Towards an Embodied Spirituality

In the last 150 years--which is not much in all of human existence--we have stepped further and further away from an intimate relationship with nature. We have done this at our peril, or at the very least, in detriment to our immediate health. As a species, we suffer from chronic illness and mental illness, fueled by a loneliness epidemic. These are difficult times, being separated from each other, separated from nature, and ultimately separated from our selves.

I would like to suggest that our separation from nature has also been to our spiritual detriment. But this separation started long ago, well before the 19th century. We have been theologically, philosophically, and spiritually leaving our bodies in dogmatic and systematic ways for millennia. We chase salvation, purity, enlightenment. We pursue these forms of spiritual attainment as a species, mostly in the form of male bodies. We pursue these things in buildings and books. We chase an idea that we (again, mostly male bodies) can be divine, or holy. That we can resist our flesh, or the desires, wants and basic needs of this flesh. It seems like we actually don't want to be a body, an animal, a living being. We long to be dead, in heaven, and no longer where everything is so difficult.

As a species, we struggle to appreciate and accept the nature of our existence--that we are soft, fleshy, physical and sentient beings. That we are animals. We are animals in nature. We are immersed in the wind and rain, sitting on a fertile earth, and moving about it with birds and mammals and reptiles and fish and insects and plants and fungi and so many, many other beings. We are one of many. One of all. One.

Our relationship with nature is something we are born into, an intimate movement through cycles of an ever-changing existence. This is not something we transcend. We do not "enlighten" or "liberate" or "save" ourselves from our flesh. Our 'flesh' is not superior to other flesh. We are equals. We do not leave it for a better place when we die, because all we have, all we truly know, is right now. And we are a body.

We are a body with consciousness, knowing, memory, wonder, and aspiration. We are unique among animals. We can imagine worlds, and talk with one another through language, art, or music about what we imagine. We can create shelter, clothing, tools. Cities, technology, and artificial intelligence. Cheetahs run very fast. Eagles can see far. And we do our human thing. But it's just our human thing. Were we meant to use our human thing--consciousness--to escape? To stop being flesh? I would say, no. Because it's not working out for us. We are not healthy. We have used our human thing to hurt ourselves and our planet. We have used our human thing to define God, discriminate, go to war, plunder the earth, separate ourselves from natural light/cycles, kill, and burn.

Our human thing, our humanness needs for us to be a body, too. To be an embodied soul. Be both, not one over the other, or one in service to the other, but both, equally. Spiritual life is how we make meaning of and be in relationship with the all. Our spiritual life as humans must include our physical being and the nature with which it is a part. We fundamentally cannot be healthy and survive without meaning and relationship that includes the body and the natural world that sustains and supports this body. We have missed this essential understanding. We are separated from ourselves, each other, and nature, and we are suffering. We need an embodied spirituality.