Imma start by saying this was going to be a post about loving your body, not in the cliche, woke style, but in the sense that, you know, you're you, and if even you turn against yourself, then you're pretty fucked, aren't you? Anyway, I'm not gonna tell you the whole thing, 'cause maybe I decide to write that someday, too.
But then, I kinda veered in a different direction. When the KISS Minimalist community asked ~ what's holding you back? ~ I didn't really think about it consciously. And as often happens, it invited the obvious to fly straight in my face.
I think my body is, and no, I don't think it's a self-image thing. Or a why's my face like this or like that thing. Rather a... corporeal thing. Isn't that a neat word? Well, this post came from a moment where I felt corpounreal.
Movement has become such an integral part of my day and my life that I can't remember how I was before. When I sublet my body, but still felt a guest. I used to be a good tenant. I dusted the blinds, and kept the windows clean, so that people passing on the outside of me would look and think what a nice flat she is. I made it looked homely, and thought that might turn into a home.
Now? I don't know what the people outside think. I haven't thought about them in a long time. Now, my body just is, and sometimes, I gotta leave, just so I have something to come back to.
What do I mean?
I mean before, my body and spirit lived on different floors, and moved independently. They didn't even know when the other was gone, or where. It didn't matter, I suppose. But now, they've gotten used to moving as one, so when one outruns the other, it's a really poignant feeling. That's what corpounreal feels like. It's when the spirit moves too fast, and leaves the body behind for a moment. Funnily enough, it happens when the body moves in just the right way.
It happened couple nights ago, floating in my hammock. Doing an aerial 180, I unlocked a door that my spirit slipped through, and left my body in the dust. It was bizarre, 'cause I don't know where my consciousness went, if it flew with the spirit, or stayed with the head. Sometimes, you move so perfectly that the spirit just flows, and you glimpse into the ethereal.
I felt like my body was too slow. Weighing me down. Like I needed to move outside it for a while, so I floated. I'd say I danced, except that's quaint. I think that's the only way the spirit moves, 'cause no one ever taught it how to walk.
It's the highest high, and I think you can learn to unlock it consciously. I think once you realize it's there, it's impossible to forget, and you're doomed to keep chasing it. The flow that sets you free.
What's moving consciously?
A hip term often thrown around by pseudo-spiritual people, moving consciously sounds like a load and we both know it. You and me. But it doesn't have to be. Really, how often are you aware of what you're doing? How often do you feel the muscles in your leg tense up to hold your weight? How often do you acknowledge where your center of gravity is, or whether you're leaning your weight front or back?
I used to think these things didn't matter. I could never be a fitness girl, or an athlete, because I wanted to be someone devoted to the spirit and the mind. Lifting weight's cute, but have you tried reading? Talk about a high. For me, the two could not, for some reason, coexist, and I thought I could thrive on a mental plane alone.
Turns out haha, aren't you a laugh, kid. Except it took me a while to figure that out. Turns out, you can't set the mind or the spirit free, as long as the body isn't. I've heard the idea mentioned before, but I'm not sure it works, anymore. And it seems perilous to encourage people to divorce them from one another.
Rather, it seems to me, the only way to be free, is to weave body and spirit so closely that they learn to move and exist like one.
...Until they don't anymore.
What's holding you back right now? My body is. Because it moves too slow, even when it's moving too fast. But I'll keep returning to it, 'cause I haven't found other ways to break free. Pulling me back, while also propelling me forward, and now my body and spirit dance in a tacit, secret-sweetheart embrace.
I escaped. I existed, for too brief moments, outside space and time, in a world where I've never known my body, or its familiar necessary constraints. And I've never, in this consciousness, at least, known that sensation before. The sensation of freedom unlike any dictionary in our known world describes it. What a fucking feeling.
...
I'm not sure any of this makes sense. I feel the more I talk, the less it does. Still. I don't know how else to explain it, this sensation of otherworldly flow, without. By which I mean, I know better words, and clearer phrases to get the point across. In by-the-book terms. But this is the only way I know how to express the sensation, so here we are.
I don't know if this fits into the Minimalist community, but I think it does. Shedding even the body, I don't see how much more minimalist you could get, so to speak.
