Ours for a Reason: Spiritual Nutrition Part I
People often ask me what diet I think is best for spiritual practice. This is unsurprising since many spiritual traditions have stressed the importance of certain dietary practices for both practical reasons (what foods help you still the mind/connect to God) and ethical reasons (what foods are “right” to eat in the eyes of God). My answer is always, the diet that best supports spiritual practice is the diet that best supports your body to be as strong and healthy and clear as it can be. As I’ve said before, I don’t believe that suffering for suffering’s own sake is of benefit. If you strip away all distractions, all “addictions” or habits, all avenues of avoidance, there will be plenty of pain to purify you. You don’t need to artificially try to create more. Further, if God wants you to be sick, and for some this is certainly a possibility for any number of reasons, then you will be sick no matter what you do. Surrender and acceptance is necessary here and always, with all kinds of immutable circumstances.
My point is, ascetic practices that weaken you overall, do not necessarily help you connect more deeply to God and I would argue those practices often have an inflated self-interest involved that takes you away from that deep connection. Ascetic practices, such as fasting, which might have a short-term weakening but long-term physical and spiritual benefit, can be part of a spiritual practice for some people in some cases. Once again, long-term, the best diet is the diet that gives you the best energy for the hard and long-term work of rigorous spiritual practice: i.e. engaging fully and honestly with life and Self.
To support one’s own body is to support God’s creation, to support the manifestation of your spirit which is expressed in every atom of your being. I definitely do not subscribe to the notion that we are spirits walking around in meat puppets. Consciousness resides in every cell. Emotions are thoughts somatized in the body. Emotions are thoughts expressed in psycho-spiritual chemical reactions, thoughts made into action, thoughts made into active energy, flowing within and without the body. Emotions are an essential part of spirit learning, growing, and expressing through the body, here on earth.
While God is without, in that each of us is not God, despite that popular new age notion, God is expressing divinity within each of us, as us, should we choose to accept and connect with this aspect of ourselves. That divinity also flows in every animal and aspect of the world around us. Part of our sacred job here is to take our manifestation to the limits we are able to take it, physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. The former three are avenues into the spiritual realm, again if our intention is to use those gifts of manifestation for expanding our transcendent realities.
We know the world through our senses-- through seeing, feeling, touching, tasting, hearing, smelling. We transcend our limited physical understanding by first understanding and being present within the body. The paradox is that we can only transcend our limits by first truly exploring them fully and appreciating them fully. This body is a divine creation, even as it is finite and transitory and fragile. Our spirits can be eternal (again, if we choose) but the bodies we’ve been given, whether healthy or sick, mangled or “perfect,” are ours for a reason. They have all the tools we need for the deep metaphysical exploration of this physical and spiritual plane. Each of our bodies is a perfectly designed schoolhouse for our individual needs of growth. The idea that a person could be “born in the wrong body” is a spiritual impossibility.
There is a notion among many teachers, especially in the new age community but not exclusively there, that all illness is an expression of a psycho-spiritual imbalance (or “wrong thinking”) that once corrected will in turn correct the physical manifestation of illness. I do not think this is true, or more correctly, I think it is both true and not true or certainly not true all the time. There is always something to be learned from sickness, from misalignment, always mistakes of understanding to be discovered, always patterns of trauma that have manifested in the body. Yet, unwinding these, even in the most profound ways, does not magically turn the body into the ultimate realization of exquisite physical form. Sometimes, the body gets sicker. Not because more “mistakes” have been made but because that is the teaching or role that person needs. Sometimes the body dies, even as a direct result of tremendous healing. Sometimes the person is released from that physical suffering because what needed to be gained has been gained. Bodies that are born with immutable challenges are not inherently inferior in spiritual growth, of course. Even the thought of that must sound ridiculous to most and yet, if we follow the logic of all illness being the result of our errors and traumas, we must follow it to that conclusion. Again, I have to express the paradox here. Often bodies born with serious encumbrances are born of inherited trauma and yet, again, all the healing in the world won’t change that outer circumstance. Still, that body is perfect in its design for that person’s expansion.
Pleasures in the senses, sexual and otherwise, are not merely animal mechanics meant to keep us fed and procreating. They are supreme teaching mechanisms, just as the pain and suffering of the duality of earth are. Can we go too far into pleasure seeking and be lost in selfish fulfillment, thinking that is the point of being here? Absolutely. Many do. Just as we can become lost in our own personal suffering where despair seems the only meaning and efforts are pointless. Living within this polarity is an art form that requires constant practice and refinement. It requires vigilance. We have all gotten lost in one or both sides of this pendulum, maybe even for years at a time. We have had our vision blurred, and our good intentions evaporated. When we become more adept at this practice, even when we are pulled hard in one direction or the other, our eyes remain open, our ability to pull back into balance or to understand more deepens. The moments of utter stillness, poise, and real peace, when a pure awareness takes over and the whole spectrum of experience is suddenly in view at once, becomes more possible. And yet, there will still be times of being swept back up into the storm, in either direction. Slowly, over time, we learn to navigate, to ride the wave back to an undulating center, our wisdom richer each return. Our central strength grows, our devotion to truth emerges. The real pleasure of seeing more, knowing more, being more, becomes the greater joy. This is choosing to give importance to our divine essence, to our eternal selves. This is realizing what matters most.
We take care of our bodies as part of this most intense practice, this complex system of spiritual expression on earth, all while realizing that our essences are sacred and inviolate. Yes, it is natural to feel fears and worries about all the physical freedoms being taken away, the poisons being disbursed to loved ones and selves, but the more you know your essence, the more you know it is untouchable by all but God. Water cannot wet it, fire cannot burn it.
Understanding who you are in totality clarifies and enlivens your purpose here, your clear seeing of Self. It allows the paradoxical to be viscerally understood. There is an edge of sadness in the most beautiful and sweet; there is an avenue to the transcendent in knowing the horrors and the pain. We are more than we think we are, always. We are connected deeply to the most expansive of treasures even when struggling through the thickest muck. We can see the artifice even when all seems lost. And all these experiences are discovered through the cells of this small, mortal manifestation. A great spirit contained in a finite body.
Many of us have an old pattern of worry and anxiety from our childhoods on this fallen earth. How do we “trust God” when it feels as if the very sky above our heads is crashing down? Seemingly small things can feel this way while large things can feel simply impossible. As always, awareness is key, the path out of darkness. Even as our hearts are racing or our guts churning, we can observe the fear from a larger perspective. We can know that what we are experiencing is not the whole picture, even if it feels that way. We are participants and observers in the dream all at once.
When you first engage in this practice it can feel like you’re literally two different people with your perspective shifting back and forth from the one wracked with anxiety and myopic pain to the one calmly watching from above. Over time, the two become more integrated and the times where all broader perspective is lost lessen.
I bring this up here again because of all the narratives of physical “threats” to our lives, to our systems, whether real or imaginary, that are swirling around us. How we deal with them is the same, whether or not they are “real.” We all need to stay grounded and take care of our material needs, which brings us back to where we began, but the way we do that is exponentially different when we stay connected to the awareness that our material existence is spirit made flesh. Processing our fears and disharmonies with a recognition of our totality grows our spirits and strengthens the bodies expressing that spirit.
To talk about so many of these spiritual practices, to talk about the transformation of suffering into a gold which takes you deeper into a connection to divinity, leaves one often feeling inadequate. There are always people whose stories of suffering are 10, 20, 100 times more horrific than yours so what could you or I know of pain? Yet, what we feel and how we process and engage with those feelings, from whatever our circumstances, is always enough to change us in profound ways. This transformational process is still ongoing for me, I am still learning. I have truly experienced the transcendence of this alchemy, have felt my understanding deepen and deepen again, and yet I can still become lost at times.
Presence and transcendence, here and everywhere, centered and expanded, all at once. Suffering and hurt, loved and loving, joyful and serene. Little self’s many wants and spirit’s overarching perspective can all exist simultaneously, if we let them. This is choosing truth in Self, choosing your eternal nature over the physical material one, while not at its core expense. This is choosing to know and trust God. Through your one perfect body.