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398. The two meanings of ‘Body’

The relationship between mind and body in our society is like the relationship between nobles and peasants just prior to a revolution.

Nobles are oblivious or ignorant or filled with fear even if the peasants do what they’re supposed to do, which they rarely do, and with surly resentment. There’s something about them. The nobles can feel something is in the air, but they dismiss it. They might, Antoinette like, play at being peasants with their dear friends the psychotherapists.

The body exists in two senses: one is as an object of the Mind. That’s our usual sense and when psychotherapists and similarly minded people say they’re interested in the body that’s really what they mean. 

The other, largely hidden sense is that the body is the heart of the world.

In practice we are required to endure the noise of the Mind: sinking through this first sense like a bird slowly diving through an oil slick, finally dropping into the clear water of the second sense.

When we drop into that second sense, we understand there is nothing that is missing.