But recently — watching my children, watching your children, watching all of us — I realized we’re falling into a different kind of abyss: the collective digital septic pit.
Right now, as you read this, feel the weight of your body wherever you are and whisper this: Without this body, I do not exist as a human being. Without this body, I cannot experience life. Without this body, my pure connection with the divine cannot evolve in this lifetime. Feel that truth — until it lives as presence.
Today we live in three worlds: – The mental world (in your head) – The digital world (hijacking your attention) – The real world — your body (where you spend maybe 10 percent of your day)And with any more reduction of time living in our bodies? We are committing slow, peaceful suicide.
When we live cut off from the body, the cost is everywhere — in our health, our emotions, and our children. The numbers are staggering: the CDC reports that 60 percent of teenage girls experience depression, 40 percent consider suicide, and nearly one in three have attempted it. More than statistics, these are signals from a world that has drifted too far from embodiment — from the simple, sustaining connection with life that begins in the body. This isn’t only about our kids. It’s about all of us.
With T’ai Chi we can again experience what it feels like when the mind quiets, the body reawakens, and energy begins to flow freely again.
In this very short reading from my new book. I summarize why the Universe is mysterious to us and always will be. For a thorough explanation of this you can find my book on Amazon.
The acceptance of a creative force or source can only bring us to a conclusion of an inherent acceptance of ourselves as being a part of the Divine itself. If the Divine energy creates the great oneness of all things; physical beings, sentient beings, universes, dimensions, even the space that exists between planets, universes and dominions, then we as human beings are an expression of the Divine and this beautiful love-energy. We are not separate from it. We are here to play our part in the work in the great oneness. This beautiful divine thought of creation. Shaolin Buddhist Temple, Slane, Co. Meath, Ireland
Therefore, the body is deeply sacred indeed. The body is a beautiful expression of the spirit come to life. This view about body and spirit has been described by Jorge N. Ferrer, professor of religious psychology as “embodied spirituality.” He wrote that:“Embodied spirituality regards the body as subject, as the home of the complete human being, as a source of spiritual insight, as a microcosm of the universe and the Mystery, and as pivotal for enduring spiritual transformation. The body is not an “It” to be objectified and used for the goals or even spiritual ecstasies of the conscious mind, but a “Thou,” an intimate partner with whom the other human dimensions can collaborate in the pursuit of ever-increasing forms of liberating wisdom.”
For Ferrer the body is the home of the complete human being. It is the physical reality in which we live. It is through the body that we both literally and metaphorically walk our own unique path. The mistake that so many religious understandings have made is that they have seen the body as the prison of the soul. Something that the spirit or soul needs to be liberated from. He claims that the mystery of incarnation never suggested that spirit entered into the body but that the spirit became flesh. To quote John’s Gospel “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh.” Through our bodies, our lives, the way we live our lives the spirit comes to life. We are here for a reason, life truly means something and it is our task to bring that something to life, through our lives, through our bodily existence.
Embodied spirituality is about fully inhabiting our lives, our thoughts, our feelings our relationships with ourselves, our lives, each other and the mystery that connects all life. It’s about being fully present in our bodies and lives and therefore fully experiencing our potential, being fully alive. The body is not just a suit that clothes our being. It is through the body that we experience what it is to be fully alive. They say “listen to your body”, sage wisdom indeed. For me the body is not a separate entity to spirit, I cannot agree with this dualistic view, it seems to me that it is through the body that spirit comes alive and further through the body that the spirit is fed.
Embodied spirituality views every aspect of our humanity, whether that be body, spirit, heart, mind and consciousness as equal partners in bringing the self, community and world into a fuller alignment with the mystery that brings into being all life, while at the same time connects all life. I suspect it’s a kind of panentheism, that sees all life as being in God and that God is in all life and that little or perhaps infinite more. It sees the full engagement of the body as being vital to spiritual growth and transformation.Rev. Danny Crosby
‘The body is a quantum coherent organism which creates and recreate herself from moment to moment.” Mae -Wan Ho likes to call this process “Quantum jazz”, which is the music of the organism dancing life into being. She goes on to write that: “Quantum jazz is played out by the whole organism, in every nerve and sinew, every muscle, every single cell, molecule, atom, and elementary particle, a light and sound display that spans seventy octaves in all the colors of the rainbow. There is no conductor or choreographer. Quantum jazz is written while it is being performed; each gesture, each phrase is new, shaped by what has gone before, though not quite. The organism never ceases to experience her environment, taking it in (entangling it) for future reference, modifying her liquid crystalline matrix and neural circuits, recoding and rewriting her genes. Quantum coherence is the ‘I’ in everyone that gives unity to conscious experience.”
As we can see from these examples of a new understanding about the significance of biological regulation and coherence of the organism, the previously intuitive construct of the “Cartesian Theater” in the brain, wherein the self sits as a spectator on the world and self acts as the CEO executive of all decision making, is exposed as an illusion. Clearly, the biologically based core functions of organization, selectivity, and coherence are necessary for organism survival. The abstracted cognitive embellishments serve as relative, convenient designations or identifications, which constructs a virtual presence of the ‘self’ illusion, and is based in ignorance, and through steadfast identification creates craving and suffering. Only now are we able to empirically support the Buddha’s insights of ‘anatta or no-self’ which he gained through the introspective practice of bhavana, or meditation.
Other living species such as flowers have striking leaf patterns visible only in the ultraviolet range of the spectrum, something that can only attract the attention of their pollinators, such as bees. A consequence of perceptual relativity and the observer-dependent universe is the realization that human’s worldview comprehends relatively little of what is available; hence, claimed hu man knowledge and awareness of the external world and universe should be approached with guidance. In fact, individually, at any one moment, we each know a very small amount of our humanity’s total knowledge and our species knows very little of how the universe really is. Our sensory apparatus was designed by evolution to help us in our everyday lives, enabling us to survive and thrive in our environment, but it is not designed to help us understand the complexity of the universe. None of us can know any absolute truths; our human minds are by their accustomed finite subject-object relationships in relativity. The best we can do is know many relative truths, some being much better relative truths than others.While relative certainty and wisdom are necessary for us in our everyday lives, ultimately, the fact that no human can know an absolute truth should lead people to accept that uncertainty is a natural response to this lack of knowledge.
God is “incomprehensible and immeasurable, beyond the grasp of the human mind.” “Human minds cannot behold God as He is in Himself” Origen of Alexandria
“He is celebrated by all beings according to the analogy that all things bear to him as their Cause. But the most divine knowledge of God, that in which he is known through unknowing, according to the union that transcends the mind, happens when the mind, turning away from all things, including itself, is united with the dazzling rays, and there and then illuminated in the unsearchable depth of wisdom” “The most Godlike knowledge of God is that which is known by unknowing.” Pseudo Dionysius
theology does “not start by making the assumption of defining God; as St John Damascene remarks, In God we cannot say what he is” “What God actually is always remains hidden from us. And this is the highest knowledge one can have of God in this life, that we know Him to be above every thought that we are able to think of Him” Thomas Aquinas
“Entering the darkness that surpasses understanding, we shall find ourselves brought, not just to brevity of speech, but to perfect silence and unknowing.” philosopher-monk
“what He is by His essence and nature, this is altogether beyond our comprehension and knowledge” John of Damascus
“He who thinks that God is not comprehended, by him God is comprehended; but he who thinks that God is comprehended knows him not,God is unknown to those who know him and is known to those who do not know him at all.” Kena Upanishads
“The essence of your knowledge of Him, O my brother, is your firm admission that you are completely ignorant of His true essence” Baya ibn Pakudah
“In the contemplation of His essence, our comprehension and knowledge prove insufficient; in the examination of His works, how they necessarily result from His will, our knowledge proved to be ignorance, and in the endeavour to extol Him in words, all our efforts in speech are mere weakness and failure” Maimonides
“From the sayings of some early kabbalists, it is apparent that they are careful not even to ascribe personality to God. Since He is beyond everything—beyond even imagination, thought, or will—nothing can be said of him that is within the grasp of our thought” Gershom Scholem
God is “above and beyond all categories of human thought and imagination, for He is beyond all that they describe of Him” (Q. 6:100b, cited in Nasr 1987:314). He is One Who“cannot be comprehended by vision” (Q. 6:101); “Vision comprehendeth Him not,but He comprehendeth [all] vision.” He is One Incomparable: “There is naught like unto Him” (Q.42:11; cf. 16:60; 32:27). He is supremely “All-High, Transcendent or Exalted” (al-`alíy Q. 4:34; 22:62; 31:30). Qur‘án
‘The Divine Essence (al-dhát al-iláhiyya) cannot be understood by the rational faculty”. “The Divine Essence is transcendent above the cosmos, independent of the worlds” Ibn `Arabá
“none knows Allah with a real knowledge but He Himself; for every known falls necessarily under the sway and within the province of the Knower” Abu Hámid al-Ghazali
“Regard thou the one true God (ḥaqq) as One Who is apart from, and immeasurably exalted above, all created things. The whole universe reflects His glory, while He is Himself independent of, and transcendeth His creatures. This is the true meaning of Divine Unity(tawḥíd)” Baha’
“Immeasurably exalted is His Essence above the descriptions of His creatures… The birds of men’s hearts, however high they soar, can never hope to attain the heights of His unknowable Essence… Far be it from His glory that human pen or tongue should hint at His mystery, or that human heart conceive His Essence” Bahá’u’lláh
“The Formless Way: We look at it and do not see it; it is invisible. We listen to it and do not hear it; it is inaudible. We touch it and do not feel it; it is intangible. These three elude our inquiries and merge into one.” “The unity is said to be the mystery. Mystery of mysteries, the door to all wonders.”Laozi
We are all Interconnected even with the Universe 