what is this life?

what is this life

hollow and whole

this holy hollow

full

collapsing and emerging

endlessly

life and death

I don’t know, but if someone figures it out, please let this girl in on the secret. However, if you think you’ve figured it out, I will assume you have no fucking idea what you are talking about, because I am always skeptical, and I am pretty sure it can’t be figured out. My assumption is, it’s not meant to be.

Sometimes I try to explain it with words. And often my mind searches for sense in the nonsensical. Not that I experience life as nonsensical in a void of meaning type of way (although in ways it is meaningless), but it’s nonsensical in a way my conscious thinking mind cannot make total sense of. Nevertheless, my mind incessantly searches for meaning, only to come to a moment of satisfaction equivalent to a less-than-mediocre orgasm — one where I am urgently seeking a climax as if it’s an end point, and all will be well once achieved. It’s unsatisfactory, except for a moment that was never as good as I had hoped it to be and passed as quickly as any other moment.

We know part of the mind’s job is to make connections. This is what it does. It is constantly interpreting input from the outside world and our internal experience to create a coherent narrative that makes sense to us. Point A connects to Point B, and the world keeps spinning. But the mind by itself doesn’t provide fullness of meaning. Through it, I can experience understanding — something that feels like cognitive resonance — my behaviors and thoughts (my life) make enough sense. I can experience the opposite as well — cognitive dissonance — oppositions unable to bridge, and psychological distress occurs. I can also be conceptually oriented, where I see the larger framework and can move clearly in that direction, or I can be conceptually disoriented — I can’t see the larger framework, and I am lost and confused, unable to find my bearings, so to speak.

These are just a few of the many amazing, complex processes the mind goes through to help us make sense of our experience. And while the mind plays an important and necessary part in how we experience life, it is only a piece of our puzzle. Our experience of meaning lacks depth and richness without the body, and without the body and mind bridged, I believe it lacks fullness. To be clear, the mind is important, necessary, and meaningful on its own, just like the body is. Without the body, we wouldn’t have sensation and a range of felt emotions. Without the mind, we wouldn’t have context. We wouldn’t be able to thread experience into story and larger narratives.

The mind does a lot for us, and when our bodies are under threat — devalued, neglected, dismissed, or blatantly attacked, it has to work incredibly hard, much harder than it is meant to. But I have learned that surviving is not the same as living.

Meaning itself is deeply personal and can only be truly known by the individual who seeks it. But where we find meaning, I believe, is universal. Experience is the catalyst. If I am the one living this life, then it’s through my experience meaning becomes available to me, and I experience life through the mind and body. The relationship these two have shapes everything.

I see and feel the mind and body as layers. But not in a hierarchical way, just in a way of being. These layers go up and down as well as in and out. And while the mind and body are not separate, the connection and communication between the two can be clear and flowing, or there can be circuitry issues that disrupt the connection to varying degrees.

What I am pointing to here is nothing new. Philosophers and spiritual and religious traditions have been pointing to it for thousands of years. And while the concept itself is not new for me, each layer I am able to open into is.

For most of my life, I experienced the world from my shoulders up. I didn’t consciously know I was disconnected from my body. If you had asked, are you connected to your body? I would’ve thought what a fucking stupid question. I likely would’ve immediately answered, Of course, how could I not be? I would’ve pointed to the fact that I was an athlete who had trained herself to be highly attuned to the tiniest details of where my body was in space.

but meanwhile…

I was often confused by people and the way they expressed themselves. When it came to physical outward expressions of emotions like laughter, playfulness, grief, anger, or anything along those lines, I labeled the person as dramatic and attention-seeking; that part wasn’t confusing for me. But when it came to verbal expressions, I was utterly confused when people would say things like…I feel so grateful, I enjoyed this so much, I had such an amazing time! Or, I love you!  While I wouldn’t spend too much time thinking about it, I often wondered if people really meant what they were saying, because I didn’t feel much of anything. Don’t get me wrong, I learned when I should be grateful, when I should be happy, when I should say I love you, and when I should be, feel, or express whatever was appropriate in the eyes of the other. But unless I was on my way into an alcohol induced black out, high as a kite, intensely working out, or being intoxicated by love and sex, I was pretty uninterested in life. It was something to endure, not something to live.

During this time, I wasn’t fully connected to my body — not deeply anyway, thankfully. I can thank my mind for that, because without my mind taking over and doing all of its processes to create an experience that made enough sense for me to survive, I wouldn’t have been able to function to the extent I was able.

I want to be clear. I don’t think there is anything wrong with being disconnected from our bodies. For those of us who have been, we know it served a purpose, and for those who are, I’d like to suggest that the disconnection is actually a deeply intelligent and beautiful act of self-love.

A few years ago, when I believed I was as connected to my body as one could be, I took a course on Somatic Attachment Therapy through the Embody Lab. Throughout that six-month course they put us in small groups every class to practice sensing and noticing our internal experience. For someone who really enjoys a lot of intensity, I initially scoffed at the practice of mindful sensing, which I was perceiving as doing nothing. But as I sat through these classes, initially unable to find anything lower than my thoughts, I began my journey of connecting with the disconnection.

As I slowly began bridging my awareness to my body — connecting what I was I was experiencing to whatever I could sense, my internal world began to open. This wasn’t, and often still isn’t, the most pleasant experience. To bear witness to yourself (with support) as your body slowly untangles and reorganizes around decades of stored, complex rage and grief is not a linear, easy, or comfortable journey. But it has been a deeply meaningful one.

How I experience life now versus then is the difference between a mediocre orgasm and a full-bodied one. Then (and still often now) I was thinking about the experience rather than inhabiting it. Now I can drop down from my mind into my body. And to the extent I have experienced my pain, I can experience my pleasure, fully.

It was from inside this opening, an opening that doesn’t have an end from what I can tell, that I began noticing a shift in the different ways I can relate to language — the voice, tone, and words that come from me as well as those that come from another.

I heard someone recently say, we often think words have meaning, but it is meaning that manifests words.

Those words hit my being like a pebble thrown in a lake, and I felt the ripples permeate inside. As I allowed the resonance to settle deeper, I realized that they had just put into words, so simply, a deeply divine potential experience. What I am pointing to here is only something you can discover and know for yourself in your own unique way.

each step

sinking into the earth

of being

arriving in me

through her

here

keep breathing, remember who you are.

— Jenna Flynn 3.19.26