Body and Soul

(fatherdavidbirdosb)

"You don't have a soul; you are a soul.

You have a body."

C. S. Lewis

I was at a religious service this morning

that was wholly based upon the above quote.

And I can't agree with it more.

And I just had to post it here.

Those of you who have waded through

some of my past entries, may recall what I've said about our bodies

as our avatars, in the very same sense that humans slipped into other wordly

skin in the film Avatar.  

And that is, 

fundamentally,

what Lewis is saying above.

Specifically, it reminds me of something that I,

Makropoulos,

wrote in a much earlier entry on Second Life:

"You see, I feel that I'm already

in an avatar. 

This body,

I live in,

is my earthly

avatar,

it's the form I chose

to use for 

this stretch of time

on this earthly domain.

I have enough trouble,

and enough fun,

negotiating this earthly

avatar,

why the hell would I need another?"

(Who Needs A Second Life?)

 And I really believe this is true.

We are spiritual essences,

sent to spend a little time

in the material domain.

We're sort of sent on a mission,

the same way the humans were sent on missions

in the film Avatar.

This is why I thought that film

was pretty fabulous,

but also pretty funny,

because it had humans

getting into another form

so they could return to the garden,

so to speak. 

(I write about that elsewhere, too.  Please follow links

to the word "avatar" on the side or below

if you want to see more

of my rambling thoughts

on this.)

The humour of it all is two-fold:

#1: I really believe we are already in avatars,  Our avatar

is a human body.  My cat's avatar is a feline body.  But we are all 

part of the same shared spirit that is our origin.  (So why the hell put on 

another avatar, if you're already in one?)

#2:  Notably, when we were put into these human avatars,

we were already in The Garden. The problem is:

we got caught up in thinking that The Garden,

and Our Bodies (aka: Avatars) constitute Everything,

when in fact they're just constituents of a Larger Whole

(that no human could perceive.)  But of course

we as Humans

have fucked up our Earthly Paradise so much

thinking that we were the Be-All and End-All,

and so now we make movies about 

putting on primitive avatars

so we can live in The Garden,

again.

 ~ ~

"You don't have a soul; you are a soul.

You have a body."

C. S. Lewis

 

~ ~

At church (OK, yes, it was a church,

to be specific:

a Unitarian Universalist Church

)

this morning,

they welcomed a new child

into the assembly.

Now, as a 425 year old Greek Woman;

I was raised in a Christian Tradition,

being born into the Orthodox --

I have moved around,

from country to country,

and in each one, sought the Church

where I could celebrate my personal beliefs

publically, and comfortably:

I was only Orthodox until I discovered the Jesuits,

and then I had to become Roman.

I longed to be

a Jesuit Priest.

No, not a nun,

a priest.  I could tolerate not being able to marry

if I could think the thoughts of a priest.

When I told any Jesuit Priest my desires, they would always draw away in fear)

I was Roman Catholic for Centuries.

Then I married an Englishman and went Anglican;

then I lived in Turkey and contemplated Islam.

It did not frighten me.

In many ways, the study of Kabbalah and the Sufi tradition best

acknowledge my personal beliefs.

But for now, I'm trying Unitarianism,

occasionally visiting a Sufi group

nearby --)

Today, I witnessed for the second time only,

a Unitarian "baptism"

Yes, they use water,

but not in any startling way:

the Minister holds a white rose,

and presents it to the child

before dipping it into the water,

and touching it to the child's head.

Today,

as the Minister held the rose

out towards the baby boy,

the child reached out,

and grabbed the stem of the rose firmly.

He clearly knew it was for him.

And the Minister,

wisely,

said: "may you grab every opportunity life gives you

with equal energy and certainty."

And I thought:

that Child will, for

that Child's will 

is ingrained in

his Soul (Soul aka; Spiritual Essence),

that Substance that Combined

and entered

His Chubby Fleshy Avatar

is a bold one.

That is who he is.

Which reminded me

of another belief

that I firmly hold:

we are each our Essential Self

at the time of our birth,

and as children,

we act out our truthfulness

in every gesture and sound we make.

It is the Process

of becoming part of society

that messes us up,

beginning

with loving,

with parenting,

then schooling,

then friending,

then loving,

then working,

then hating,

then mating, 

then loving,

then reproducing,

then loving,

then playing,

then aging.

The soul inside of you,

the Spiritual Essence that is 

the Real You

(not to be confused with your body,

which is rather randomly chosen)

is the child in you.

And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (The Bible. Matthew 18:3 ).New Living Translation (©2007)

The Child in Me is Gentle;

the Child

in Me is Quiet

and Kind.

I had not encountered her

for a long time,

until a few years ago,

when I fell

childishly in love

with a man who

 appeared to do the same

with me.

But it was

a beautiful love

partly because it helped me rediscover

the Child in Me; I was

wholly and fully

myself

with him,

and I could not figure out

why I hadn't found My Inner Child before,

since I'd been there all along.

It was the simplest thing in the world,

yet it was the hardest.  Because society

would belittle, and does belittle, the 

Common Sense of The Child.

But in fact, 

the Common Sense of The Child

is equal to

the Common Sense of the Essential Spirit.

So,

to return to one's childishness

is to return

to one's Essential Self,

the Self

we were meant to be

in The Garden,

before we went and messed it all up.

 ( dailymail )

It's that easy:

find the Child in You,

and be True 

to it.

But it's also very very hard:

for to find 

The Child in You,

you must be able to distinguish Who

You were before

a parent first called you "stupid"

or told you not to pick your nose,

or reprimanded you for talking to loud,

or for chewing with your mouth

open.

That's right:

you must find the You

you were before

someone broke your heart the first time,

or lied to you,

or yelled at you for picking their flowers,

or raped you

or beat you

or didn't feed you

or locked you in a room.

I found my Essential Me,

My Child,

and Shared My Childish Love

with one who I thought felt the same

in return.

Unfortunately,

my lover

grew jealous and angry

and worked very hard

to hurt Me,

and succeeded.

(Yes, he acted like a child.)

And now my Child cowers

behind a door in my Heart,

afraid to come out again.

Any human who has had that experience

I describe above

has trouble finding their Child;

and if Your Child 

has been hurt many many times,

it is hiding even deeper inside of you

as a child would do.

But it's still there.

(And don't forget--

this Child is the Essential You,

the Spiritual You

that moved into your body

at birth)

Am I still angry at my lover?

No.

Only hurt.

Deeply hurt.

I don't blame him,

because I really believe

that the only way his 

Inner Child could Justify

hurting another Child

would be because he was

hurt so so much as a child.

He was abused

as no child should have been 

abused,

and in his knowledge

that the abuse he received

was unjustified, he feels a need

to impose it on Other Children,

so he won't feel so much

like a freak.

But he's not a freak.

He's a Child; he's a sad sad spirit

whose fate in this lifetime

was to live in an avatar

that others abuse

continually.

I don't blame him;

I can only love him

still,

and pray for him,

and hope his Inner Child

was not hurt so badly

that it is eternally lost to itself. 

"You don't have a soul; you are a soul.

You have a body."

C. S. Lewis

fever state

1.

I really wanted to write something here

today,

but I woke up with

a fever.

Aching, coughing, miserable,

the whole nine yards.

I felt really crappy

about the fact

I could barely move without 

crying,

until I heard a story about this man

on  National Public Radio's  "This American Life." 

Here's a link to the whole story:

Held Hostage

There are at least four stories in this radio program,

but the one that made me think I'd better get my ass out of bed

is called "I've Fallen In Love and I Can't Get Up."

This is a story about Chris Higgins,

who has something called 

Narcolepsy with Cataplexy.

I would not like what Chris has.

Narcolepsy, as you probably know, is a neurological disorder

wherein you fall asleep while you're going through your daily life.

Add cataplexy to it, and you lose muscle tone when you receive certain emotional stimuli.

Generally good emotional stimuli.  

So if Chris is gazing at his grandchildren, happy that they're 

beautiful and happy and healthy, he has an attack - ie: he loses all muscle tone and falls

asleep.  In the radio show, he talks about how he goes to his brother's wedding, and instructs people to just lean him against the wall so he looks attentive.  And that's what he did.  There are pictures of him,

propped up against the wall, I guess.  Looking at the pictures, or even just talking

about them will also give him an attack.

The result of this disorder is that the sufferer has to make every attempt

to avoid happy situations.  

This, as you might imagine, makes life very difficult

for his wife.

Love, itself, is debilitating for him.

2.

Now I'm a blogger who sings 

the praises and power of love,

so I felt a deep sadness for Chris Higgins,

and it really kind of woke me up,

and made me think of a thought that I've had

several times over the past six to nine months:

Love, itself, for living creatures,

can be absolutely debilitating. 

Love sickness causes us to

lose our minds,

and the conditions that can occur when you lose the thing you love

can be even worse,

especially if you are a sensitive person.

Having the person or object you love begin to treat you badly

can actually lower your resistance to a number of other illnesses,

and absolutely losing the beloved sometimes changes a person's health

and happiness forever.  It can be incurable.

Despite the fact that I continually

conclude my channelings and ramblings with

the concept that love is the only answer to all our woes,

I also often wonder if,

as long as we live in our earthly avatars,

we might be better off without love.

3.

Consider, for instance,

the psychopath.  I have encountered the idea recently that the 

psychopath might actually be the next stage in

human evolution:

"The goal of evolution is to maximize a specie's chance of survival, and there is evidence to show that the basis of psychopathy is an heritable predisposition to the disorder, a disorder which enhances the psychopathic individual's chance of survival. Therefore, is psychopathy indeed the result of human evolution?"  ( Psychopathy:an Evolutionary Perspective )

(kari'sblog)

After all, it is love, and emotional connections, that will cause a human to go back into a burning building to retrieve a baby, or a dog, or a bird.  Love causes women and men

to stay in destructive relationships; love also produces martyrs.  Consider, for instance,

the case of Jesus Christ and Noor-un-nisa Vilayet Kahn (I've written a bit about her earlier in this blog.)

Love is the primary motive of their martyrdom.  Love and the willing loss of selfhood 

for the sake of the collective human race.

Now, in this day and age,

many people may think that's just plain crazy.

If a species intends to survive, 

it's best off just leaving its emotions at the door.

If this is the case, perhaps Mr. Higgins' Narcolepsy/Cataplexy

actually marks an advancement of the species

which happened in his brain 

during this lifetime.

4.

Now I'm the first to admit that this is a troubling concept,

and that I find the human capacity to love to be

 the thing that makes us divine;

otherwise, we're little more than animals.

But after all, we are only animals - right? 

And as I've argued elsewhere, we were born into our animalistic avatars 

(these bodies)

in order to live on this earth.

I've also contemplated elsewhere the concepts of

creation,

the Fall,

evolution,

the soul

and a bunch of other really heady stuff like that.

In fact, much of this blog is about heady stuff like that

and I'm absolutely stunned and thrilled to see

there are a couple people out there in the world

who have actually returned to this blog and read

more than one of my rambling, channeled entries.

I thank you.

In a few of my entries, I contemplate what happened

when Adam ate that apple.

And here I would like to add another thought to that

theme:

when Adam ate that apple

(of course because Eve made him do it)

he became, as the Book of Genesis tells us

more like God.

Being more like God 

is being able to look at the creation

and love it.

Before Adam ate the apple,

I'd venture to suggest,

he and Eve were really nothing but

animals.

Happy animals, at that, 

and animals who were given the 

ability to use words,

but animals, nonetheless.

So it is possible that one of the effects of eating

the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge

was the man suddenly had the capacity to look at his mate,

and fall in love.

Love is an emotion that is God-like;

love requires an all-encompassing gaze

and absolute forgiveness, 

which man, in his earthly avatar

and its limited function,

is incapable of doing.

Following this line of thinking,

love is what makes us God-like,

but it is also the thing

that can kill us,

as individuals

and as a species.

5.

In the realm of the undead and undying,

which is where Makropoulos lives,

most human entities 

have something akin to Narcolepsy with Cataplexy.

They can't be happy; they can't love;

they have to maintain a certain level of misery and pain and predatorial lust

in order to survive.

The problem with Makropoulos

me

is that I was damned by a selfish man

to live forever young,

but I was not wired to not love.

I can love;

I do love;

it is essential to me.

A prerequisite of love is the capacity to be selfless.

I will love you

if I let myself,

like I can read your mind

if I let myself;

I've simply learned how to not let myself do either,

because if I permit myself to do 

one or the other or both,

if I open the barriers I've learned to put up,

the pain and horror of what I encounter

is so horrible and heartbreaking,

I know I will surely go insane.

I won't go on with that; 

read other parts of the blog

if you want to know who Makropoulos is.

6.

Sometimes I look at the young people today.

Either from being in a family where love didn't exist,

or from being subject to loveless media stimuli,

they have learned that loving 

is fatal, and so they don't do it.

Some are just born with the incapacity to love.

Perhaps, as a new generation,

they mark the evolution of humankind,

as well as the guarantee that we will survive as a species.

But if that is true, what of love,

and what of God?

This line of thinking marks the essence of the historical juncture at which we currently live:

we can either work, as a species,

to find a way to maintain the place of love on this earthly realm,

or we can make it a myth, an old magical tale long past its currency

and let the new generations of the loveless assure

the ongoing existence of our species.