It came clear to me while I was purging a riotous patch of Virginia waterleaf from a front flowerbed: Mind and body are one. It doesn’t make sense for me to see them as separate. The same energy that animates one animates the other. Seeing them as separate is an illusory convenience.
The health and well-being of one is the health and well-being of the other. Mind and body are but different aspects of who I am. Much as particles and waves can be the same.
What drove this home was the sudden realization, in my garden, that Ron, my brother, has been sick for a week. No clinic or emergency room has been able to arrive at a diagnosis. It suddenly became clear to me that he has been apprehensive about the pending visit by Mary Ann, our sister, and her spouse, Bob. We even talked about how his being sick might discourage the visit.
The situation has been sitting there in front of me for a week, and I never recognized the convergence between what was going on in Ron’s mind and what was happening in his body. Not only has one reflected the other, but I also think they are one and the same. His “body” sickness is real, not imagined. So is his “mind” distress real. Both are an aspect of the same reality.
I am aware that the entity that I call “me” is a convergence of many things, many entities, many fields. I am an event that happens because of interactions that I scarcely understand. I seem to move through a day in steps one after another. It is an expression of a constant coming together of information from many sources. I am slowly becoming aware of certain aspects of that convergence.
The more my awareness grows, the more I see how all is connected, all is part of a whole that simply “is” and goes to the depths of the universe, to the core of all that is.
I have been saying to friends that I see the body as a gateway to awareness. I like to say that body awareness is the stimulus and pathway to mind awareness. One comes before the other. I breathe to become aware. I now think this is only partially true.
Today I think that body awareness, such as breathing or any sensation, and mind awareness are the same. Each is an aspect of the same event, the same happening, the same awareness. Body and mind are not separate, they actually are aspects of the same reality, intimately one and the same. For this reason, I do not think that I can have mind awareness without body awareness.
It is possible that this can make sense to me because I spent so many years thinking of how the Trinity expressed three aspects of God. I don’t think about that much anymore. But I do think about my sick brother while I am gardening, and because of him I understand the unity of body and mind much better.
I also think I can see a slight glimmer of what it means for all things to be one. I am learning how my garden and I are one. There is more to come. Convergence is a joyful event.