What is your body longing for and what is your mind longing for?
Your body belongs to this planet. Your body has its own desires – water, air, fire, wind, space and the connection with all living beings. Your body has its own longing to be touched, to feel, to enjoy – to interact with this life.
For example, you are walking in the garden. You happen to see an apple tree and you would like to eat an apple. But then there is the mind. Your mind may say that it would be nice to make a pie out of it or sell it. The mind will have so many different ideas.
Or for example when it is raining, your body wants to run into the rain, wants to be touched by the rain. This is the longing of the body. But your mind may say that you want to take a photo and post it on social media to get ‘likes’.
The mind has a culture, religion and nationality. It follows a learned pattern. It has learned so many things on how everything is supposed to be.
When people appreciate, acknowledge and applaud you, your mind will enjoy it. It is looking for recognition of its existence. It wants to put a story for tomorrow. It gives a future plan and wants to own it. The body doesn’t want to own it. The body is not future-oriented, it is very present. It doesn’t know tomorrow. It knows only now. The body just wants to be. It wants to meet life now, interact with life now.
When we talk about the desires of the body, the ignorant mind immediately thinks about sex. Is sex the only desire of the body? Or, is food the only desire of the body? No. The body desires much more than sex and food. Your eyes long to see beauty. Your ears long to hear the sound of nature – the sound of the birds, the sound of the wind. The desire of the body is for natural fragrance, natural taste, natural touch and also space, the space to be.
When cosmic movements take place, the body wants to reunite with the cosmic rhythm because your physical body is a consequence of the cosmic constellations. Whatever is happening in the cosmic plane is also happening on the planet, in nature. Whatever is happening in the cosmic plane is also happening in your body. These three – the cosmic movements, the planet influenced by the cosmos, and you – need to be coordinated. This is the longing of your body. Your body has a strong desire to be one in this relationship. But we don’t communicate in this relationship. We detach ourselves. We deny the whole existence.
If you live in a concrete block without any natural sound, you will see that you are not functioning in the same way. Think about a prison. Imagine the prison has a big glass window facing the sea. You can see the ocean, you can hear the sound of the ocean. You may like to stay there forever! If a prison is a very natural, beautiful place, it is not a prison. It is a garden of Eden. When people are being put into prison, the contact between life and their senses is disconnected. When our senses are disconnected from nature, we lose something very great.
When we detach our body from the whole – from the nature and cosmos, so many emotions take place – self-denial, self-betrayal, rejection – we go through so many things in our body. To justify or to handle these, we create a lot of substitutes, a lot of artificial longings. We try to fulfill the desire of the mind. The desire of the mind comes due to the disappointment of the body’s unfulfilled desire. When the body is totally disappointed it finds substitutes to survive, it creates artificial desires to survive. At one point, these survival techniques become our desire.
The more I separate this body from the whole, the more the sense of this separated self, this ‘me’, arises and I am not feeling complete. Then I need to buy this, I need to buy that, I need to have so many things to make me feel good. And I cling onto them. I claim that these are all my desires.
The more the body becomes one with the whole, the more the sense of the separated self dissolves. It is important to recognize that this so-called ‘me’ is part of the whole. The planet is an extension of myself. When I create this ‘me’ as something separate from everything, the problem starts.
I have to interact. I have to include the whole as me. The body wants to reunite with the existence. It is like having a dog on a leash. We want to control it; we want to hold it. In the same way, we are holding our body, not allowing it to merge with life. Like keeping water in a balloon and making this balloon float on the ocean water. If you put a little hole in the balloon it becomes one with the ocean. This is the longing of the body. The desire of the body is most profound. It does not want to be alien and hold this life as something separate and carry this life as a cross. It wants to merge; it wants to dissolve.
On the spiritual path it is very important to recognize this difference – what is my body longing for and what is my mind longing for? It is important to complete the desire of the body. Normally, we deny the body, we keep on planning for the future and being busy in building up this mind. So, we live as an unsatisfied, incomplete being. Completing you means bringing completion into your body.
