The Living Arts - October 2007
Earth - Mind - Body
by Jesse Wolf Hardin
When I first started developing the Animá teachings, I wrote extensively on the so-called mind/body dichotomy. I brought attention to how the “rational mind” seems to increasingly run roughshod over the needs and instincts of the sensate body as well as over the callings of the heart. I pointed out how our use of language contributes to this dynamic. For example, “minding” is doing what we are ordered to do and “following the heart” means doing what feels right instead of what we are told. I described the paralyzing ambivalence I sometimes encountered in my students at the Animá Center which was actually a stalemate between intuitive bodily knowing and a contesting “head”. This thing we call the “mind” seems to have switched in modern times from acting as an agent of the conscious and whole self, to being a self-critical despot and purveyor of illusion. It will tell us anything we want to hear while paradoxically coming up with arguments against everything that we dare to believe in, choose to care about, or hope to do.
There seems to be other problems associated with this organ of thought as well. It often stores information that benefits nothing, that grows no garden nor remedies no wrong. The results of this information, if put into certain action, can be tragic. It is in the mind rather than in the heart or the body where our species increasingly dwells, seated in a cerebral theater of objectification, fear-driven denial and escapist imagination. It is the mind—imagining itself as somehow separate from the heart—that creates the devastation of entire neighborhoods by the pressing of keys on a keyboard thousands of miles away. The collective decisions that our minds make may in turn make it impossible for all sentient beings to survive with good health and integrity.
Our partner Kiva and I first wrote in our curricula that the mind’s most meaningful role was as a conscientious word processor, composing the poetry that honors truth and life and providing moving metaphors that provoke rather than replace lived experience. As a translator, the mind interprets the languages of human innuendo as well as of plants, animals, and ecosystems. It is an imperfect spokesperson for our empathy and affection.
The more that my partners and I worked on the subject of relationship, the harder it became to even speak about mind aside from its interwoven connection with body, heart, and the surrounding world. The findings of new science are now leading to the same point of inseparability that Animism, shamanism, deep ecology, yoga and spiritual exploration have so long led to. The trail of empirical science may prove a circular one at last, with fields like PNI (psychoneuroimmunology) and quantum physics describing what has in the past been dismissed as mysticism. In the last few years, some scientists have begun to conclude that what we call the conscious mind is housed not only in the brain but in a body-wide net of awareness, in the interplay of neural transmitters and in the chemical codings of the endocrine system.
Since the 17th century, scientific thought has been based on the concept of the mind-body split, famously extolled by Rene Descartes. Just as many organized religions described spirit independent of corruptible flesh, so did scientists claim that consciousness was housed exclusively in the brain and functioned apart from the rest of what was believed to be a mechanistic body. The first chinks in the armor of this ironclad paradigm were created by studies of hysterical paralysis by 20th century psychologist Sigmund Freud and others. The latest and most telling information comes via the field of PNI. Even the conservative U.S. National Institutes Of Health (NIH) has documented the helpful influence of the mind on the immune system.
Surprisingly, it is the NIH’s own Dr. Candace Pert who is partly responsible for one of the most potentially assumption-shattering discoveries yet. Just as the tumblers in a padlock are shaped to accept only one design of key, our bodies are equipped with receptors made to accept only specific kinds of molecules. Dr. Pert has mapped receptors for neuropeptides (information-carrying molecules) in every part of the body, each functioning as integrated components of what is proving to be both an extensive and extended mind. Pert’s empirical results have caused her to assert that a definition of consciousness will require an understanding of spirit or soul.
It’s one thing for Tibetan Monks to be able to raise their body temperatures at will or for the rare patient to stop the progress of her cancer through intense visualization. It is another thing to discover that consciousness verifiably extends beyond our bodies, influencing events supposedly “outside ourselves.” A 1994 report of the NHI’s Panel on Mind/Body Interventions conducted by Dr. Larry Dossey among others concluded that “there is some aspect of the psyche that is unconfinable to points in space, such as brain or body, or to points in time as in the present moment.” This work suggests that conscious intention alone can influence the spacing of schooling fish in an aquarium, the growth rate of bacteria, and the rate of decay of blood cells in a test tube.
The ”I” is not limited to a single mortal container. This explains such diverse and previously denied phenomena as the ability to draw wisdom from the natural world, interspecies communication, the power of intuition, emergent “memories” ascribed to reincarnation, the connection between soul mates, the shaman’s “out of body” travels, telepathy and even precognition. It seems that hard data may finally be leading science back to what traditional shamans, magicians and healers have always known: there exists a unifying element or force akin to Animá, the world soul—a dynamic and all pervasive spirit that animates and connects all things through all times.
We are indeed the co-creators of the world and of reality itself. We evolved to be conscious agents and celebrants of the inseparable whole—our lives intentional, our acts deliberate, our moments decisive. Gladly, we must assume responsibility for our choices, attitudes, creations and acts.
Jesse Wolf Hardin is an acclaimed teacher and author of five books including Gaia Eros. He and his partners offer inspiring correspondence courses, as well as host wilderness retreats, personal and couples counsels, vision quests, internships and events in their enchanted river canyon and ancient place of power: Animá Wilderness Retreat Center & Medicine Woman Tradition, Box 688, Reserve, NM 87830. www.animacenter.org.