this is an artifact of messy chatting with Chat-GPT – in creating the HOME month – some fun pictures in here, so I thought I would share – maybe useful to meditate though – some of it is surely crap, but maybe some diamonds in the rough 🙂
We Are Wed to Your Body for Life
The question isn’t whether we’re going to have a relationship.
The question is what kind of relationship we’re going to have.
Because while we’re alive, here we are.
Together.
Body and soul.
We can spend this marriage estranged.
Living in opposite wings of the house.
Arguing.
Ignoring each other.
Pulling in opposite directions.
Overriding.
Withholding.
Managing.
Blaming.
Shaming.
Trying to get the other one to BEHAVE.
Or…
we can learn to live together.
Listen.
Communicate.
Care.
Play.
Collaborate.
Make love.
Move together toward our shared desires, hopes, visions and dreams.
We can make a Life together.
And that is some of what I mean by Comfort.
HOME: Living as Allies with Our Body-Soul
Our theme this month in Soul GYM is HOME.
Living as Allies with Our Body-Soul.
We began with Safety.
Cultivating enough Safety within that more of us can emerge from hiding.
More room to perceive.
Choose.
Act.
Rest.
Connect.
Create.
Become.
LIVE.
And now we move into Comfort.
Because it’s one thing to invite everyone HOME.
It’s another thing entirely to learn how to live together once we’re here.
Safety says:
More of me can live here.
Comfort asks:
Can we enjoy living here together?
Can I become comfortable in relationship with my own body-soul?
Can I listen?
Can I receive communication?
Can my body have needs?
Can I have emotions?
Can I experience desire?
Pleasure?
Sexuality?
Fear?
Anger?
Sadness?
Tenderness?
Can different parts of me communicate without immediately being judged, suppressed, indulged, fixed or placed in charge?
Can we develop enough relationship, trust and capacity that more of us gets to participate in this Life?
Can HOME become not merely somewhere we’re protected…
but somewhere we’re increasingly free to PLAY?
A Lot of Us Have a Body-Management Program
Many of us don’t really have a relationship with our body.
We have a management arrangement.
Feed it correctly.
Exercise it.
Make it sleep.
Make it wake up.
Make it productive.
Make it thinner.
Make it stronger.
Make it younger.
Make it stop hurting.
Make it stop being tired.
Make it stop wanting that.
Make it stop feeling that.
Make it perform.
Make it behave.
Keep the machinery functioning so we can get on with whatever we think our Life is actually about.
And when the body refuses to cooperate?
It becomes the problem.
An adversary.
An obstacle.
An inconvenient animal we’re unfortunately required to drag through Life with us.
And sometimes we go further.
We make our body wrong.
Wrong for how it looks.
Wrong for what it needs.
Wrong for getting sick.
Wrong for hurting.
Wrong for aging.
Wrong for being tired.
Wrong for being sexual.
Wrong for not being sexual.
Wrong for being sensitive.
Wrong for having limits.
Wrong for failing to be the body we think we were supposed to have.
There can be enormous shame here.
And blame.
How comfortable can HOME become when one of its inhabitants is continually being told:
You’re the problem.
What If We Cared for Our Body Like Someone We Love?
This was a profound turn in my own practice.
What if, instead of treating my body like something that had disappointed me…
I cared for it like a child I loved?
A lover I loved?
A beloved companion animal entrusted to my care?
Not indulging every impulse.
Not pretending everything was fine.
Not abandoning responsibility.
Caring.
Listening.
Learning its language.
Noticing its needs.
Providing resources.
Responding.
Repairing.
Making choices on behalf of our shared Life.
It took practice.
A LOT of practice.
But the change in relationship was enormous.
Because this body wasn’t my enemy.
It was the companion I had been given for the whole damn trip.
Ignoring Your Body Is Still a Relationship
There isn’t really a neutral option.
Ignoring the body is a way of relating.
Overriding it is a relationship.
Being ashamed of it is a relationship.
Only attending to it when it hurts loudly enough is a relationship.
Treating its desires as suspicious is a relationship.
Trying to control everything it does is a relationship.
Leaving it alone while we live somewhere else in consciousness is a relationship.
We’re already in this together.
So the question isn’t:
Should I develop a relationship with my body?
It’s:
What kind of relationship are we already having?
And…
what kind of relationship do I want us to have?
Sometimes Nobody Is HOME
We can fight our bodies.
And we can also simply leave them.
Not one moment of distraction or dissociation.
I’m talking about patterns of relationship.
We can spend enormous amounts of ourselves somewhere else.
In analysis.
Fantasy.
Addiction.
Remembered experience.
Anticipated experience.
Worry.
Planning.
Endless mental activity.
Sometimes we live predominantly in the past:
What happened.
What shouldn’t have happened.
What we lost.
What we loved.
What hurt.
What we wish we could recover.
Sometimes we live predominantly in the future:
What might happen.
What must happen.
What we’re trying to create.
What we’re afraid will happen.
What we’re determined to prevent.
Sometimes we even do this spiritually.
We go off to play in the heavenlies…
and leave the kids home alone.
We seek transcendence while abandoning embodiment.
And eventually we may discover:
It’s difficult to tend your HOME when nobody is home.
The Kids Are in the Back Seat
I’ve often used the image of driving a car to talk about our inner relationships.
The Analyzer?
Passenger seat.
Useful.
Can read maps.
Can offer information.
Can help.
But I don’t necessarily want it grabbing the steering wheel every thirty seconds.
Emotions?
The kids are in the back seat.
Sexual impulses?
Maybe they’re strapped into the back-back. 😂
Desires?
Also along for the ride.
And no…
the children do not drive the car.
Thank God.
Because if every emotion, impulse, fear, craving or desire took the wheel whenever it appeared, we’d spend a lot of time in the ditch.
But somewhere along the way, many of us learned that if the kids aren’t allowed to drive…
they shouldn’t get a SAY.
Those are two completely different things.
Healthy Authority Is Not Domination
Think about raising a child well.
A child doesn’t get to decide everything.
They don’t necessarily determine bedtime.
They don’t decide whether it’s okay to run into traffic.
They don’t get to hit somebody because they’re angry.
There are edges.
Boundaries.
Structure.
Guidance.
And within those edges?
So much room.
Room to choose.
Explore.
Make mistakes.
Learn.
Develop competence.
Discover preferences.
Experience consequences.
Say NO.
Say YES.
Be sad.
Be delighted.
Want things.
Be weird.
Experiment.
Become.
PLAY.
A healthy child learns:
I matter.
My experience matters.
My desires matter.
My fear matters.
My pleasure matters.
My communication matters.
I have agency.
AND…
there are edges I don’t yet have the capacity to hold alone.
There is loving authority here.
“We’re Having Fun. And When I Say It’s Time to Go, We Go.”
I learned a great deal about this helping to raise a child I love.
There could be enormous freedom.
We could play all day.
Explore.
Experiment.
Delight.
She had choices.
Agency.
Permission.
A very large yard.
And…
the yard had edges.
When I said:
It’s time to go.
We went.
That wasn’t always an easy lesson.
But learning it didn’t diminish her freedom.
It created conditions in which more freedom became possible.
Because I could trust her with more.
She could trust me.
And increasingly, she could trust herself.
This is one of the paradoxes of healthy discipline:
Discipline can expand freedom.
Think About a Well-Trained Dog
A dog that hasn’t developed basic discipline may need to be controlled constantly.
Leash.
Fence.
Gate.
Watch the door.
Watch the road.
Watch EVERYTHING.
But a well-trained dog in an appropriate environment?
That dog can have acres.
Run.
Sniff.
Explore.
Dog around.
Have an absolutely magnificent doggy Life.
Why?
Because it has developed enough capacity to hold some important edges.
Come when called.
Don’t bite people.
Don’t run into traffic.
Don’t shit in the house.
😂
The discipline isn’t there to crush the dog’s aliveness.
The discipline makes greater aliveness possible.
And perhaps something similar is true within us.
We Don’t Need to Control Ourselves Forever
This is an important part of embodied Soul Practice.
We’re developing capacity.
Not simply exerting more control.
We practice enough that increasingly we don’t need somebody standing over every part of us with a clipboard.
We learn to inhabit ourselves.
Listen.
Choose.
Respond.
Discern.
Hold edges.
Communicate.
Trust.
And as capacity develops…
the territory of freedom can expand.
We don’t need a six-foot leash forever.
We can have the enormous yard.
We can PLAY.
Your Body Has Been Sending Telegrams
Relationship requires communication.
And our body-soul communicates all the time.
Sensation.
Emotion.
Pain.
Pleasure.
Fatigue.
Energy.
Attraction.
Aversion.
Fear.
Anger.
Sadness.
Excitement.
Sexuality.
Desire.
Imagine that every emotional communication arrives as a telegram.
Some got read.
Some didn’t.
Some needed action that never happened.
Some simply needed acknowledgment.
Some belonged to circumstances long gone.
Some needed completion.
But instead of reading them, completing what needed completion, and putting them in recycling…
we piled them on the desk.
Ten.
A hundred.
Five hundred.
A thousand old telegrams.
Eventually they’re spilling onto the floor.
And then your body sends a telegram today:
Something about this person feels off.
I’m exhausted.
I want to go outside.
I’m lonely.
I need touch.
I don’t want this.
I REALLY want that.
I’m frightened.
I’m hungry.
I’m delighted.
Please stop.
Let’s GO!
And the new telegram lands…
somewhere underneath a thousand pieces of old mail.
No wonder we have trouble hearing ourselves.
Processing Isn’t Necessarily Feeling Something Harder
When I talk about processing emotions, I don’t necessarily mean digging them up and feeling them MORE.
Sometimes a telegram needs to be read.
Sometimes acknowledged.
Sometimes there is unfinished business.
Sometimes action is required.
Sometimes something needs grieving.
Sometimes something needs changing.
Sometimes the message is simply old.
Message received. Thank you. Recycle.
The purpose isn’t to spend our lives obsessively processing ourselves.
It’s partly to clear enough communication space that we can perceive what the body-soul is communicating NOW.
Here.
Now.
With.
And Whose Telegram Is This Anyway?
This distinction has been enormous in my own Life:
Is this even mine?
Many of us are sensitive to other people.
Their fear.
Sadness.
Urgency.
Anger.
Pain.
Desire.
Expectations.
We perceive.
We resonate.
We pick things up.
And without differentiation, another person’s emotional communication can arrive in our experience and become:
I feel this, therefore this is mine.
Not necessarily.
Learning to disambiguate changed my relationship with my own emotional Life enormously.
Is this mine?
Is it theirs?
Is some of it mine and some of it theirs?
Is this happening now?
Is this old?
Is it information?
What actually needs my attention?
We can learn to turn down the volume without disconnecting the communication line.
We can perceive another person’s experience without becoming responsible for being them.
We can care.
Respond.
Help when appropriate.
And still remain responsive and responsible for our own body, our own Life, our own choices.
Healthy relationship requires differentiation.
We differentiate in order to relate.
I can be with YOU without ceasing to be with ME.
That is Comfort too.
Listening Doesn’t Mean Obeying
If my body communicates fear, that matters.
But fear doesn’t automatically get the steering wheel.
Maybe I listen and say:
Yes. I hear you. We’re taking another street tonight.
Or perhaps:
Yes, sweetheart. I hear that you’re afraid. I’ve got this. We’re going down this street anyway. I’ll stay with you. Hold my hand. Let’s ask the angels to walk with us. Let’s go.
That’s relationship.
The fear was heard.
It mattered.
Its information became part of our discernment.
But it didn’t automatically dictate the decision.
Similarly:
I can experience anger without attacking somebody.
Experience sexual desire without making it somebody else’s responsibility.
Want something without automatically taking it.
Feel tired without abandoning every commitment.
Experience discomfort without assuming something has gone terribly wrong.
Listening is not obeying.
Communication provides information.
We still choose.
And because our body learns that somebody is actually listening…
perhaps it doesn’t always need to scream.
Emotions Don’t Have to Be Where We Live
This was another enormous change in my own Life.
I spent much of my adult Life struggling with depression and, when I wasn’t depressed, often living with enormous sadness and other intense feelings.
There were many reasons for that.
But through practice, something fundamental changed.
I didn’t stop having feelings.
I didn’t stop experiencing sadness.
I didn’t stop encountering difficulty.
I learned to relate differently.
I learned to reframe.
To disambiguate.
To ask what was actually happening.
To find agency where I had previously experienced stuckness.
I learned that I could be in the driver’s seat and respond to my emotions rather than continually living inside them.
That distinction changed my Life.
Because an emotion can be real…
important…
powerful…
worthy of response…
without becoming the entire HOME.
Weather and Climate
Some emotions are like weather.
A storm arrives.
Sadness moves through.
Fear comes.
Anger rises.
Joy bursts open.
The weather changes.
But some emotional patterns are so longstanding that they no longer feel like weather.
They feel like climate.
If we grew up immersed in anxiety…
shame…
sadness…
fear…
anger…
hypervigilance…
we may barely recognize them as emotional conditions.
They simply seem to be:
what Life feels like.
The water we’ve always been swimming in.
I sometimes think of these deeply embedded patterns as concrete.
They have set.
They aren’t a passing shower.
Changing climate can take a minute.
Sometimes a LONG minute.
And yet…
climate can change.
Layer by layer we may suddenly recognize:
Oh my gosh. I didn’t even know how much fear was in this water.
Wonderful.
Now we can work here.
Heal.
Die.
Rise.
Shift.
Become new.
And then sometimes, later:
Oh! There’s another layer.
😂
Practice.
Not failure.
Because changing something that has organized our experience for decades is different from dealing with today’s weather.
And the fruit can be astonishing.
When the Climate Changes, the World Changes
This is bigger than feeling better.
When our inner climate changes…
our perception changes.
Available choices change.
What we notice changes.
What seems possible changes.
What we tolerate changes.
What we reach toward changes.
How we relate changes.
How we participate changes.
And eventually…
we change.
We can find ourselves inhabiting a very different world because we’re no longer meeting everything from the same inner climate.
That’s not mood management.
That’s Becoming.
You Don’t Need Everything Inside You to Feel Good
This may be one of the most important Comfort distinctions of all:
You don’t need everything inside you to feel good in order to become increasingly comfortable being you.
Comfort doesn’t require perfect contents.
Your body can hurt.
Sadness can be present.
Fear can visit.
Your health can be challenging.
Someone you love can be distressed.
Your body can need inconvenient things.
You can have a difficult day.
And perhaps…
you don’t have to abandon HOME because difficult company arrived.
That’s real relationship.
Not:
Everyone in this family must be cheerful or I’m leaving.
😂
But:
Whatever today’s weather, we know how to live together.
And over time, with cultivation and practice…
even the climate can change.
Desire Is Not the Enemy
Desire belongs beautifully in this territory.
Many of us have complicated relationships with wanting.
Is this desire acceptable?
Practical?
Responsible?
Spiritual?
Selfish?
Embarrassing?
What will people think?
Am I allowed to want this?
Sometimes we begin evaluating desire before we’ve even perceived it.
But desire itself is information.
Energy.
Movement.
I often experience desire almost like a magnet.
It pulls us toward what our body desires…
and pulls what our body desires toward us.
Not every desire should be acted upon.
Not every desire tells the whole truth.
Again:
desire doesn’t drive the car.
But what if we learned to hear it?
What if we became curious?
What is pulling me?
What wants to flower here?
What does my body-soul reach toward when I stop telling it what it’s supposed to want?
There may be enormous Life in that question.
When Desire Begins Moving Us
Sexuality gives us a particularly vivid experience of this.
There can be a point in sexual experience when we’re initially doing something.
Moving.
Touching.
Participating.
Choosing.
And then…
desire blooms.
Something changes.
We’re no longer simply moving the experience.
The experience begins moving us.
Life moves.
The body knows.
Desire has its own intelligence and momentum.
We participate…
and we are also moved.
This is one of the places Comfort begins touching what we’ll later explore as Ease.
Because relationship with the body-soul can teach us that not everything valuable needs to be produced through personal force.
Sometimes we need enough Comfort to receive the movement that is already happening.
Pleasure Is Information Too
And then there is pleasure.
Not as reward for good behavior.
Not something frivolous we squeeze in after all the important things are done.
I mean our organism’s extraordinary capacity to receive goodness.
Warmth.
Food.
Touch.
Movement.
Beauty.
Sex.
Rest.
Water.
Music.
Laughter.
Company.
Solitude.
Sunlight.
A breeze.
Our own bodies.
Life can feel GOOD.
And for some of us, receiving goodness is surprisingly difficult.
Survival can become familiar.
Striving can become familiar.
Pain can become familiar.
Even suffering can become familiar.
Pleasure may require something different:
Enough presence to receive what is happening.
Enough Safety to soften.
Enough Comfort to let goodness reach us.
Because we’re not merely trying to stay alive.
We’re learning to LIVE.
Comfort Feels Like Living Water
When I perceive the light-yellow energy of Comfort, it feels delicious to me.
Like floating in living water.
The water holds us up.
Gently rocks us.
Supports us.
And doesn’t pin us down.
We can float.
Roll.
Dive.
Kick.
Rest.
Swim.
Play.
Move under our own power.
Let ourselves be carried.
Held AND free.
That feels like Comfort.
Not rigidity.
Not chaos.
Not abandonment.
Not control.
There are edges.
And within those edges…
movement.
Communication can move.
Emotion can move.
Desire can move.
Sexual energy can move.
Relationship can move.
Life can move through the body.
Comfort Is Not the Same as “Never Uncomfortable”
Comfort isn’t a project to eliminate every uncomfortable experience.
That’s another prison.
Bodies hurt sometimes.
Emotions hurt.
Growth can be uncomfortable.
Relationships can be uncomfortable.
Truth can be uncomfortable.
Learning something new can be uncomfortable.
Life certainly does not promise perpetual pleasantness.
The Comfort we’re cultivating is deeper than arranging things so nothing ever rubs.
It’s developing a relationship in which we can increasingly be:
present, responsive, cared-for, free AND held.
Comfortable in and with ourselves…
even when circumstances aren’t particularly comfortable.
HOME doesn’t have to become perfect before we can live here.
Comfort From Inside → OUT
And just as with Safety, we begin deeper than behavior.
Below everyday consciousness.
We practice with the energy and experience of Comfort itself.
We ask.
Receive.
Notice.
Experience.
Cultivate.
We don’t need to intellectually manufacture Comfort.
We encounter it.
Marinate in it.
Let it in.
Let things go.
Follow what moves from deep within.
And we participate.
Maybe there is communication to complete.
A habit to shift.
An edge to strengthen.
A need to acknowledge.
A boundary to hold.
A pleasure to allow.
A desire to notice.
A body to listen to.
An attic to clean.
Some furniture to move.
A relationship to tend.
Blessing AND Practice.
Receiving AND participating.
Following from deep within.
Leading from deep within.
And gradually what we practice within can become more available throughout soul…
body and mind…
and the Life we’re actually living.
An Unattended HOME Is Easier for Somebody Else to Occupy
There’s another practical reason this matters.
When we’re rarely HOME…
when we don’t know what we want…
can’t hear our body’s NO…
don’t recognize our edges…
don’t inhabit our own authority…
don’t trust our perception…
don’t practice making choices…
then other people can have an enormous amount of influence over our inner territory.
A strong personality.
A controlling partner.
A charismatic teacher.
A demanding family.
A group.
An ideology.
Someone else’s needs.
Someone else’s desires.
Someone else’s certainty.
If we’re not inhabiting HOME, there can be a lot of empty real estate.
This does NOT make us responsible for somebody else’s manipulation, abuse or predation.
Their behavior belongs to them.
But our presence belongs to us.
Comfortable relationship with our body-soul helps us perceive:
Something doesn’t feel right.
I want this.
I don’t want that.
That’s enough.
Come closer.
Back up.
YES.
NO.
Maybe.
Not yet.
Let’s find out.
Communication supports agency.
Agency supports relationship.
And relationship helps us become increasingly HOME.
Poor Body Relationship Bears Fruit Too
None of this is merely philosophical.
How we relate within can eventually show up in how we live.
When communication is chronically ignored…
when attention habitually lives elsewhere…
when needs are continually overridden…
when emotions remain piled like unread telegrams…
when desire becomes inaccessible…
when discipline is either rigid control or almost entirely absent…
when shame and blame dominate our inner relationship…
when nobody seems to be HOME…
things can begin rolling downhill.
Sometimes slowly.
Body.
Relationship.
Choices.
Habits.
Energy.
Life.
Turning this around can take practice.
Sometimes a LOT of practice.
I can attest.
And…
it is worth it.
The fruit can be mind-bogglingly good.
Not because Life stops being challenging.
Because it becomes so much more comfortable to be:
me.
Here.
Now.
With.
As I go on.
Imagine Actually Becoming Allies
Imagine your body no longer primarily as:
a problem,
a project,
a machine,
a source of embarrassment,
an unruly animal,
a collection of symptoms,
or something you occasionally feed under the door.
😂
Imagine instead developing an alliance.
I listen to you.
You communicate with me.
Your needs matter.
Your pleasure matters.
Your fear matters.
Your desire matters.
Your limits matter.
Your gifts matter.
And I will not abandon my responsibility for our Life.
I will choose.
Hold edges.
Sometimes say yes.
Sometimes no.
Sometimes not yet.
Sometimes:
OH HELL YES, LET’S GO.
We will learn together.
Develop capacity.
Practice.
Play.
Make mistakes.
Repair.
Become increasingly trustworthy companions to one another.
And perhaps…
we can make a Life together.
HOME Is Not a Prison
A good HOME doesn’t merely keep danger out.
It gives Life somewhere to happen.
There are walls.
Doors.
Edges.
Shelter.
And inside?
Food cooking.
People laughing.
Bodies resting.
Music playing.
Arguments happening.
Sex happening.
Tears happening.
Projects spread across the table.
Dogs tracking mud across the floor.
Somebody dancing badly in the kitchen.
😂
Life.
The purpose of HOME isn’t to build increasingly perfect walls.
It’s to create conditions in which Life can be lived.
Safety helps us come HOME.
Comfort helps us inhabit it.
To move around.
Communicate.
Relate.
Receive.
Desire.
Enjoy.
Develop.
PLAY.
And perhaps discover:
I don’t merely have to survive living inside myself.
Maybe I can become increasingly comfortable being me.
Not when everything inside me finally behaves.
Not when my body becomes perfect.
Not when every emotion is pleasant.
Not when Life stops being difficult.
Here.
With today’s weather.
In this body.
With this Life.
Together.
You Are Wed to Your Body for Life
So we return to where we began.
You are wed to your body for Life.
The question isn’t whether you’re going to have a relationship.
The question is what kind of relationship you’re going to have.
Estranged?
Controlling?
Abandoned?
Hostile?
Barely functional?
Or increasingly…
responsive?
communicative?
playful?
disciplined?
free?
sensual?
trusting?
loving?
alive?
What becomes possible when your body-soul stops being something you manage…
and becomes someone you live, love, listen, play and create a Life with?
Perhaps Comfort isn’t a luxury.
Perhaps it is part of learning how to inhabit our own Life.
Enough relationship that more of us gets a SAY.
Enough discipline that we need less control.
Enough differentiation that I can be with you without abandoning me.
Enough presence that somebody is HOME.
Enough communication that we can hear today’s telegram.
Enough Safety to receive goodness.
Enough freedom to PLAY.
Enough Comfort to let Life move.
Whatever today’s weather, we can learn to live together.
And over time…
even the climate can change.
One small practice at a time.
Creating a little more HOME within.
And discovering what Life becomes possible from there.
Come PLAY.
.
I don’t need everything inside me to feel good in order to become increasingly comfortable being me.
Whatever today’s weather, we can learn to live together.
And over time, even the climate can change.
That feels like HOME. 💛🌊
PS
PS rapprochement really is a great picture here, two warring states learning step by step to live together
Rapprochement is the word many of us need here
Reestablishment of cordial, friendly, or harmonious relations between those who were previously in conflict or estranged. It comes from the French word rapprocher, meaning “to bring together” or “to bring near”
Reconciling
Developing enough TLC, communication, collaboration, trust…
that more of us
gets to participate.
Relationship
Developing enough alliance
that all our needs get a voice, start to matter.