I am going to a reunion gathering today of people who have studied Essential Motion with Karen Roeper. Pat Samples will be here from Minneapolis. I have not met her, but I have read her book, Body Odyssey, Lessons from the Bones and Belly. I am perusing it this morning.
I place a paragraph from the book here.
"Buddhists speak of mindfulness, bringing, full, detached attention to our every experience. From this perspective, every act, every physical engagement - from washing dishes to listening to the phone ring - holds the promise of a revelation and an enjoyment of the numinous. Even without action, simple awareness and appreciation of the physical world, our own body included, can become an encounter with the sublime. The respected Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, in Touching Peace: Practicing the Art of Mindful Living, speaks of consciously noticing our eyes, blessing them and marveling at the miracle of sight. He talks of attentively appreciating and caring for each of our bodys' organs: "Our eyes are us. Our heart is us. Our liver is us. If we cannot love our own heart and our own liver, how can we love another person?" One of the early New Thought teachers, Myrtle Fillmore, describes in her writing how she cured herself of tuberculosis by spending extended periods of time each day blessing specific parts of her body and thanking them for their wonderful work. Loving attention to our physical form changes it, and changes how we live. As Hanh says, "We do not have to die to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. In fact we have to be fully alive. When we breathe in and out and hug a beautiful tree, we are in Heaven. When we take one conscious breath, aware of our eyes, our heart, our liver, and our non-toothache, we are transported to Paradise right away."
So, here you and I are, in Paradise together, and, as I look out, on this wondrous day, I must admit it doesn't take much imagination to know where I live.
