'Love it. Love it Hard'
The body, in all its sensitivity and strength, holds more wisdom than the mind can name. What if the path back to peace begins not in thought, but in flesh?
“In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard.” —Toni Morrison.
What do we know of the secret lives of our bodies?
It’s becoming clear to me that my body is speaking with life in ways I cannot fully name or explain but can feel. She has been moving through the world with her ear pressed to the drum of the earth. She hears what my mind can barely grasp. She feels what my mind cannot hold.
Even as the world pulls itself apart in visible and unbearable ways, I have come to believe that there is another current, mainly flowing unnoticed. It does not erase suffering. It does not excuse it. But it continues beneath it.
Though the body can be used to wound, it can also become the altar of return. I have felt mine soften in places I could not name. I have watched it tremble without reason, open without story, remember without prompt, as if it were mid-conversation with something holy.
Beneath the violence, beneath the severing, beneath belief itself, a sacred exchange is still happening. Even in the darkest corners of our world, every human being carries a body that knows how to speak with life. Knows how to listen. Knows how to kneel.
A deeper conversation is still taking place. One, our minds cannot hear, but our bodies can. A conversation of repair. Of remembering. Of return.
And though I do not always understand it, I can feel it pulling me toward presence, toward coherence, toward something that might one day be called love.
Sitting cross-legged on a grey, mottled carpet, I watch blades of morning light cut through the blinds. I feel the early dawn informing my body of its gladness.
The body loves to commune with dawn and her skirt of golden light. It adores touching the earth with hips and thighs, feeling time pass through it, gravity settle into it. It watches light swirl with motes of dust and does not hurry or overlook this ordinary moment.
As I settle into the warmth of my body's contentment, a shrill voice breaks through:
"This joy can't last. What will you do when the dark comes back?"
But anchored in the body's quiet receptivity, I respond:
"Whatever comes, we will trust."
When the mind is still and quiet, you can hear the body and life speaking to each other. They are in love. I know this because I can feel it, resting like a feather on water, in the pause between moments, the space between breaths. The soft pulse of my being remembers itself outside the wild mind. It rests, content, on the current of its own becoming, on the brine of its life.
Often, my mind interrupts the conversation, offering suggestions, fears, and considerations. A staccato of noise cut through stillness. Peace is punctured by the aggressive, habitual rumination of my mind.
Countless conversations are happening inside me all at once. And if you were to listen closely, you'd hear that each voice is right in its own way.
I am, at once, serene and rattling with racket. A being inside a body suspended in the tension of both.
And finally, I am beginning to let myself be. To trust the topography of my life, the love forged in the Heart of earnest struggle—and, perhaps most importantly, the love I hold for my body.
There is nothing in me (or in you) that needs to be persecuted or oppressed, battled or abandoned, tamed or transcended.
What is compassion but drifting through the immensity of life with an open heart?
A place we arrive only by attuning to the quiet world within us, returning to ourselves, our bodies, lovingly.
I wasn't fully aware that my body was having a conversation with life, independent of my awareness until I began sitting daily with the trees. Nature does not appeal to the mind; it speaks directly to the water and bone of the body. To the viscera. The mind is often the last to understand what the body and life are saying to each other.