Pax Corporis
Your body is not an enemy to be subdued, it is not evil and does not need transcending.1
You do not need to mortify the flesh, neither is it advisable to indulge it.2 3
It is not a peripheral matter that the intelligence beaming out of you at this moment, meeting my words in that ancient embrace of sense-making together, (like strangers clasping hands and forearms to make a new peace), is embodied.4
Embodiment is not an accident, a trap, a curse, a trick, an inconvenience. The Great Mystery is not mistaken, and neither is everyone who loves you.
Do not worry that you are a body for no reason. Your ability to reason depends upon your body, as everything you can conceive of is measured by a proportion you learned before you could speak, when you were quickest making sense.
You are not trapped in a body, you were not born in the wrong body. There are no wrong bodies.
If your body is in pain, even in chronic pain, is injured, exhausted, ill or dying, is damaged, is unwieldy, unwilling, unwanted, then remember you remain in good, ordinary company at the endlessly long feasting table of life. All of us will one day be most of these things, or already have been.5 Indeed, it is why we can have any compassion for anyone else.6
This podcast was first published here on Substack with full transcript, footnotes, images and links on 10th June 2024.
Episode 70: To End a War, Be Unafraid to Fight