To earth ourselves it is necessary to reconnect with our bodies and to experience ourselves as part of the ecosystem that sustains us.

Disconnection

      Most Westerners are disconnected from their bodies.

      This is rarely obvious to those of us living in the West. Native Americans and Australian Aborigines are in no doubt about our predicament. The evidence is overwhelming. We lack the discernment characteristic of people whose perception of reality results from engaging the total bodyself.

      We are inclined to dismiss this judgment as ill-informed. We argue that we attend to our bodies.

      We consider sport important. While most participate in sport to win, rather than as a way of respecting their bodies, it can hardly be claimed that we have overlooked the complex physiological organism encased in our skin-bag.

      We have also made a fetish of fitness. We run, power-walk, and lift weights to keep healthy and strengthen our bodies.

      We have fostered the cult of the body-beautiful. We have decorated our bodies with cosmetics and jewellery and compensated for deficiencies with prostheses. We try to arrest ageing and camouflage the body's odours with synthetic aromas.

      Since the 1960s we have flaunted our sexuality.

      However, in spite of our passion for sport, our commitment to fitness, our expensive makeovers, and the parade of our sexuality, we are not comfortable with our bodies. The fact that we talk about "our bodies" indicates that we treat them as embarrassing appendages.

      We find it difficult to accept our bodies. Those considered attractive are the least happy with theirs. [65]

      Our bodies suffer most from being conscripted into the service of disembodied egos, whose tyranny is driven by insecurity. Lacking affection, our bodies pay us back for the neglect and abuse.

      I have argued that our egos are disconnected from our bodies. This is not strictly true. Because we are bodyselves it is impossible for us to separate what we are calling "us" from our bodies. We carry our bodies around, or, more accurately, they carry us around. We could refine the image still further, and picture these skin-bags being pulled in different directions by two control centres. The first is the wounded ego. The second is the psycho-physiological mechanism that attempts to keep the body-self in balance.

The Earth

      Being disconnected from our bodies, we are also disconnected from the earth.

      If we are in touch with our bodies we will exhibit sensitivity towards our physical environment. If we are alert to the energies of the bodyself we will engage the energy that we identify in others, in animals, in plants, and in what we often refer to as inanimate matter.

      If we respect our bodies, relate to them, and experience them as part of ourselves, we will respect the environment and relate to it with sensitivity. We will not regard it as altogether separate from us. If we do not respect our bodies, we will not respect the earth.

Dissociation

      Wilber argued that egoic consciousness detached itself from the body during the transition from the Mythic-Membership era to the Mental-Egoic era.¹

      This detachment, which privileged reason over embodied ways of knowing, resulted in hyper-rationalism. This hyper- rationalism was supremely evident in Descartes, the father of modern philosophy. Philosophers accepted Descartes' schizoid [66] skepticism, pushing it to an extreme. This resulted in a perception of the universe that viewed it as dead and devoid of spirit.²

      The smart thing to have done, during the transition between the two styles of consciousness, would have been to incorporate what was valuable in the older, less developed way of knowing, into the new mode of analysis. This didn't happen. The body, the booster that launched the rocket, fell away.

      The reality was that the smart option was developmentally impossible.

      The ego of a young child, emerging from its unconscious ground, needs to separate from this ground before it can reconnect with it. The child also needs to individuate from her parents before she can reconnect, or connect for the first time in an adult way, with them. Similarly, the egoic dimension of human consciousness needed to separate from an acute, but restrictive, bodily perceptiveness in order to establish its own integrity. Reconnection is a subsequent task. This task has become urgent.

      Jung argued, as early as 1939, that if the white man doesn't destroy himself with his brilliant inventions, he will eventually be forced to begin the serious task of understanding himself.³ This self-education involves re-earthing ourselves in our bodies and in the wider environment.

Consequences

      Our disconnectedness from our bodies, and from the environment, has had serious consequences.

Our Bodies

      Oscar Wilde argued that those who cannot distinguish between soul and body have neither.⁴ While an exaggeration, his comment is pertinent. We are diminished by our lack of engagement with our bodies.

      Our disconnectedness has reduced the bodymind to that part of the brain that governs our thinking. We are denied access to perceptions generated in the rest of the body's input and processing centres. As a consequence, we find it difficult to [67] understand what Michaelangelo was asking when he prayed that he would be able to see with his whole body.⁵

      The dissociation also restricts access to our feelings. Our bodies channel and amplify our feelings. We are in touch with our feelings to the degree that we are in touch with our bodies. Lack of engagement with our bodies reduces sexual expression from a rich sensuality to a series of unconnected sex acts, from which the ego easily detaches itself.

      Dissociation from our bodies also restricts our creativity, because it severs our connection with our intuition and our imagination.

      When we are detached from our bodies we are also unaware of when we are burdening them with unresolved emotions. When this happens, our bodies may pay us back with illness. As Thomas Merton argued, if the soul attempts to silence the flesh, the flesh will take revenge.⁶

      Being out of touch with our bodies, we are out of touch with the self. Being out of touch with the self, we are out of touch with the self in others. We may dialogue, ego to ego, but there will be no soul-to-soul encounter. We will spar, we will compete, we will fence, we will laugh at our cleverness and smile wryly at our ironies, but we will not meet. If we do not have the ability to relate to the bodyself that is us, it is impossible for us to relate to another bodyself at depth. Because women are more in touch with their bodies than men are, particularly in Anglo-Saxon cultures, they generally relate more deeply than men do.

The Environment

      If we can't relate empathically to our bodies, we will not relate sensitively to the environment.

      The environment nurtures us.

      We are dependent upon nature for physical nurture, shelter, and security. We are apt to overlook this fact in highly industrialised societies. Many people are unaware of where the water comes from when they turn on a tap or where it goes to when they flush the toilet.⁷ [68]

      The environment also nurtures us spiritually.

      If we are comfortable with our bodies, if we dialogue with them, we will experience a deep affinity with nature, with animals, trees, rocks and oceans. We will be aware of a synergy that connects us. Tony Moore has perceptively commented that nature must be bemused by our attempt to compete with her, when her greatest riches are offered free to those who are willing to be merely present in their surroundings.⁸

      Because we have lacked the ability to dialogue with our bodies, we have become ecological vandals. This is not to deny that caring for the environment in over-populated societies is difficult, particularly where the choice is between survival and further ecological degradation. Nevertheless, as Sam Keen contended, authentic spirituality must be ecologically responsible.⁹

      Our disconnectedness from our bodies has also diminished our capacity to discern a Spiritual Presence in the world of nature.

Reconnecting

      According to James Hillman, re-connecting with our bodies, and with the environment, is a matter of "growing down",¹⁰ a perception that has its roots in Jewish and Christian mystical traditions.¹¹ The image is of an inverted tree. We may begin in our heads, but we must ultimately plant our feet firmly on the earth. We must grow down.¹² "Growing down" is generally a later development.

Our Bodies

      How do we reconnect with our bodies?

      We can identify tensions. A helpful way of doing this is to lie on the floor and relax your body, layer by layer. You will soon recognise what part of the body is knotted up. Concentrate on that area. You may find that images will arise that reveal the cause of the tension or suggest appropriate strategies for dealing with it.¹³

      We need to develop respect for our bodies. [69]

      The West has been influenced by body-denying philosophies deriving from Neo-Platonism. This attitude needs to be challenged.

      It is also important for us to develop a healthy attitude towards our sexuality. Both our prudishness and our brazenness are evidence of our discomfort.

      Homosexuals, in being identified with their sexuality, have been forced to confront this task. While some are stuck in an in-your-face response to persisting homophobia, others are comfortable with their sexuality. James Broughton, homosexual poet and filmmaker, revealed a healthy, humorous respect for human sexuality in his comment that the genitals, the anus and the perineum, a hold trinity, were central to the experience of the torso.¹⁴

      If we respect our bodies, we will not abuse them with relentless labour, stress, or the over-use of foreign substances, like tobacco, alcohol or drugs.

      It is important that we dialogue with our bodies. We will also benefit from therapies, like massage, bioenergetics and kinesiology.

      Cultivating an appreciation of beauty also helps.

      We are surrounded by beauty--natural beauty, and the beauty created by human minds and hands. Whether it is a natural landscape, a building, a painting, a dance, or a superb work of literature, beauty will enter deeply into our bodies, moving them to silence, and perhaps even to reverence.

      Music is particularly effective, as its rhythms permeate the body with vibrational energy. Schopenhauer described music as the sound that awakens the will. He went on to argue that music awakens basic life-rhythms.¹⁵ The ancient Sumerians concluded that music awakens us to the music of the spheres, the symphony of the cosmos. The Confucian attitude to music was similar and influenced Pythagoras.¹⁶ It was this cosmic perspective that caused Socrates to suggest that to practice philosophy without musical accompaniment was hazardous to the soul.¹⁷ [70]

      Artistic creativity, even more than artistic appreciation, connects us with our bodies.

      The most beautiful experience we can have is to love and be loved. Love is an embodied experience.

      Meditation, particularly meditation that is prepared for by our centring ourselves in our bodies, can develop in us an acute body-awareness.

The Environment

      There are a number of approaches we can adopt to heighten the sense of our connectedness with nature.

      Developing sensitivity to our bodies helps.

      It is also important to attend to the textures of the natural world. For some this will mean spending time in the bush, by the sea or in the country.

      We need to learn the art of dialoguing with nature. This dialogue involves the silent acknowledgment of affinity, as well as tactile and verbal expressions of empathy.

      We dialogue best with nature by flowing with the Spirit that moves through it. As Campbell argued, to be aware of the rhythmic energies of the cosmos, we must live out of the centre of the bodyself and not merely out of the mind.¹⁸

      If we are committed to caring for the environment, we will respect all life. This presents those who cannot espouse the ideals of animal liberationists, or strict vegetarians, with a dilemma. How can we respect life when we kill animals for food?

      The experience of the Bhutanese suggests a way forward. They are loath to kill animals because the animal is likely to be a reincarnated human. Fish are abundant in their stream, but they do not eat them. Needing sustenance, however, they kill yaks. One fish can only feed one person, whereas a yak can feed many people and its slaughter is thereby justified.¹⁹

      The Native American practice of thanking the animal you intend to slaughter for providing sustenance for your tribe is also helpful. This gesture represents an acknowledgment of the interdependence and sacredness of all life. [71]

      Because of the importance of remaining in touch with nature, it may be necessary for us to re-create natural oases in our cities.²⁰

      Katherine Mansfield was passionate about her commitment to remain connected to the physical environment. In her excitement, she rhapsodised about re-uniting herself with nature, immersing herself in it, so that she could discover what she was capable of becoming.²¹

A Cumulative Effect

      The effect of our engagement with our bodies, and with the environment, is cumulative. The appetite for deeper engagement intensifies the more we progress, as does our sensitivity.

      The panorama is eventually mind-blowing. It involves a vision of unity that includes all people.²²

      This unity extends beyond humanity to embrace the total ecosystem. It is through this ecosystem that we are impinged upon by the Spirit.

The Spirit

      The experiencing of a cosmic Spirit is a consequence of the development of embodied perception. Raimundo Panikkar has described the discernment of this Spiritual Presence, the basic element constituting all reality, as the ultimate transcendent experience.²³ This experience confirms us in the belief that matter is the manifestation of God's thoughts.²⁴ [72]

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