Autonomous Bodily Intelligence
Excerpted from "Awakening the Below" by Oholomo, available now from Aeon Press!
Another place where a sense of autonomy and alienness emerges — sometimes to our great surprise and consternation — is in our relationship to the physical body. On any spiritual journey, our relationship with the body tends to undergo radical transformations. In the Above, for example, the body is one of those things that we Transcend beyond. In fact, de-identification with the material form through the realization that “I am not my body” is often one of the first things that propel people into this trajectory. As nondual realization dissolves the subject-object division, we see that what we thought of as “the body” is a mere collection of sensations floating around within awareness — or appearing within a void, depending on your flavor of nonduality. As a deeper level of nondual deconstruction takes hold, those body sensations also are seen through. The body dissolves into tiny particles of energy that barely can even be said to arise at all. As the quality of divinity comes to the foreground, this empty and insubstantial body can take on the qualities of pulsation, bliss, joy, and divinity. A “body of light” or a “rainbow body,” as they say in some traditions.
Moving into the Below is a totally different story. In the Below, the body is not transcended or dissolved. Rather, it comes alive as its own autonomous intelligent being. Again, there’s a difference between those who experience this intelligence as an energy or impersonal force and those for whom it is a personified entity. For the former, there is a knowingness, wisdom, or felt sense that the body somehow seems to possess, quite autonomously from our mental apprehension or perceptions of it. This autonomous intelligence asserts itself spontaneously, taking control of the awakening process, healing old wounds, and activating, energizing and balancing out the energetic system. Here is how a friend named Misha described her experience of this process:
I wake up most nights two hours after I went to bed. I feel a particular energetic quality, a kind of arousal or activation that’s been going on for years. I’ve joked with friends that this is “life having its way with me.”
I’m in a liminal state. I feel intuitively guided to engage in different ways. The body begins making spontaneous, organic, symmetrical movements that are dancelike. My hands move into very precise, mudra-like postures. I vocalize, though not usually in words. I might tremble or shake. I may find myself pressing hard on areas of blockage, such as the throat or liver. From the outside, these things might look like possession. From the inside, I’m opening, expanding, clearing, releasing, healing, awakening.
I find myself doing energy work with and on my body, encountering and resolving psychological issues. Waves of emotion may arise, need to be felt, expressed, released. I sob away old hurts. Chakras or other energy centers may activate, energies may move around in a multitude of ways. Many kinds of spiritual experiences and insights occur. At times it’s like the deep phase of a psychedelic journey. Sometimes sexual energies arise and I engage with those.
Generally, I just stay very receptively present and notice what happens or wants to express. Sometimes I use some of these periods to listen to recorded meditations or dharma talks, or feel guided to go outdoors and bask under the night sky. Nowadays, even if I’m not paying full attention, whatever process wants to happen just happens anyway.
An episode might last between 10 and 90 minutes, or sometimes even longer. When several occur in a night, which is more often than not, there is generally a progression in the processes that occur. The last round generally begins about an hour before dawn.
These experiences feel purposeful and directional. Even when I can’t recall precisely what shifted, progressed, or resolved, I can feel beneficial differences in my being.
I can totally relate to Misha’s experience, and had something quite similar happening with me. However, people who are more attuned to entities, as I am, will likely also experience the autonomous intelligence of the body as a distinct creature with its own agenda and will. The spiritual teacher and healer Mary Mueller Shutan calls this the “body deva” (deva means a spirit or a deity in Sanskrit), a term that I feel is quite apt in describing my own experiences.
I met my body deva during a Kundalini event that kicked off my initial Descent into the Below. When Kundalini arose, it felt like my whole body was taken over by a serpentine goddess. Over the course of the next year, I kept having visionary experiences of this entity: a feminine form that was half serpent, half human, with dark, black, scaly coils below and radiant sunshine pouring out from her head above. When she appeared, she would often enter my body and begin to move me around. She would teach me qigong-like sequences combining breathing and visualization. She would use light and energy to heal and empower my body.
This goddess became one of the primary entities in my imaginal lexicon, a powerful symbol that I felt was speaking to me at a visceral level. And, for all of that time, I took this entity to be a goddess that was wholly external to me. However, eventually, this goddess revealed herself in a powerful visionary experience to be none other than my own body’s inner consciousness. From that point onwards, she no longer felt alien or like she was “taking over.” Rather, this goddess became the symbol or icon for my own body in my imaginal world. Working with her in this way, she became so closely associated with my experience of my own body that it’s now entirely natural for me to think of my physical body as this goddess.
In whatever way it manifests, whether as a relationship with an intelligent energy or an entity, in a Descent, the quality of the interactions between you and your body are of the most intimate nature. In order to engage in this relationship, what the body needs is for you to hear and accept its deepest truths. It needs you to give it the space and time to tell you about its memories, traumas, and wisdom. The whole time that your ego-self has been deeply identified with the body, it has ignored, walled off, and repressed these uncomfortable truths. The ego has repeatedly told the body that it needs to be quiet, to shut down, to deny parts of itself, in order to be safe.
In an Awakening from Below, as the body begins asserting its independence and autonomy, the ego-self often has no choice but to place aside its preferences and allow this communication to take place. What the body reveals when it is listened to can be crushing to the ego, and this unburdening process can for many be one of the most difficult areas of the Below. Eventually, though, you learn to meet the body with loving patience and acceptance, without ego-identification or the impulse to recoil. You hold it in a loving embrace and allow it to speak its truths no matter how difficult. You learn to surrender to the process, and to allow the body to express itself, and through this, to heal itself.
Here is how Lisa experienced this kind of opening:
Right from the start I had to give my body over to this process. This body, as I once knew it, was no longer mine. A few days after my initial transcendent awakening experience, where I was shown I was pure light and was visited by both God and Jesus, my whole body exploded internally, releasing all the pain and trauma that was stored in each and every cell.
This pain contained traumas that I had known, traumas that I thought I had already worked through and resolved, and traumas that I had absolutely no memory of. I remember thinking, I cannot believe a human body could hold so much pain! How could such a thing actually be possible? I went from someone who was incredibly active, always moving, going to the gym, going on hikes, always engaged in active projects, cleaning and cooking and stretching and moving, to someone who couldn’t even walk down the street due to the insurmountable emotional pain I felt in my system.
I had to descend down into the depths of my shadows. Allowing myself to be taken over by a sense of pure ugliness and disgust. Memories of awful experiences from childhood and thoughts of any harm that I have ever experienced over the course of my life surfaced. I found myself wanting to hide any aspect of beauty or attraction from the world. I was cloaked and clouded in ugliness, in an aura of dullness. My life went from somewhat difficult but certainly enjoyable, to entering into the complete depths of this inner darkness.
I knew on a very deep level from that point forward my only job was to surrender to this pain, allowing it to consume me completely. My body was no longer mine, there was a much bigger process taking place now. Something far beyond what my own mind could understand or try to control.
While it can be excruciatingly painful at first, over time, a foundation of trust builds. The body goes from being a source of shame, disappointment, and disillusionment to being a deep well of groundedness and intimacy. It goes from feeling alien to feeling like an old friend and companion. There is a sweetness to the energy that is shared between you, like between two old lovers who have been enamored with each other for decades.