And we get to have a body, too!

 

This delight and amazement with the experience of embodiment has stuck with me ever since. It really is remarkable to experience this universe in a body. Thich Nhat Hanh once said, "The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive."

 

As philosophers J.J. Poortman and Ken Wilber have both noted, the miracle of life just scratches the surface of the miraculous. The greatest miracle, they agree, is that anything exists at all. Apparently, as it has been explained to me by better physicists than I, the odds are seriously stacked against existence itself.

 

Yet, we exist, and in these bodies. 

 

And what a garden of delight embodiment can present. An explosive sunrise over the sea, the touch of a beloved, the smell of your favorite meal being prepared, the taste of an exquisite fruit, the song of a canary . . . on and on the list of embodied delights can go.

 

Of course, embodiment has some not so delightful dimensions, to which the hundreds of millions of ill-fed, or ill-clad, or just plain ill, can attest.

 

There is another aspect of embodiment, though, that is worth noting. It is related to what I refer to here as Unique Self, as taught by spiritual teacher Dr. Marc Gafni. Dr. Gafni talks of this Unique Self as the theist that he is -- "God is having a Marc experience." An atheist that is in touch with this same Kosmic creative force of Consciousness might say, "Consciousness is having a Natalie experience." 

 

The experience of the creative Force behind Consciousness expressing itself uniquely in an individual's life is inextricably tied to embodiment. Indeed, there can be no separation between your experience as a conscious being and your experience as an embodied being. 

 

This may seem obvious, and it is. But the ramifications may not be. When we sit on a cushion and watch the operation of the mind, it is obvious that I'm following the injunction of 13th-century Zen master Dogen, "to study the Way is to study the self." Yet, many practitioners see body practice differently, perhaps simply as a way to relax in preparation for the study of the self through meditation.

 

A different way to hold body practice, however, is as exploration of Unique Self in its own right. From this approach, consciousness is only one dimension of the expression of the creative force behind the Kosmos, along side of and intertwined with the experience of embodiment. This body I inhabit, then, becomes not just a vehicle in which I transport the unique perspective of my consciousness, but as an essential component of my unique, even sacred, experience of embodiment. 

 

From this place of radical embrace and radical acceptance, the body's every delight and every ache, then, is not something to be embraced or rejected, but instead is an aspect of your utterly unique expression of the very force that brought the Universe into existence.

 

Your Unique Self is not merely conscious awareness. You get to have a body, too!