I think therefore I am

I spent years looking for the smoking gun. When was it, I wondered, that people in western culture split “mind” from “body,” privileging the former over the latter as the true “I”? I scoured the writings of those dead white men whose brilliant ideas continue to shape our politics, economics, and religion--the value we accord to individual persons. I never found it.

The split, it seems, was never complete. Never final. Take Descartes, for example, who in 1637 published his infamous line: “I think therefore I am.” In the same breath Descartes acknowledges that he is engaging in an act of imagination: he can imagine that he has no body. He admits as well that he is able to imagine this due to years of training--years of bodily discipline. Further, even he is aware of the problem that arises in the wake of this imaginative act: once we think mind and body apart, how do we hold them together? “Body” slips away; “it” loses value. It may appear as an object of scientific study, but not as a subject in its own right--not as the very medium of our living. How can we think this?
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We can imagine we have no body. We train ourselves to do so, as noted last week, as we learn to sit still while mobilizing our frontal limbs and lobes, or as we pass through a day without moving in ways that draw our attention into our bodily selves. Yet our tendency to think and feel and act as if we were mind over bodies is nowhere more evident and practiced, perhaps, than in our responses to pain.

One of two responses generally prevails: “no pain no gain,” or “stop it now.” Either way, we use the power of our minds to overcome the pain--endure it or get rid of it. We respond to pain as if it were a bodily problem that our minds must fix. I think therefore I am. This I ignores it. Numbs it. Overwhelms it. Distracts our attention from it. Rarely do we rarely respond to discomfort as harboring invaluable information about what will nourish our health and well being. I move therefore I am. Might it be so?
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Wisdom. When people do think about wisdom “in” the body or “of” the body, they still tend to think of “the body” as a kind of container or text whose wisdom can be read or deciphered by a practiced mind.

As we shall see, however, bodily wisdom does not appear as a formula to apply. It appears as an impulse to move. It arises in the moment, for the moment, as a response to the challenges and opportunities present in the moment. It appears as a movement that will coordinate our pleasure and our health.

It is a wisdom that is present, then, in our sensations of frustration and desire, physical pain and emotional longing. Such pain represents a potential for a movement that we are not making--a potential for making a movement that will unfold more of who we are, and more of what we have to give. This wisdom guides us towards greater freedom.
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Really? How so? What do you mean? Any pain? You must be kidding.....

The issues raised by these claims are many and huge. We will tackle them in weeks to come, arising as they do in all areas of our living. I offer one example here to spark the discussion.

You are sitting at a computer, hunched over, eyes glued to the screen. Your neck begins to ache; a headache begins, radiating outward. At first, you ignore the pain. You have work to do. When that doesn’t help, you try distracting yourself. You play music or check email. You redouble your concentration on the task at hand. When that doesn’t help, you pop a painkiller, have a drink. The pain eases a bit, but it doesn’t stop. You start to feel depressed. You convince yourself that it’s not so bad, you can deal, yet are left with a vague longing for something you cannot identify. At the end of the day, you feel like all you want to do is escape.

Most of us engage in a similar pattern of sensing and responding to our discomfort at some point every day. I think therefore I am. Often it doesn’t seem like we have a choice. There are people depending on us--bosses, coworkers, partners, friends, children. And so we postpone the task of attending to our sensations and their possible wisdom, until it is too late. We get sick. Depressed. And we slowly lose our ability to know what is good for us--what will support the health of bodies--human, animal, earth, ours. We have options.
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I am reminded of a time my daughter Kyra, then 4, was describing how she missed friends we left behind in Boston when moving to our farm.
She noted: “My mind is a world.”
“Oh?” I responded.
“Boston is in my mind, but there is a piece that is not attached to my mind. And that is me, my self. My self is not in my mind. My self is outside my mind.”
I gasp as the foundations of western philosophy crumble before me.
“What happens when you are in Boston?” I ask.
“Then my mind is here,” she replies. “I miss both places.”
Kyra had not yet learned to identify her “self” with what goes on between her ears. Her self is her bodily being--what she can see, touch, move, feel, and feel with. What goes on in her mind strikes her as something else, somewhere else. Not here. Not her.
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We can indeed imagine that we have no bodies. We can also imagine that we are the bodily movement that is making us. Next week, we explore this alternative and the difference it can make.
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Reflection:
What do you do when you feel pain?
Think about several instances from recent experience.
How do you respond to the first twinge of a headache? What resources you draw upon when you feel a cloud of depression approaching? A wave of anxiety? A surge of inexplicable hunger? A burst of irritation with a partner or child?

How do you experience such sensations? What kind of responses do they evoke in you? Do you attack the sensations? Ignore them? Try to forget them? Do you numb them or sleep them off? Do you pull into yourself? Turn on yourself in anger? Take it out on others? How do you make sense of pain? What sense do you allow it to have?

In the weeks that follow, this discussion aims to expand your repertoire. We will learn to embrace sensations of discomfort as opportunities to learn, to grow, to discover potentials in ourselves, yet unfolded, for pleasure and well being, for living in love.