thoughts through positive, practical exercises and meditations that show you how to climb back into your body and honor it as the temple of God that it is.

Sujets

• personal Growth
• Inspiration

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 07 juin 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781594734533
• Langue: English

Extrait

To the Divine in each of us
Contents I NTRODUCTION
1. A D EEP S TEP INTO G OD feet
2. L OVE OF THE D ANCE legs
3. T HE W HOLE W ORLD IN O UR H ANDS hands
4. N O H OLDING B ACK back
5. S EXUALITY AND THE S ACRED generative organ s
6. T HE H OURGLASS D RESS belly
7. T HE H EART OF THE M ATTER heart
8. P RAISING O UR O WN G EOGRAPHY breasts
9. C LAIMING O UR V OICE throat
10. L ET S H EAR I T FOR THE E ARS ears
11. S EEING O UR W AY C LEAR eyes
12. A C ELL IN THE R IGHT B RAIN OF G OD brain
N OTES
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
About the Author
Copyright
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About SkyLight Paths
Introduction
Many of us are told as children that our bodies are temples of God, houses of the Holy Spirit, and that within our very beings exists a spark of the Divine itself. Following this joyful pronouncement, we also learn that our bodies are dirty, shameful, not to be touched, enjoyed, played with. We re taught to deny ourselves pleasure, to fight temptation, to hold back, to go without, to resist carnal connection.
The Imitation of Christ , attributed to Thomas Kempis, was first published in Latin over five hundred years ago and remains in print today. It has been translated into dozens of languages and has a reputation as being second only to the Bible as a guide and inspiration to Christian believers. In a modern translation, we read: Sometimes you must use violence and resist your sensual appetite bravely. You must pay no attention to what the flesh does or does not desire, taking pains that it be subjected, even by force, to the spirit. And it should be chastised and forced to remain in subjection until it is prepared for anything and is taught to be satisfied with little. You must know that self-love is more harmful to you than anything else in the world. You should give all for all and in no way belong to yourself.
It was this contradiction, this kind of training, that kept me confused and disembodied for the better part of my life. I grew up reading The Imitation of Christ every night before bed, from age eleven through thirteen. I was trying to be as good a Christian as I could be, and I thought if I read that book, I d end up being more Christlike. But its message only helped me sever my soul from my body, kept me from tuning in to its urgent, loving messages, fortified a fear that all light was outside me and all darkness within.
The great tragedy of Western religion is that it elevates disembodied love over embodied love, leading us to believe that it is better to be out of our bodies than in them. Even in the dictionary, the definition for carnal , which simply means of the flesh, is charged with the added connotation: usually stresses the absence of intellectual or moral influence.
It s not specifically a Roman Catholic upbringing such as mine that will create this division from the body, for this mentality has pervaded our cultures and religious traditions for thousands of years. Cultural anthropologists tell us that there was a time when humankind honored its oneness with the natural world and lived in peaceful, full-bodied harmony with nature. But as broader social organization developed, as religion became codified in language and in hierarchy, and as the intellectual became dominant over the physical, we began to separate our souls from our bodies. We forgot we were sparks from the same flame, waves of the same sea, that as much as the Divine is around us, the Divine is within us, experiencing itself through every sense in our bodies. The journey of our lives is a journey of remembering and reconnecting. It is a journey of joy and discovery, a chance to feel and reveal the radiance within. The spiritual path leads inward, for the beloved dwells there in every cell, like the oak in the acorn, the jewel in the mine. The great secret within us is waiting to be told through the living of our lives, waiting to be shared through the pleasures of our senses.
We need to climb back into our bodies and honor them as instruments of our souls. They are the means through which the Divine takes shape in this world, crucibles in which the raging blaze of spirit is transformed into luminous thought, radiant creations, enlightened action. We are the word made flesh, and through our bodies, we are continuing the creation of the universe, physically and metaphysically. It is not happening to us, but through us-and the meaning we re seeking, the deep joy and passion we re after, the enlightenment we long for, all this arrives as we begin to re-pair what cultures and creeds have torn asunder.
In the process of divining our bodies, we embody the Divine as the mystics did. We feel the beloved in every cell, sense the sacred one in every heartbeat, every touch, every image our eyes encounter, every sound our ears behold. Transcending duality, we shift from a sense of self and other to a sense of self in other. When we embrace the Divine within ourselves, it becomes natural to find and love the Divine in others. It is our nature to do this. If we love ourselves tenderly, that feeling of compassion and kindness will seep out of us and transform every relationship in our lives.
This book is an attempt to undo the damage we ve sustained living in a culture that thrives on our self-hatred. It is a sanctification of our human bodies, a consecration of ourselves as hosts to the Great Beloved. It is a journey of awe and reverence through the sacred terrain of foot and hand, back and breast, heart and brain. The path to peace is the pathway through ourselves, starting with the inward step, the brave, gentle step toward the Divine within. Godspeed to us all.
1
A Deep Step into God
A secret turning in us makes the universe turn. Head unaware of feet, and feet head. Neither cares. They keep turning.
-Rumi
Our feet are our connection to Mother Earth. They ground us, balance us, take us wherever we choose on our journey to wholeness. They are the part of our sacred garment of flesh that allows us to move toward others in communion, toward nature in a quest for quiet, to other lands and cultures for adventure and learning. Our feet draw in energy from the earth every moment of our lives, as our lungs draw in air, our eyes draw in images, our ears draw in sounds. Heaven and earth converge in our bodies, entering in through the crowns of our heads and the soles of our feet. Our feet are sacred portals, thresholds over which great energy enters us from Mother Earth.
In different spiritual traditions, the feet have been a symbol in many teachings. It is said that from the soles of his feet the Buddha radiated a light that looked like a wheel of a thousand spokes. Some claim that this wheel symbolizes the respect that the Buddha had for his teachers and the actions he performed to show that respect. Some claim that Buddha s life was his teacher and that he followed in his own footsteps. Either way, temples around the world contain replicas of the feet of Buddha, and various Buddhist texts affirm that whoever looks upon the footprints of the Buddha shall be freed from the bonds of error, and conducted upon the Way of Enlightenment.
Today, the footprints of the Buddha are venerated in all Buddhist countries, reminding followers to walk in his footprints by being present to the ordinariness of everyday life and alert to every opportunity for compassionate self-giving.
In the Hindu tradition, the word Upanishad (meaning to sit near) evokes an image of students or devotees sitting at the feet of a master. The spiritual texts of the Upanishads were composed over a time span of a thousand years, centuries before the birth of Jesus. They contain the highest wisdom revealed to illumined sages in the depths of meditation. Eknath Easwaran, a respected modern translator of the Upanishads, describes them as ecstatic snapshots of supreme reality and adds that unlike other great scriptures that look outward in reverence and awe, the Upanishads look inward, finding the powers of nature only an expression of the more awe-inspiring powers of human Consciousness.
The wisdom of the Upanishads is a realized and embodied wisdom, felt in the marrow of the bones. Sitting at the feet of a master is a step on the way to self-mastery. By placing ourselves in the presence of one who has experienced the Divine in his or her own spaciousness, we can learn the practices that lead to deeper experience and higher consciousness.

One should worship with the thought that He is one s self, for therein all these become one. The self is the footprint of that All, for by it one knows the All so whoever worships another Divinity than his self, thinking He is me, I am another, knows not.
-U PANISHADS, EIGHTH CENTURY BCE
As the Upanishads were transmitted to disciples at the feet of the masters, so were the teachings of Jesus. And so were his teachings meant to be embodied. So, too, were they about the kingdom within us. When Jesus attempted to wash the feet of his disciples before his arrest, they were unnerved. Never! said Peter. You shall never wash my feet. Jesus was the master, and this was not his role. But his gesture was an attempt to help them become their own masters. Jesus replied to Peter, If I do not wash your feet, you can have nothing in common with me. If I am the Master, then do what I do. I have given you an example so you may do what I have done and wash each other s feet.
Washing another s feet symbolizes recognizing and honoring the Divine in the other. It s about deconstructing the separation between master and student and taking on both roles as we make our way through life. Look within is the message of all the masters. Know that you are gods and love each other and yourself as God is as simple as it gets. We are all teachers to someone, and we are all students of everyone. Every encounter has something to teach us when we become mindful observers of our own lives. Our lessons are in our relationships. Our life is the c