In discovering a new way of thinking and experiencing the body, we enter a new way of perceiving the Earth, of which the body is a part. Human beings with all of their thoughts and all of their ideas, are enveloped within the atmosphere of this planet. An atmosphere which circulates both inside and outside of our bodies. A primordial unity between the visible and the invisible realms of life. The senses of the body being the mediating portal into these visible and invisible realms. Attentiveness to the body enables us to stop, and locate our selves within the depths of a living Body much larger than our own… the Earth Body.
Our scientists now finding out what the ancients knew and held sacred. That all beings; both humans and non-human are “interconnected.” We weren’t placed here as a separate creation. Our human body emerged out of a “community of subjects, not objects, of which the Earth is but one (Berry,1999). Experiencing the Body as a living breathing process, places the human back into connection with a living breathing biosphere. From there we co-create, or bring forth a new world, rather than responding to a “given reality” out there.
Making meaning and place in our lives by rooting and deepening into the Earth is something humans have been doing long before words. Forty thousand years ago we were living in caves and shaping clay to represent ourselves in relation to other beings in the universe. Human knowledge of relationships with the land, animals that shared the land, and the cosmos were carved into stone and hand-printed in ochre to share with others. We emerged in a co-creative process with all of life. This co- creative process shaped our human biology and our human psyche.
Radical human change in consciousness cannot happen without embracing the body. The body as a way of knowing and expressing what is known, has shamanic roots all around the planet. It has been a true source of living intelligence that the ancients drew from in their healing oracles. Denying this intelligence gives us a distorted knowledge perspective. It is denial of this intelligence, and our inter-connection with all other beings in the biosphere, that has led to our current level of environmental degradation. The need for more embodied ecological consciousness is urgent, and our body is a good ground to start on. It is the mediating existence between ourselves, and the rest of the universe. It is our connection to all of life.
Recent Comments