I am from a society that imposes thoughts about the body on its members. The body is valued and devalued according to its ability, strength, weight, beauty, and so on. It has taken many years for me to even partially accept that I am not my body. The idea that I am my body still comes up for me particularly when I give in to the ever-present urge to view myself from the imagined eyes of someone else. At these times, my ability to control my body, to make it conform, becomes of paramount importance to me. Fortunately, my body is generally uncooperative when it senses that it's being asked to conform. My body, perhaps even more so than my mind, eschews authoritarianism and favors a free will approach to life. My best friend is fond of saying that even though she doesn't think that we are our bodies, there are times when it sure is nice to be in one. I totally agree.

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Collecting

Our bodies are sculptures in progress. With each encounter, each interaction, each inhale, and each exhale, the lines of the sculpture are changed. In the beginning, it is the body that allows us to know that we are experiencing. The body craves experiences-- even demands them. However, the body learns quickly that the collection of experiences is not without pain. Our bodies, in fact, become the canvases on which and into which the trials and tribulations of collecting are painted. Like all art, sometimes the images are transparent, the process of collection obvious. Other times, the body collects in symbols, holding the experiences in secrecy in an effort to spare us or spare others from an awareness of how pervasive the effects of mutual engagement can be. In the end, the body is the visible reification of every moment lived.

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Connecting

The body relies on the evaluative power of the senses to determine the desirability of its experiences. Experiences are absorbed by the body indiscriminately, but they do not remain undifferentiated in the body's memory. Unencumbered by social constraints, the body has precise powers of perception that allow it to know the exact relationship between experiences. Our bodies comprehend the connections between causes and effects and strive to reveal these connections to us in very practical ways. Despite our oft-repeated rejection of their teachings, our bodies never fail to imagine for us a day when we, too, see the connections.

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Creating

Our bodies seem quite fragile when compared to our minds or souls. We can see and feel how they are affected by experiences. They are susceptible to the intervention of others. We feel vulnerability in our bodies because they are the element of us that can be limited by forces outside of ourselves. Yet still, we do amazing things with our bodies. We use them to create, to transform what appears as nothingness into somethingness. The mass of the body is both its weakness and its strength. Its tangible mass does expose the body to the consequences of contact both good and bad, but it is in this tangible mass of the body-- when it comes into alignment with other bodies for some purpose-- that the strength of the body is found. Bodies working together realize creation.

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Thoughts in/on/of the Mind

Collecting, Connecting, Creating

The comment has been made to me (or about me) on more than one occasion that "I live in my mind." In fact, recently I was asked, "Don't you ever get tired of thinking?" My answer was, "No." I don't really ever get tired of thinking, though, I'm willing to admit that it might be better for me at times if I did. I take great comfort in thinking and having something to think about. Some people fill their lives with activities; I fill mine with thoughts. For the most part, my love of thinking has served me quite well in my life. However, lately I've become more aware of how I may have been thinking my way out of feeling so while I still love to think, now, I'm trying to be sure that thinking is something that connects me more to what is my truth in any given moment rather than something that separates me from it.

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Collecting

We spend our whole life collecting in one way or another. The mind is a repository for all of the "things" that we collect. Those "things" might be pieces of information, images, memories, ideas, and so on. We collect "things" with all of our senses imagining that we are somehow selecting what will be stored. The senses, however, are wiser, letting everything in and knowing that the mind has a use for all that we experience.
Our experience of collecting is, in fact, our mutual engagement with others, with that which is human, with that which is nature, with all the contexts in which we find ourselves.

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Connecting

Our minds are one of the great mysteries of life. I am often amazed by the connections one's mind can find or generate between the "things" the mind has collected. It's intriguing that our minds can store "things" in ways that hide them even from ourselves. A smell, a sound, a texture can bring into sharp focus a long forgotten memory that is somehow connected to our present circumstances. Unfortunately, we often become too attached to the initial connections that our minds draw or have drawn for them, and we try to shut off the connective mechanism of the mind. Luckily for us, the mind, with the persistence of a cat that wants to see what is behind a closed door, never gives up its desire to discover new connections and simply waits for us to become aware of new possibilities.

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Creating

The work of collecting and connecting provides the raw materials for the grandest work of the mind which is creating. We create the world and ourselves through our abilities to imagine ways of being and align our imaginations with those of others. Our minds, like our souls, allow us to move beyond what we perceive as physical limits and to create freely from the reservoirs of our experience. Like matter that is and cannot cease to be, our experiences are and cannot be denied; they can, however, change form giving life to imaginings beyond our experience. Our imaginings, in turn, can move us into new realms of being and new communities in which to practice these new ways of being.
In this way, we find that the end and the beginning are one as we simultaneously give birth and begin to conceive again.

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Thoughts in/on/of the Soul

Collecting, Connecting, Creating

If the body creates by doing and the mind creates by thinking, the soul creates by being. The soul is our essence-what we are sans body and mind. The soul uses the body and mind to experience itself, but it has its own agenda, its own trajectory. Our soul is our only true source of knowing. Most of us only have access to small bits of the wisdom that our souls carry. This is not because the soul is hiding something from us. On the contrary, the soul desires nothing more than that we know ourselves as souls. The soul longs for us to recognize the gifts that lie inside of each of us (in our souls). However, the soul is process oriented not product oriented so the time we spend in this lifetime or in another lifetime feeling separated from the soul does not diminish it. The soul enjoys the process of our return, no matter how long it takes, because it knows that we cannot fail to return for it is who we really are.

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Collecting

The collections of the soul are of a different sort than those of the body and the mind because the soul's collections are not bound by any sort of time or space that we understand. The soul collects not only from the relationships that we know ourselves to have, but also from those that occur beyond our knowing. The soul doesn't limit itself to only collecting from what we understand as real; it collects from our dreams, from our fantasies, from experiences that we imagine for ourselves. Inside the soul of everyone is the collective memory of everything that was, is, and can be.

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Connecting

The soul, our souls, a soul, is there any real distinction? Is one soul really different from another or are all souls one soul that simply imagines itself divided? If so, what is the point of this division? The Soul knows that wholeness without awareness is insufficient. It is the experience of the process of connection that allows The Soul to become truly aware of what it means to be whole. Thus, The Soul joyfully abandons its wholeness again and again solely for the pleasure of experiencing the discovery of its connections.

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Creating

Divine inspiration is the term used to describe ideas that do not seem to be merely the result of the experiences of the body and mind. We clearly understand that the processes of collecting, connecting, and creating undertaken by our bodies and our minds are not in and of themselves sufficient to explain the grandeur of all creation. There is that which we cannot explain, but which we know must be, that silently accompanies us and assists us in the creation of meaning. For as we go along in life collecting, connecting, and creating with our bodies and minds, we will always feel the pull of The Soul-the pull that says meaning is in the alignment of doing, thinking, and being. If these three are not following the same trajectory, meaning does not exist. Thus, The Soul is the great creator of meaning, the great creator of what is real, for nothing passes into real existence without the blessing of The Soul.

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