Redefining the body (3)

Friday, August 20, 2021

3 a.m. Switches to maximum focus, receptivity, clarity of expression. You’re on, gentlemen.

Then let us continue with our view of the nature and function of the body in 3D, bearing in mind that what appears to be a body-mind division, or a me/not-me division, is only so if you assume the reality of matter as something other than mind-stuff, something “other” and “exterior” and therefore of different substance from “you” – whatever “you” may be. Remember that it is all mind-stuff, all connected, all one thing, and of course all your perceptions and conclusions change.

Somehow I always knew – at a deeply pre-conscious level – that things were not as they appeared. I felt divided in my love for history (that manifested first) and my love for the truth of metaphysics (that manifested relatively suddenly beginning in 1968 or so, then increasingly as years passed). Yet I never thought that the apparent contradictions between history (the external 3D world) and spiritual development (the unknown limits of the internal world) could be a real contradiction. Pursuing one never seemed an abandonment of the other, nor even a detour.

You say your metaphysical interest came second. It did, in its modern garb. But you were raised in the medieval Catholic tradition (as it survived within modern trappings) and accepted it as true. Even when you rejected the church and its teachings and its idea of God and all those rules and prohibitions, the sense of the nature of the world that you had absorbed from your earliest days remained.

And as we wrote that, I realize why. It wasn’t that I was convinced of anything; that Catholic background acted as spark, and, I responded.

Yes, “you” did. That is, monks and priests of various kinds, and mystics, and shamans and magicians “within” you all agreed with the reality behind the teachings, and were only temporarily forestalled by your rejection of the trappings and the specific form that had been placed over those understandings.

I did come to think it strange, looking back, that I was the only person I knew who had lived smoothly with one foot in the mystical medieval worldview and the other in the modern American technological worldview. Logically the two contradicted each other, but I never felt torn between them. Or – I see where we’re going with this now – or was it my body, holding the tension?

Go slowly now: you, Frank, and you, reader. There is more to be gotten here by inference and spark than by specific statement.

Life is usually more than one process at a time. It is natural for your minds to consider one theme at a time, separately, but they don’t in fact proceed in isolation. They flow together, sometimes interfering with one another, sometimes mutually reinforcing, sometimes as if separately (that is, temporarily not particularly affecting one another). So if we set out any one cause-and-effect, trace the dynamics of any one system, by all means, follow the argument, but try to remember that other things are going on at the same time. Any factor in one system may also be a factor in one or more other systems.

But let’s pursue the question of the body and the stress inherent in holding together divergent or contradictory values. For that matter, holding together even closely akin mutually supportive values may be a strain. That’s what the body is for, to be the shock-absorber.

Now as we are writing that, I think, why are you saying “values” instead of “views”?

If we had suggested “views,” you would have accepted the word and slid on by. But “values” slows you down, makes you think, so now we can mention that from our point of view, “values” and “views” are very little different.

Say some more about that?

How you see the world interacts so closely with what your values are, there is hardly a distinction to be made except that “view” implies perception and “value” implies whatever follows from perception.

I had not thought of the strain inherent in holding together various strands, but now it seems it should always have been obvious.

Not so obvious, nor are we saying or implying that the strain is entirely absorbed and managed by the physical body. But that is a prime function of the body, certainly.

It requires some thinking-out.

It will repay the process, anyway.

• The body holds you in 3D, in one time-place.
• It allows you to access the world through a coordinated set of sensory filters, producing a coherent picture of the “exterior” world.
• It serves as metaphor, giving you a 3D symbol of “you,” as opposed to all-that-is.
• It serves as transceiving station between 3D and non-3D – or, to put it another way, between the “you” you experience in your mind and the “you” you experience in interaction with the world, the great exterior “not-you.”
• As we say, it serves to buffer the series of shocks – the pulling and tugging – that goes with different strands coexisting.

That one requires a little more exposition, I think.

Much more, in fact. It is a theme in itself. But for the moment, let us take the fact for granted, and continue.

• The vagaries of 3D existence are not random. They aren’t quite determined, either, but perhaps closer to that end of the freewill/determinism polarity. It isn’t the exact contour that is more or less determined; it is the nature.

And that is involved with the nature of the passing moment, and that is why you have us discussing astrology as a functioning aid.

Correct. The times flow (within the ever-present living moment) in accordance with rules, with patterns. It isn’t some big incoherent mess. That is what astrology charts: the tides behind events, the rules of morphology. The I Ching does the same, only much less in a time-driven (or, we should say, in a chronologically determined) way.

• So now, 3D life may be considered as an ordered series of changes, and your 3D body may be considered as a sensitive mechanism continually adjusting “you” to “the world.” There will be bumps.
• Depending upon your internal makeup, your 3D body will have greater or lesser or fluctuating amounts of strain to accommodate, even in the absence of “external” stressors. Thus you may be born with – or may develop – good health or bad, a robust constitution or a fragile one, a sensitive recording instrument or a relatively insensitive one. None of it is (or ever could be) by accident, of course.

A tremendous lot here to chew on.

For some. Others will merely nod and say, “Yes, that’s what I always knew, even if I didn’t think to put it that way.”

Now can you see that the 3D body is rather different than merely a diving-suit designed to hold you in one time, one place? It is that, but hardly only that.

We say it again, sensing that our meaning may have been muffled so far: Your body is a sensitive instrument recording relative stresses in various directions; it is an adjustment mechanism allowing discordant strands to coexist during your life; it is an automatic timer, relating your internal (non-3D) life to the external (3D appearing) shared subjectivity. And it is all these things in addition to what you usually see as its primary function, a physical locus for your non-physical self.

Wow. Thanks for all this. Next time, pursue that bypassed theme of the body as the shock absorber among disparate strands?

Yes. And by then the spark may have had enough time in some people’s minds to allow greater scope.

I don’t know that I follow that.

No matter. It will emerge.

All right. “Redefining the body (3),” this?

Nothing wrong with that as a title.

Till next time, then, and again, our thanks.