Insight: Body Wisdom

"Behead yourself! Dissolve your whole body into Vision. Become seeing, seeing, seeing!"

-Rumi

I have been in Seattle all week working with the terrific folks at the Boeing Company. We had a great two days on advanced collaboration practices in support of the company's continued commitment to "Working Together."

Last time, I outlined the seven distinctions of Insight. This time, I will focus on the first distinction, body wisdom.

The body is the vehicle that has been given to each of us to pursue meaning and experience life directly. It is the principle agency of manifestation: whatever we do, whatever we produce, is done through the body.

The body, known as the Cradle of Manifestation in Visionmaking, has a wisdom that is instinctual and sensual, and is far older than our capacity to reason.

Body wisdom has protected humanity on its journey from the primordial soup to modern times. It is assembled in the gut, and attuned to the heart.  It provides the Visionmaker with sensate knowing. As the Latin proverb instructs: "Nothing reaches the intellect before making its appearance in the senses."

The body has been endowed with five known senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. The body is always honest and direct about what it wants, needs and experiences. Today, though, most people are so sedated by the status quo or the excesses of  comfortable living that their capacity to access body wisdom is diminished.

Or they have been taught to mistrust what they feel if it is not logical.There is far more to life than logic. 

When the Four-Chambered Heart (the subject of many previous posts) is aligned with the intellect and will, the five known senses are sharpened to a sensitivity that allows for heightened awareness.

This is the domain of the martial artist, the poet, the mystic. It is as if the whole body is wide- awake and aware of even the subtlest stimuli-a hummingbird at the window ledge, an action about to happen, the mood of a stranger, the atmosphere of a place.

The Visionmaker is always deeply respectful of the body, of the wisdom that is available there, and of the great gift of leading a purposeful life that it supports.

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