And the Opposite Is Also True

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Where Consciousness Resides, suggesting that the part of us that thinks and feels abides somewhere in parallel to the part that moves and talks, and I often feel that's true. But shortly after writing that, I was taken down with the stomach flu and plunged into a couple of days of animal existence, one inseparable from the machinations of my body. There was nothing more to me than the act of purging. There was something cleansing about that experience, though, and not just in the literal, visceral sense, but also in the experience of being so much in the moment. It was not a time to plan or reflect or to allow my mind to dwell on anything apart from being. And that is the other side of this reality: that on the one hand, we do carry within us a spiritual essence whose dwelling is someplace other than the body, but that on the other hand, life also offers us intense physical experiences -- and we can seek them out-- moments when we are completely engaged in a consuming physical task and inseparable from our actions. It is deeply paradoxical that the human spirit- the thing in us that is life- is lent from elsewhere, but yet we never feel as fully alive as when we wed that spirit to the parts of ourselves that perish. Perhaps that is the greatest mystery of all- that life does not know itself fully until it engages fully with death.