Imagine to Remember

“The soul can only be present when body and spirit are one; it can. not breathe, exist, or move disconnected from the body. Your parents gave birth to your body, and your body is the womb of your soul. The birth of your soul is a virgin birth, one you must do on your own. It’s a labor of love, and we all know labor ain’t easy. If you want to give birth to your true self, you are going to have to dig deep down into that body of yours and let your soul howl.”

Gabrielle Roth, Sweat Your Prayers: The Five Rhythms of the Soul

There was a time when we were souls without bodies, waiting to be called into physical existence, each of us at our appointed times. In the Islamic tradition this is known as ‘ Alam al-Arwah, an existence outside time as we know it, where all souls witnessed the divine presence and testified to this reality. All our experiences are mediated first through the body before they are abstracted by the mind. The body is direct in its communication with the heart and soul. And yet so many, especially in the modern world that prioritizes cerebral activity over all other ways of knowing and feeling, tells us to deny the body. Pleasure becomes totally devoid of the spiritual foundations of balance and temperance and we are in an age of unparalleled gluttony. Yet there are other ways the body is dishonoured. Historically some traditions not only denied but punished the body in an attempt to purify themselves of all earthly needs and desires producing extreme forms of asceticism and neuroticism. But the body is essential, it is our first earthly home. The resurrection that all the great spiritual transition promises us, is a return to the body. Afterall the pleasures of the garden and the torments of the fire are experienced by the body, not the soul.