Body Double

I've been paying attention lately to this concept of my body as an Earth Elemental that I essentially "conjoined with" in order to be a player on this planet.

After reading the 'Wheel of Time' book series (by Robert Jordan) I thought a lot about this concept of a Warder. It really appeals to me on many levels, though not quite so one-sided as it seems like in the books. It's nearly a sort of psychic-spiritual fantasy: wouldn't it be awesome to have another entity with whom you are so close that you are psychically conjoined? Not so extremely as to interfere with individual identity of course, but closely enough to serve as each others' protector, in different ways.

Essentially to have one entity with whom one is so bonded that there is really no issue of romance or commitment or uncertainty: already, you're inseparable. They are a deeper part of you than could spare any room for question. (Some part of me off in the corner is smirking that maybe this is my 'biological clock' griping about not having a person that I have that committed a relationship with...)

The more I think about my body, the more I feel convinced that this is very literally the relationship that we have. The irony of it... All these years that I wished I could commune better with nature spirits. All this time feeling so fascinated at how another lifeform might exist and perceive reality and experience. And all along, I've been as intimate as one can be with an extremely advanced, sentient earth-elemental being... so close to me I couldn't even see it.

Back in the Bewilderness days I had an experience where, briefly, I had a complete out of body experience except the sense of "I" awareness stayed with the body instead of going with the part that left. That was completely disconcerting. I'd had OBEs my whole life and thought it was normal, but I had honestly just never even thought of such a thing as staying with the body while some 'other' part of one leaves before!

I observed how different it was. How trying to use 'logic' was nearly a linear process that made a normally split-second thought process into an agonizingly tedious step-by-step progression. How my eyes could see things, but I understood that my brain could not evaluate it clearly because I lacked the normal more-advanced perceptual faculties to process it.

Back in January of '06 I had some of the most amazing meditations I've ever had in my life. We are talking total virtual reality, total "autonomy" on the part of the archetypes and aspects etc., and visuals that were so utterly astounding I still feel awe just thinking about them. I could have sworn I blogged about them but apparently I didn't (which seems very odd). As just one example:

I found myself in a cramped, dank cell, with the barest hint of some metallic immpression, and definitely kind of wet. A frog-creature with a flat face and huge eyes met me, moved across the room in the kind bizarre way only a human-sized frog could, reached up impossibly high and pulled down this chain that opened up a part of the ceiling and folded down as steps to the ground. I thanked him, and went up the steps. Down a hallway with more weird things than I can recount, at the other end there was a doorway. I knocked, it vanished, and this lizard-like creature made entirely of ice -- but dry ice sort of -- stood there. He led me through a big room, around and down as if I were in a very complex house, and finally to the door of another room, which opened. A man, who seemed respectable and vaguely British (that part cracked me up), with a neatly trimmed beard and wearing a suit, opened the door and let us in. He thanked the lizard-ice-creature who promptly melted into nonexistence. Then he had a conversation with me.

He said he was "representative" consciousness of this part of my body. We were in this really big room, and over at the far side were these low walls and some big open area they were bordering. He took me over there and I looked down over the wall -- it went down quite a ways -- and was simply stunned into speechlessness by the vision. Below, there were zillions of these buckey-ball-shaped "panels" is all I can call them, each of them independent, and zillions of them in a circular shaped pattern. There was a slow 'swirling' motion that they all were in. There were other things too but those were the ones that really caught my attention. For some reason I had the overlay of the panels used to make satellite dishes. At one side of the vast opening with this swirling zillion-piece thing some ways down, was this fluid reservoir kind of thing. He told me, "This is one of your eyes. You are seeing it from the back, in a way that you normally could not." I had to spend awhile simply stunned at the complexity and beauty of it.

He told me that water was a problem. That my whole body was in competition with itself for the rare resource of water. The sinuses, the eyes, every organ, the brain and spinal cord, that they all had representative intelligences, such as himself, that I could talk to if I wanted. I realized it was because I'd been chronically dehydrated for eons, as some researchers suggest our whole culture is to the cellular level thanks to a lifetime of drinks that aren't water. He said that he was giving me this tour because they were really having a serious problem: they were so water-deprived it was causing severe issues with the continued operation without degradation of that part of my body. He wanted to ask me to see that 'his people' -- his area -- got enough water. I thought about it a bit, and then I meant to pull out a paper and pen which somehow became a scroll and inked quill, and I wrote out something like, "First dips on all incoming water to the body, as much as is needed," and I signed my name, and I said, here, will this help? And he seems pretty happy and he says with relief, "This is wonderful. Yes it will help. Especially with the politics of it." I looked at him in some confusion and said, "Politics? My body has politics?" He looked like he wanted to laugh out loud, but he just said dryly, "You have NO idea."

I looked over the edge at the swirling mass of independently moving, shifting buckeyball panels, which seemed to be reflecting these orbs of light that were shooting up from somewhere yet farther below, as if each panel could move so it could reflect it as needed. Then I thanked him, and the stiff un-cold but ice-like lizardish creature grew out of fluid again, led me back to the hallway entrance where he had met me. I went back down the hall, ignoring all the openings, doors and distractions, and down the stairs and into the dank, vaguely metallic feeling cell where the giant frog with huge eyes awaited me. I thanked him and bowed and ended the meditation.

The two most profound parts of it were that first, the visuals were AMAZING. We're talking "3D with Dolby Sound" as a friend used to say of her visions. The "reality" of it was stunning. The second was that everything was a surprise. When you really get the meditative world down, you are not controlling it, nor totally passive, it's almost like you are feeding it a stream of creative energy but then you are allowing that energy to autonomously be what it will without your interference, so the interaction can be just as novel and astonishing as things can be in real life (sometimes, oddly, moreso).

I hadn't thought until then about the fact that if a small copse of flowers is filled with consciousness that is its own identity to some degree, with 'representative' earth-nature spirits and devas and so on, well then, definitely, the highly complex human body is as well, especially when you consider how it is intertwined with our consciousness.

I had other meditations during that period that focused on things in the body, but I didn't go back to the eye -- I didn't go there on purpose to begin with, it was a new kind of meditation and that's just where I ended up -- but it's an experience more striking than nearly any I've had in my life, even in so-called "real life", so I'm not likely to forget it.

And that was just one little part of my body. The overall body is surely even more 'aware'.

I think our tendency to think as our body as "us", even though that's a good thing in a way, is also the reason we don't always recognize it well; my body gets punished for being 'me', hahaha! When I think of my body as a beautiful, incredibly sentient nature spirit that is totally bonded with me, part of me for this journey on earth, I feel a lot more respect for it and awareness of its needs.