Create Your Own Religion (17 page)

To be fair, religion is not the only pursuit that has promoted alienation from the body. Even though usually it casts the body in a less negative light, science has sometimes substituted the religious soul versus body dichotomy with its own mind versus body problem.

This contrast is no doubt a little less extreme than the religious one. While science does not identify the body as a source of sin and shame, the idea that we have a body but are not our body, remains. According to this view, our true self is our mind. As Descartes, one of the pillars of Western mechanist scientific thought, famously stated, “I think, therefore I am.”
¹²³
By identifying exclusively with his mental activities, Descartes makes the ultimate argument for the superiority of the mind over the body. In Descartes' view, thinking is a process that is completely detached from our somatic experience. True reality is not made of muscles and blood, but of thoughts and ideas existing separately from the physical world. With this statement, Descartes ties himself to a long tradition of thinkers, such as Plato, who place the ideal over the real, the abstract over the tangible.

This combination of religious and scientific prejudices has affected human life in hundreds of ways. Despite some tremendous advances made over the centuries, modern medicine only acknowledges
to a very limited extent the interconnectedness of mind and body. In Western medicine, health and sickness are usually considered purely physical issues with no relation to our emotions, states of mind, and overall spiritual wellbeing. Healing is the result of fixing a series of mechanical systems. Doctors trained with this mindset are little more than mechanics who relate to the human body as if it were a car, or any other complex machine devoid of consciousness.

Walk into any classroom and you see the same logic being applied to education. Remember the pain and boredom of having to sit most of the day in little, uncomfortable chairs facing forward, listening to some teacher speak for hours on end? The body, forced into an unnatural immobility, is left to atrophy while the mind is engaged. Our physical energies beg us to get up, stretch, and move, but one of the primary requirements of classroom learning is to become skilled at repressing these impulses. The pedagogical message couldn't be clearer: the only thing worth educating is your mind. The body has nothing to do with your full development as a human being. It's little more than an accident of nature—irrelevant to who you truly are. The basic assumption underlying this approach to education is that the quality of our thoughts is independent of our physiological states.

I was never able to buy into this idea. As a student, anytime I looked into the eyes of the people who were supposed to “educate” me, I would feel like something had gone seriously wrong. So many of them looked like they had escaped from the set of a scholarly version of a zombie movie. They were already dead, but someone had forgotten to notify them. I could sense the staleness of the energy flowing through their veins. They moved like achy librarians who had lost the address to their bodies long ago. They smelled of old books and decaying flesh. Listening to their lifeless lectures, I
couldn't help but think that their words were direct extensions of their bodies: dry and hunched over. These were the people I was supposed to learn from?!? They were the ones in charge of feeding my mind and expanding my being?

As I looked around for help, I realized some heretical thinkers throughout Western history must have felt exactly the way I did. Take Nietzsche, for example. He says:

We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books. It is our habit to think outdoors—walking, leaping, climbing, dancing, preferably on lonely mountains or near the sea where even the trails become thoughtful. Our first questions about the value of a book, of a human being, or a musical composition are: Can they walk? Even more, can they dance? . . . Almost always the books of scholars are somehow oppressive, oppressed; the “specialist” emerges somewhere—his zeal, his seriousness, his fury, his overestimation of the nook in which he sits and spins, his hunched back; every specialist has his hunched back. Every scholarly book also mirrors a soul that has become crooked.
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Right on, Friedrich! Tell those gloomy freaks that nothing good will ever come from people who are more familiar with the dust of the library than with the light of the sun.

To clarify, let me say I don't believe you need the physique of a Greek deity to be a smart, loving, or otherwise pleasant person. Many individuals have molded wonderful personalities despite facing some very serious physical limitations. Stephen Hawking is a perfect example of what a brilliant mind and an undefeatable spirit can achieve even without the aid of a healthy body. But just because exceptional persons can reach high on mind and spirit alone doesn't
mean their lives couldn't be easier, or better, if they could also rely on a vibrant physical energy.

What I am advocating here is not some anti-intellectual glorification of athleticism and popular wisdom against the elitist “high” culture of academia. Few things are as pathetic as those who consider reading books a waste of time and wear their lack of refinement as a badge of pride. My issues with much of the world of academia derive from the opposite. It is precisely because I do value intellectual pursuits and view them as essential that I am disturbed by traditional academic learning treating the body as something superfluous. It is hard to develop a healthy mind without also developing a healthy relationship with one's body, and with the physical world in general. As Thoreau put it, “A man thinks as well through his legs and arms as his brain. . . . Indeed, the mind never makes a great and successful effort without a corresponding energy of the body.”
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In my own experience, I have noticed that any time I feel physically at the peak of my health and strength, my mind works better. When my body is tired and weakened, the mind doesn't flow as well.

This is why I firmly believe that personality is influenced by the body—possibly even more than by our thoughts and values. Nietzsche again says it best when he writes, “give no credence to any thought that was not born outdoors while one moved about freely—in which the muscles are not celebrating a feast, too.”
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By overlooking the body, we are doing more than just damaging the body; we are also limiting our intellectual potential. The alchemy of body and mind working together transforms knowledge into wisdom. Not only does it change the quality of our thoughts, but it changes also the way we walk, talk, and act. Knowledge ceases being a heavy load of notions we carry in our heads, and turns into a practical source of empowerment to help us lead better lives. Reason
and instincts complement each other. The union of muscles, intellect, and spirit makes us more complete human beings than if we were to develop only one of these areas at the expense of the others. Combine athletic talent with great intelligence, and the odds are you'll have greater depth than anyone who is only familiar with half of the experience.

The effects of the lack of connection between mind, body, and spirit in our culture are not limited to the confines of medicine or academia. The material conditions of postindustrial society have radically changed our relationship with our own bodies. In the not so distant past, the vast majority of human beings had to rely on physical labor to make a living. Today, for the first time in history, this is no longer the case.

In many ways, this is a wonderful transformation that spares us sometimes insanely harsh and exhausting working conditions. We are now free to do something more than be beasts of burden; we have extra energy now to pursue leisure, a fairly new concept. At the same time, though, this evolution has furthered the divide between mind and body. It is not at all uncommon for people to hardly ever move their bodies. No longer being forced to engage in physical labor, many people only remember they have a body when it's time to feed it. Many citizens in industrialized nations drive from home to work, sit at a desk somewhere all day, then get back into the car and drive home. There, physical inactivity continues as people unwind from a long day at the office. They melt into their couches and watch TV,
surf the Internet, and stuff their faces with food. The walk from the couch to the fridge is the longest many people take on any given day.

No longer having to chase one's meal through the forest, or dig it out of the earth, comes at a heavy price. The combination of lack of movement with easy access to enormous amounts of food is paradoxically turning into a liability. Too much comfort can be as bad as too little. Today, people in industrialized nations are getting fatter by the minute. Far from being purely a problem of appearance and resulting emotional pain, the supersizing of the human population has triggered one of the biggest health crises today. Thousands of people die every year as a direct result of being morbidly overweight. Obesity is also more likely to be a contributing factor in deaths from heart disease, certain types of cancer, diabetes, and high blood pressure. The annual health care costs of tending to this epidemic are in the tens of
billions
of dollars.

As horrifying as they are, these statistics are the logical consequence of a change in material conditions (less physical work and more easily available food) combined with the negative view of the body promoted by many of our religions and philosophies. Laws curbing the abilities of certain industries to profit by peddling junk food, and campaigns designed to encourage people to adopt healthier lifestyles (a.k.a. the “move your ass for a change and quit eating so damn much” campaign) are positive steps, but they are not enough. They target the consequences of the problem, but not the root cause: the lack of a mind-body-spirit connection. This is a philosophical problem that begins in the heart, mind, and muscles, and then it manifests in bad habits and poor choices. We can diet from here to eternity, but little is going to change until we alter our whole attitude toward our bodies.

Energy is eternal delight
.

—William Blake

I can only have so much in common with people who have never been in touch with their bodies. Some of them may be very pleasant, smart, and sweet individuals. Maybe we share similar tastes and opinions, but our connection can only go so deep, since we relate to life in radically different ways. To them, the body is little more than an afterthought. For me, it is a primary source of insight: an essential part of who I am.

But to make things more complicated, I also don't necessarily have much in common with people who dedicate plenty of time and attention to their bodies. If my psychic powers are up to speed, I believe the questions you are looking for right now are: why do you have to be such a pain in the ass? What's wrong with those who worship the body as much as you do?

Plenty of people obsess about their bodies, and obviously consider them crucial to their self-esteem. The billions of dollars spent annually in fake boobs, botox injections, liposuctions, steroids, diet programs, and a whole array of other products and medical procedures attest to that. But this has nothing to do with the relationship with the body I am advocating. All these artificial efforts to enhance one's physical appearance indicate a relationship with the body that is no different from the relationship one has with one's clothes, or with a car: nothing but another product to take care of for the sake of attracting attention and showing off.

Even those who don't turn to plastic surgery and other shortcuts, but mold their bodies through old-fashioned sweat share the same mentality. Most people who work out do so for one of two reasons:
either to improve their looks or their health. I can fully appreciate that being healthy and attractive is preferable to being ugly and sick. These are very legitimate goals, and I find nothing wrong with them. But then again, this reminds me of how people treat their cars. They change the oil regularly and perform all the needed maintenance to ensure the car's “health,” and paint it, wash it, and wax it to make it look its best.

Well-being and beauty are great, but why stop there? The body is much more than health and looks. It's not a product. It's an experience offering a pathway to expand our perceptions and forge our character. We can turn the body into a way to shape our very essence. Working out becomes a way to transform our whole being. Forget drugs. The body is the ultimate psychedelic agent. Through the body, we can dramatically change our state of consciousness.

Have you ever had one of those nasty, painful days when it feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders, and sadness, anger, and frustration are pinning you to the floor? More likely than not, working out is the last thing on your mind. All you want to do is disappear into the couch and dive into a pint of the most fattening ice cream on earth. But if through some titanic effort of the will you manage to walk away from your den of misery and head to a gym, interesting things may start happening.

For the next hour or two, the flow of your thoughts slows down while all your muscles are awakened by the intensity of the training. At this point all the negative emotions begin to fade away; as your breathing changes, tension is literally sweated out of your body, and the endorphins come out to play. Once you are done, your problems are waiting for you, still as big and scary as when you left them. But in the meantime your attitude has changed. Instead of feeling overpowered, you are ready to stare them down, and tackle them with
renewed energy. If you have had this experience, you know exactly what I mean when I say body and mind are interconnected. And if you haven't, this may be a good time to put down the book and head for the gym. I'll be waiting for you when you get back.

If you are really morally opposed to sweating and working out, you can try a different experiment. Next time you are depressed and bummed out, pay close attention to your posture and your breathing. Open up your chest rather than caving it in, and substitute shallow breaths with deep ones. Sit straight rather than slouching. The odds are you'll realize that being depressed is hard work, for it requires adopting very specific physical postures. Without them, it will be hard to remain depressed for too long.