Working on body issues

“My Avatar betrays me. It is a mortal corporeal version 1.0 requiring constant, expensive upkeep. It carries me, like an arrow through linear time. It includes a brain that builds a simulacrum of this sensual world. I want to perfect my Avatar with mouse clicks, but it stubbornly adheres to source codes I cannot access. What an uneasy alliance I have with this quintessence of dust.” — Facebook status update by Jonathan Zap, 2010 At war with your bodily nature. Most of us are highly ambivalent about corporeal incarnation. We often resent the limits imposed on us by being incarnated in a physical body that can’t always do what we want when we want it. Many are at war with how their body looks, with aging, and corporeality in general. Like most wars, all concerned are harmed. The positive aspect is that this may be a propitious time to make your peace with being embodied. That’s the short version, if you have time for a bit more: Don’t judge yourself by conditioned body-image notions. You are much more than your corporeal body image, and your corporeal body is much more than its topographical reflection. That’s the short version, if you [...]

“My Avatar betrays me. It is a mortal corporeal version 1.0 requiring constant, expensive upkeep. It carries me, like an arrow through linear time. It includes a brain that builds a simulacrum of this sensual world. I want to perfect my Avatar with mouse clicks, but it stubbornly adheres to source codes I cannot access. What an uneasy alliance I have with this quintessence of dust.” — Facebook status update by Jonathan Zap, 2010 Don’t judge yourself by conditioned body-image notions. You are much more than your corporeal body image, and your corporeal body is much more than its topographical reflection. That’s the short version, if you have time for a bit more: Body Mountain There are many ways in which the body can be our mountain. Like climbing a mountain on a stormy night, corporeal incarnation presents us with one risky challenge after another. We live in a time where denial of the body has generated the polarized opposing view, the body-centric perspective. Neurological materialists believe that consciousness (if they admit such a thing exists at all) is merely an epiphenomenon, or secondary effect, of biochemical process in the brain. This unproven assumption is definitively contradicted by some of [...]

“My Avatar betrays me. It is a mortal corporeal version 1.0 requiring constant, expensive upkeep. It carries me, like an arrow through linear time. It includes a brain that builds a simulacrum of this sensual world. I want to perfect my Avatar with mouse clicks, but it stubbornly adheres to source codes I cannot access. What an uneasy alliance I have with this quintessence of dust.” — Facebook status update by Jonathan Zap, 2010 You have more than one body. Besides your gravity-bound, flesh and blood, corporeal body, you have an emotional body, an energy body, a dream body, and a spirit body (if it is not lost to depotentiation and fragmentation). A more glorified body may emerge in the dream time, during out-of- body experiences, near-death experiences and in other incarnations. Meanwhile, good treatment of your physical body helps your other bodies to glow while you are in this phase of corporeal incarnation where the many bodies are in a state of parallel interdependence. That’s the short version, if you have time for a bit more: Don’t judge yourself by conditioned body-image notions. You are much more than your corporeal body image, and your corporeal body is much more [...]

“My Avatar betrays me. It is a mortal corporeal version 1.0 requiring constant, expensive upkeep. It carries me, like an arrow through linear time. It includes a brain that builds a simulacrum of this sensual world. I want to perfect my Avatar with mouse clicks, but it stubbornly adheres to source codes I cannot access. What an uneasy alliance I have with this quintessence of dust.” — Facebook status update by Jonathan Zap, 2010 Make friends with your animal nature. We are mammals and primates. Many have sought to make spiritual progress by repressing our animal nature. But we do not benefit by either repressing that nature or by being ruled by it. Make friends with your animal self, work with it, integrate it as a valid part of who you are. Regard it as neither alien to who you are, nor all of what you are. Most of us are highly ambivalent about corporeal incarnation. We often resent the limits imposed on us by being incarnated in a physical body that can’t always do what we want when we want. Many of us are at war with how our bodies look, with aging, and mortality in general. We may [...]

“My Avatar betrays me. It is a mortal corporeal version 1.0 requiring constant, expensive upkeep. It carries me, like an arrow through linear time. It includes a brain that builds a simulacrum of this sensual world. I want to perfect my Avatar with mouse clicks, but it stubbornly adheres to source codes I cannot access. What an uneasy alliance I have with this quintessence of dust.” — Facebook status update by Jonathan Zap, 2010 You are much more than your body — don’t judge yourself by its reflection. The positive aspect is that this may be a propitious time to work on that. That’s the short version, if you have time for a bit more: Don’t judge yourself by conditioned body-image notions. You are much more than your corporeal body image, and your corporeal body is much more than its topographical reflection. That’s the short version, if you have time for a bit more: Body Mountain There are many ways in which the body can be our mountain. Like climbing a mountain on a stormy night, corporeal incarnation presents us with one risky challenge after another. We live in a time where denial of the body has generated the polarized [...]

“My Avatar betrays me. It is a mortal corporeal version 1.0 requiring constant, expensive upkeep. It carries me, like an arrow through linear time. It includes a brain that builds a simulacrum of this sensual world. I want to perfect my Avatar with mouse clicks, but it stubbornly adheres to source codes I cannot access. What an uneasy alliance I have with this quintessence of dust.” — Facebook status update by Jonathan Zap, 2010 Are you a mortal body? An immortal spirit? Both? Core inner conflicts about our embodied nature often underlie troubled relationships, depression, anxiety and many other life problems that might seem to be about other things. That’s the short version, if you have time for a bit more: Body Mountain There are many ways in which the body can be our mountain. Like climbing a mountain on a stormy night, corporeal incarnation presents us with one risky challenge after another. We live in a time where denial of the body has generated the polarized opposing view, the body-centric perspective. Neurological materialists believe that consciousness (if they admit such a thing exists at all) is merely an epiphenomenon, or secondary effect, of biochemical process in the brain. This [...]

Your neurological state is a major player in your life on this plane. The position of neurological materialism, that consciousness is an epiphenomenon or secondary effect of biochemical process in the brain, is fundamentally flawed, but while you are incarnated in a corporeal body the condition of your brain is a huge player in your life experience, so take care of it! Avoid excess alcohol consumption, wear a helmet when riding a bike or motorcycle, and eat a high-omega diet — especially walnuts, which actually look like brains. A diet sufficiently high in omegas (according to recent research) may even allow nerve cells to regrow (once thought to be impossible). Stabilize your blood sugar (your brain lives off of glucose) by eating complex carbohydrates and avoiding refined carbohydrates and excess caffeine. Get sufficient sleep, and be wary of pharmaceuticals that affect your brain chemistry, such as serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors (Prozac and related substances). Everyone’s chemistry is a bit different so carefully monitor the effects of anything that crosses the brain/blood barrier — alcohol, recreational substances, stimulants. Consider this a propitious time to look into your neurological influences.

One of the great pleasures of corporeal incarnation is movement of the body. The movement can be play, sport, dance, or it can be practical — the movements obligatory to our survival and to many forms of work. Unless we are paralyzed, our bodies are always moving. Even if you are seated in a chair reading this, you are making all sorts of conscious or unconscious choices about your posture. How we move our bodies through space and time is like a continuous signature that transmits to others and to ourselves vast amounts of information, the body language that major parts of our brains are designed to generate and interpret. Vigorous exercise needs to be part of our daily life. Consider the occurrence of this card a propitious time to be more mindful of bodily movement.

Don’t judge yourself by conditioned body-image notions. You are much more than your corporeal body image, and your corporeal body is much more than its topographical reflection. That’s the short version, if you have time for a bit more: Body Mountain There are many ways in which the body can be our mountain. Like climbing a mountain on a stormy night, corporeal incarnation presents us with one risky challenge after another. We live in a time where denial of the body has generated the polarized opposing view, the body-centric perspective. Neurological materialists believe that consciousness (if they admit such a thing exists at all) is merely an epiphenomenon, or secondary effect, of biochemical process in the brain. This unproven assumption is definitively contradicted by some of the findings of near death experience research. Although the condition of our brain has a vast influence on what we experience while we are bound to this particular body, there is strong evidence that we are not bound to a particular body. The body-centric point of view would have you believe that the body is not merely our life raft through human incarnation, but that we are the leaky life raft, and without it [...]