MSN Home  |  My MSN  |  Hotmail
Sign in to Windows Live ID Web Search:   
go to MSNGroups 
Free Forum Hosting
 
Important Announcement Important Announcement
The MSN Groups service will close in February 2009. You can move your group to Multiply, MSN’s partner for online groups. Learn More
Silken Fire's Fireplace IIContains "mature" content, but not necessarily adult.[email protected] 
  
What's New
  
  Silken Fire's Fireplace II  
  Your Hosts And Hostesses  
  Hosts and Hostesses  
  Fire's Principles  
  Misbehavin' Policies  
  
  Fireplace News  
  Opinion Forum  
  Messages  
  Messages  
  General  
  Heart Storms  
  Heart Storms  
  GRRR & Vent  
  Peaceful Debates  
  Peaceful Debates  
  MSN Servers  
  SNAGGABLES  
  SNAGGABLES  
  C & P Backgrounds  
  C & P Background  
  Your Mail  
  Mailboxes A - C  
  Mailboxes D - F  
  Mailboxes G - I  
  Mailboxes J - L  
  Mailboxes M - O  
  Mailboxes P - R  
  Mailboxes S - U  
  Mailboxes V - X  
  Mailboxes Y - Z  
  MEMBERS' SIGN-INS  
  Member Sign Ins  
  Member of the Month  
  Member of Month  
  Springburst: Fun & Fitness  
  Members' Surveys & Intros  
  Member Intro's  
  Our Lil People & Pets  
  Lil Peeps & Pets  
  Happy Birthday!  
  Happy Birthday!  
  In Loving Memory  
  In Loving Memory  
  Singles' Tips  
  Singles Tips  
  Dating Tips  
  Dating Tips  
  New Relationship  
  New Relationship  
  So Far Away...  
  Long Distance Love  
  Relationships  
  Relationships  
  Marriage Tips  
  Marriage Tips  
  Add Sizzle  
  Add Sizzle  
  Romantic Fantasies  
  Romantic Fantasy  
  Midlife Issues  
  Midlife Issues  
  When Loved Ones Hurt  
  Helping Friends  
  People Builders  
  People Builders  
  Career Issues  
  Career Issues  
  Disabilities  
  Disabilities  
  Let's Be REAL!!!  
  Topic Q & A's  
  Topic Articles  
  Family Troubles  
  Family Troubles  
  Parenting  
  Parenting  
  Step-Parenting  
  Step-Parenting  
  Broken and Hurting  
  Broken & Hurting  
  Abused Souls  
  Abused Souls  
  What Men Want  
  Men Want......  
  What Women Want  
  Women Want......  
  He Said / She Said  
  He Said/She Said  
  Our Mystical Realm  
  Mystical Realm  
  Silken's Country  
  Silk's Country  
  Our Garden of Peace  
  "She Weaves"  
  "The Mask"  
  Angel of Highway 109  
  The Strength of a Man  
  The Girl Inside  
  Garden of Peace  
  Silken's Retreat  
  Silken Talks  
  Prose and Poetry  
  Prose and Poetry  
  LMAO Stuff  
  LMAO Stuff  
  Pictures  
  Sign-In & Checkin In Tags  
  Scenery  
  Ally's Album  
  Lady's Gary Allan  
  Angels  
  Angel GIF'S  
  Animations 2  
  Animations 3  
  Animations - Animals  
  Animated GIF's  
  Babies  
  Backgrounds 1  
  Backgrounds 2  
  Backgrounds 3  
  Backgrounds - Nature  
  Backgrounds - Romantic  
  Backgrounds - Sensual  
  Biker Snags  
  Birthday Wishes  
  Body Parts  
  Bumpin' It Up  
  Bye, See Ya, Hurry Back, etc  
  Click Me's  
  Compliments  
  Condolences  
  Congratulations  
  Country  
  Couples  
  Couples 2  
  Cowboys  
  Cowgirls  
  Dancers  
  Debate Stuff  
  Dividers & Decorations  
  Dragons  
  Dreams 'n Wishes  
  Emotions  
  Fantasy Women  
  Fantasy Art  
  Flowers  
  Friends & Friendship  
  Fridays  
  Funny GIF's  
  Funnies & Moods  
  More Funnies  
  Funny Sayings  
  Get Well  
  Good Day, Weekend, etc  
  Good Morning  
  Good Night  
  Great Day Etc  
  Great Week, Weekend  
  Heartache, Sadness, etc.  
  Hello, Howdy, Hi  
  Hugs, etc.  
  Kisses  
  Kisses 'n Lips  
  Last Word  
  Lol, lmao & rofl  
  Love & Inspiration  
  Mail Stuff  
  Masculine Tags  
  Men  
  Men 2  
  Men - Fantasy  
  Missing You  
  Monday  
  Months  
  MSN tags  
  Romance 'n Glitters  
  Saturdays  
  Self Esteem & Inspirations  
  Smilies  
  Sorry, Forgive me, etc  
  Spiritual, Religious, etc  
  Sunday  
  Teasing, Fighting 'n Feelin'  
  Thank You's  
  Thoughts & Prayers  
  Thursday  
  Tuesday  
  Under Construction  
  Weddings  
  Wednesdays  
  Welcome & WB  
  Women  
  Women 2  
  Women 3  
  Women - Fantasy  
  Wow & Woohoo  
  You Have Mail  
  Zodiac Signs  
  Christmas 2006  
  Christmas 2007  
  Christmas Pics & GIF's  
  Easter  
  Father's Day  
  Hallowe'en 2  
  Hallowe'en GIF's & Stuff  
  New Years  
  Remembrance Day  
  St. Patrick's Day  
  Thanksgiving  
  Valentines  
  Andy  
  Bella's Album  
  Cocopuff's Corner  
  Cowboy Country Gent  
  Ginger's Girls  
  Ginger Christmas  
  Ginger's Photos  
  Ginger's Welcomes  
  Hergman's Pics  
  Lady Asst Manager  
  Lady Checking In  
  Lady's Christmas  
  Lady's Family  
  Lady Misc  
  Lady's Stuff..morn, eve, etc  
  Lady Tags  
  Lady's Welcomes  
  Love Muffin (aka Mish)  
  My Blue Hawgs 2, 3 & 5  
  Shyann and Rat and Arley  
  Shy n Rats Critters n Stuff  
  Glimpse Of Traveler  
  Alphas for Fireplace  
  Silken's Pets... Meet Justus  
  Silken's Dancers  
  Silken's Mgr Stuff  
  Silkens Photos  
  Silken's Personal Photos  
  Silken Siggies  
  Silken's Siggies 2  
  Silken's Siggies 3  
  Silken's Siggies 4  
  Fireplace Hosts & Hostesses  
  Fireplace Auth Tags  
  Fireplace Backgrounds  
  Fireplace Glitter Text  
  Fireplace Logos  
  Fireplace Site Map  
  Friends of Fire  
  MSN Emotions  
  Chat Acronyms  
  More Chat Acronyms  
  Fancy Nicknames  
  Fancy Nic's II  
  Fancy Characters III  
  Email Settings  
  Create Fancy Fonts  
  More Fancy Fonts  
  Alt Key Codes List  
    
    
  Links  
  Lest We Forget  
  CHRISTMAS CHEER  
  Christmas Snaggs  
  Christmas Fun  
  Xmas Info  
  Blue Christmas  
  Sensual Xmas  
  Xmas Belly Laffs  
  Xmas Recipes  
  Christmas Beauty  
  Lest We Forget  
  Family Issues  
  Fun & Fitness  
  Alt Key Flourishes  
  GRRR !#!$@~!!!  
  
  
  Tools  
 
People Builders : My Body Beyond the Mirror
Choose another message board
 
     
Reply
Recommend  Message 1 of 1 in Discussion 
From: MSN NicknameSilken2004  (Original Message)Sent: 7/18/2006 3:46 PM
My Body Beyond the Mirror

Hello, I’m Irwin Kula and welcome to “Simple Wisdom.�?nbsp; We live in an age in which there is so much change and so much choice that sometimes it’s very difficult to know what to do and how to live. “Simple Wisdom�?brings the insights of an ancient tradition to the challenges of daily life, in the hope that we can make life a little bit more meaningful and a little bit more creative. Today we’re going to talk about the greatest gift we’re given or at least one of the greatest gifts we’re given, a gift that produces some of the greatest anxiety we have. We’re going to talk about our bodies. We’re going to talk about some of the attitudes that we bring to our bodies that make it very complicated. Then we’re going to talk about the unique challenges of this age.  We live in one of the great transformations of our understanding of the body which may be one of the greatest spiritual achievements of the human community. And then we’re going to talk about how to rebalance to create a sacred attitude towards the body. 

I’m 44 years old and over the last two or three years, for the first time, I’ve actually begun taking notice of my body.  When I was eighteen I would get up in the morning, jump out of bed, and off I would go.  Now if I jump out of bed, I have to get right back into bed.  The body creaks, the back creaks, my back always hurts just a little bit.  My knees creak, those jump shots are not quite as high as they used to be, my hair is gray, [but] I’m in denial which is why I’m not dying it.  Now I eat two days in a row, not the right foods, and I have kind of a paunch a little bit and my wife reframes it and calls it love handles, but I do know it’s a reframing and I feel a little bit inadequate now, sometimes a little ashamed.  

I have a 14 year old daughter and sometimes she gets ready to go out �?not even on dates yet �?just go out �?and I don’t know which to say first: I think that that shirt should go down a little bit or is it those pants that should go up a little bit?   And she looks at me �?abba, oh �?but the thing is I see more of my daughter’s skin than I saw of my wife’s after quite a few dates and I’m not a prude.  Actually, in my house, I like to think that I’m the cool father �?so there’s something going on with the body that is making us all uncomfortable.  I’m sure if I asked how many people here are truly comfortable with their bodies  (Aren’t we all too tall or too thin?  Aren’t we all too fat or too short or too gray-haired or too bald?),  we’re never really comfortable so what’s going on?  We need to talk about this.  

Well, it seems to me we’ve inherited at least two fundamental attitudes towards the body in the last 2,000 years.  They are really polar opposites and they create a lot of problems. The first is the attitude that comes from our religious communities �?it’s the attitude I call the “body is nothing�?and it really starts with Plato, one of the most important philosophers, who saw the body as being inferior to the soul.  The soul was the thing that was going to last eternally �?the spirit lasted eternally and so the body was inferior.  After all, the body is going to deteriorate �?the body is going to wear away -- and if it’s going to wear away and we’re going to die, what you really want to do is to find out what’s going to last forever.  That’s the spirit �?and that penetrated all of Western traditions.  Eastern traditions have their own understanding of this -- that suffering isn’t real and that we can transcend and disconnect and detach from our body.  This attitude produced the legacy in which the body is the source of temptation �?the body is dirty �?the body is evil �?the senses lead us in the wrong direction.  This “body is nothing�?tradition is still around with some of our discomfort with our own bodies �?some of our discomfort with our own sexuality �?some of our discomfort in talking to our children about our bodies.  It’s there �?it’s there in some of the puritanical attitudes in American politics.  You see, it’s very hard.  You shut the door �?it comes through the window.  You shut the window �?it comes through the door �?because it’s such a serious legacy.  

Now if there’s a “body that’s nothing�?tradition, don’t be surprised that at some point in history you’re going to have a “body as everything�?tradition.  Well, we’re living heavy duty in the “body is everything�?tradition.  It is not surprising �?look at the dramatic transformation and changes we have and what we are capable of doing with our bodies.  We probably have had more change in the last two decades in our capacity to control, tailor make and shape our bodies than in all of the previous human history and I’m not even talking about the high tech stuff �?the bio tech stuff.   I’m talking about nutrition �?food supply �?health �?medicine �?elective surgery �?corrective surgery �?plastic surgery �?face-lifts �?hair dying �?hair transplants.  We can actually now literally change sex and that’s stuff my great grandparents couldn’t possibly imagine.  Think about it �?how many of your grandparents even exercised?  We’ve moved in the past 50 years from not even exercising to being able to literally transform our bodies �?that kind of power changes everything and, not surprisingly, the first wave is a kind of intoxication with our bodies.  We can do anything with our bodies �?that’s what I call the “body is everything�?tradition and we know there is a kind of obsession and glorification in the worshipping of the body today.  

I was on the subway the other day, to show you how daily this has become �?I’m on the subway and I look up to see the advertisements.  In one subway car, there were signs for adult braces �?teeth whitening �?laser procedures to remove hair and liposuction �?that was the subway.  That seems like a kind of overkill and it’s not only that �?it’s the health clubs and the exercising and the diets and the medicine �?it’s all of that. 

I joined a health club recently and actually what struck me was that’s what happens �?44 and I finally had to join.  What struck me about this health club �?now admittedly I come in with a religious consciousness �?is that I walked in there and it seemed very little different from the same kind of religious structure of most synagogues and churches.  First of all, there were the priests and ministers.  I know we have a different name for them �?we call them trainers now.  Then there were clearly the altar and the holy of holies.  Those were the weights that, unless you learned exactly how to use them, you were not allowed up there to use them.  And there were rules and norms as significant as in any church and synagogue: upper body �?lower body �?you can’t do the lower body, the legs, two days in a row �?you can’t do the upper body two days in a row.  There were so many rules that I felt I was back in Jewish life.  That’s what happens when, actually, we displace one part of who we are for another.  Well, we know something is off.  The “body is nothing�?tradition and the “body is everything�?tradition leave us not in the middle �?but leave us with tremendous anxiety and tremendous problems.  

Well, of course, what we do need is a new way of thinking about this.  I want to suggest that actually we are neither body nor spirit.  We are not the body nor the soul.  We are both always. In ancient Jewish wisdom, in the most ancient Jewish wisdom, there is no word for body or spirit.  There is one word.  The word is nefesh �?which ought to be translated as body spirit �?we’re always body and we’re always spirit.  We’re spirited bodies and embodied spirits and you can’t separate them.  There’s no such thing as a spirit experience that’s all spirit and pure spirit, and there’s no such thing as a body experience that’s pure body �?to separate them is to undermine the very dignity of and uniqueness of a human being �?and we know this from our own experience.  When we’re in great physical pain, our spirit and our psyche suffer.  When we look in the mirror and we don’t like what we see—for whatever reason �?our spirit suffers �?our psyche suffers.  There’s an intimate connection between body and spirit and we also know that some of the most positive body experiences give us a spiritual uplift.  When we make love passionately, it is not only a body experience, but our spirit and psyche are affected.  When we physically caress or hold our child, our psyche and spirit are affected.  When we’re in sports  and have an amazing experience in competition and we’re sweating, our psyche is part of the experience and, by the same token, when we have a spiritual experience �?isn’t our body affected?  If you have one of those amazing spiritual bliss experiences �?a moment of transcendence �?here’s the funny thing about a moment of transcendence.  If you’re human, your body tingles with the transcendence all the way down to your toes, so the body and spirit are absolutely connected and we do a disservice to the dignity �?we undermine the dignity of the fullness of the human being �?by separating them.  Whatever a body is, without a spirit it’s not human.  Whatever the spirit is, without a body it’s not human.  Body gives the spirit form and spirit gives the body depth.  Again, body gives the spirit form and spirit gives the body depth.  Maimonides �?a medieval scholar, one of the great scholars and actually also a doctor �?puts it this way: the proper way is to worry about the well-being of the soul and the well-being of the body.  The well-being of the soul is more important, but the well-being of the body comes first.  Isn’t that perfect?  The well-being of the soul is more important, but the well-being of the body comes first. So we need a new kind of balance.  

Let me suggest that the balance moves in this direction.  The first is to understand that all of the advances are fantastic [in our knowledge about and our capacity to transform our bodies].  If body psyche or body spirit are connected �?then every advance in being able to shape and tailor and correct and amend and affect our body, every single one is actually a powerful spiritual innovation.  But when you have new power, inevitably what happens is you have new excesses �?you create new conditions and then the real challenge is to build in the correctives to the inevitable excesses and unintended consequences.  So we need new kinds of correctives in our dealings with our body �?new kinds of correctives for how we use the body �?new correctives for the excesses themselves.   

The first thing we have to be worried about is what I call idealization.  When you actually contain the body to a specific image, what happens is it’s very easy to develop a preferred image and a preferred image is very dangerous.  After all, not every one of us can look like Brad Pitt and not everyone can look like Julia Roberts.  Each one of us has our own unique body spirit and if you add the communication we have �?if you say communication plus what we can do in shaping the body -- it’s very easy to create a situation in which there is the perfect body image.  This actually creates shame and inadequacy and isn’t it funny �?if it creates shame and inadequacy �?then the “body is everything�?position does exactly the same thing that the “body is nothing�?position does because actually they are the same positions in terms of undermining our dignity.  So we have to be extra aware that just like religion that teaches the “body as nothing�?degrades us, so a Madison Avenue view that says this is the one preferred body also degrades us.   

The second challenge is what I call the fooling yourself challenge.  You know when you really do have the capacity to change your body �?when you do so, it is very easy to imagine that what you’re changing is deeper than the surface.  This is especially so if the body psyche is connected �?you are changing more than the surface �?but then one needs to ask: beyond the surface what are you actually changing?  

Every single culture �?every single culture �?has had to make sense of aging because we die.  Some cultures say this about wrinkles for example:  wrinkles are a sign of wisdom.  You understand that that is an interpretation of wrinkles.  It is not clear at all that everyone who has wrinkles is wise.  So actually just like wrinkles = wisdom is an interpretation, we today have a new interpretation of wrinkles. Wrinkles don’t look good and we need to get rid of them.  Both are interpretations.  The question is: what beyond that interpretation does it do to us?  When we eliminate the wrinkles, we actually think we’re stopping the aging process �?but then we’re failing to embrace who we most deeply are.  Mystics and saints and fitness freaks all age. That’s the body psyche connection.  

There’s one more piece of this regarding this new power and that has to do with something that’s actually plaguing most Americans.  Sixty percent of all Americans are obese and, at the same time, we have these ideal images of body.  We have the majority of Americans obese, more obese than in any other country in the world.  Actually, it’s a good thing gone wild as most excesses are.  Obesity is a reflection of the incredible explosion of food �?the incredible explosion of what’s capable for our diet. One hundred years ago, if you wanted to eat something sweet, the only thing you could eat that was sweet tasted like maple or honey.  You didn’t have refined sugar to make it pure sweet.  Everything sweet tasted like maple or honey.  So with the explosion of our capacity in food with all the new choices �?it actually gives us the opportunity to enjoy more, but also to hurt ourselves.  We moved from a diet of scarcity to a diet of abundance.  The challenge of a diet of scarcity is how not to get scurvy and rickets, while the challenge of a diet of abundance is how not to become obese.  It’s not that you don’t have pathologies and diseases �?you always do as long as you’re human.  The question is which ones and what are you going to do about them?  So what are we going to do about this -- the idealization and the fooling ourselves?  

Let me suggest three or four questions that we could ask as we begin to take more control of our bodies which will help us develop the beginnings of a kind of ethics of the body for the new age. The first is to ask ourselves, as we’re dealing with our body, what our motivation is.  It’s not simply what we’re doing.  In one generation, when Francis Bacon developed glasses, the fact is he was considered a heretic and no one used glasses for the first hundred years because glasses were considered tampering with God’s gift.  Now it would be considered child abuse not to get glasses for one’s child.  When orthodontics began, most people thought it was vain.  Now if you don’t do orthodontics on your child, it’s child abuse.  Now we also have adult braces.  So whatever we think about the objective line, there is no objectivity in this.  It’s all subjective to who we are and the lines are always shifting, so the key is not to ask about the procedure �?not to ask about the exercise �?but to ask about who we are as we do this and why we do it.  Is our motivation shame?  Is our motivation fear �?shame that we don’t look like somebody else �?judging ourselves some external standard.  Is the motivation fear of aging or is the motivation a kind of gratitude for our life and, therefore, we want to be different in our bodies?  I learned this from a colleague of mine �?one of the great teachers in America.  He actually was very obese and not just obese, but very obese.  And for years we shamed him: How can you be so fat?  How can you look like this?  Nothing changed until he had his third child and one day he was thinking: “I’m so grateful for life.�?nbsp; And all of a sudden he realized:  “I have to take care of my body.�?nbsp; The motivation was not to look like someone else.  The motivation, the source, was gratefulness.   

The second thing we have to ask ourselves as we’re working on our body, whether it’s exercising or doing whatever procedure, is: “Is my concern for my body crowding out other lines of development or is it actually influencing my psyche and spiritual development?�?nbsp; The beautiful body is only one kind of beauty.  We know this better than anyone.  Now there’s such a thing as a beautiful mind and a beautiful being and a beautiful spirit and a beautiful person.  As we make our bodies more beautiful in whatever image we’re using, are we developing the other lines, too?  You know where I learned this?  I had a laser procedure about three years ago.  I had resisted doing the laser procedure for about two years �?not because it wasn’t safe.  One of my closest friends actually had it done and had thoroughly checked on the procedure and found one of the best doctors in the country.  It was perfectly safe.  But I thought it was so vain to do it, to spend that money, and anyhow my glasses worked fine.  But here’s what happened.  I did the procedure and three weeks after the procedure I was swimming with my children at the beach.  I was not wearing the glasses.  I was playing with my kids and I was throwing them up in the air �?I have a 14 year old and an 11 year old and how they loved to be thrown up and down.  Well, the younger one began to laugh joyously and I promise you �?I had never seen my child so happy in the water because I never could see my child.  She was so exuberantly joyous that I just burst out in tears. That laser procedure affected my body, but it also affected my psyche.  So is your concern for your body crowding out or actually enhancing other aspects of yourself?  If you’re exercising six hours a day, it’s crowding out other lines of development and there’s something off.  If we’re doing procedures and they’re not working to affect our psyche �?then there’s something off.  If our eating is actually making us unhealthy, then there is something off.  So we have to ask these questions.  

And the last question we have to ask which assures the beginning of an ethics of body is: After we do whatever we do with our body, how do we look at other people’s bodies?  If in fact when we work on our own bodies it is connected to our psychic and emotional development. then we’ll have more dignity, and if we have more dignity and more security �?then actually we’ll be able to look at other people’s bodies, whether we’ve changed them or not, however we’re taking care of them �?we’ll be able to look at other people with greater respect.  If instead, after we take care of our bodies and are shaping them any way we want, what happens is we actually look down on other peoples�?bodies thinking they are not good enough, they are not thin enough, then it’s not working.  If we change our bodies and don’t have more internal dignity and security, something is off. 

There are some practices that we can do that will help us begin to develop a sensitivity to and awareness of these issues.  Now practices are to be done, not simply thought about.  You have to do practices or you don’t have the experience.  But you can tailor the practice any way you want.  The goal is not the practice, the goal is the experience �?but you can’t have the experience without the practice.  Here’s the first practice: In almost every tradition in the Jewish tradition, we do it in the morning �?there is a body meditation, a set of blessings that we say, from our feet all the way up to our heads.  It takes about five or six minutes, but it begins to sensitize us to our body as it is.  For example, Jewish wisdom suggests a blessing, but it doesn’t have to be a blessing.  A blessing is just a fancy theological way of saying:  Wow!  Here’s the blessing: Thank God for my feet because with those feet I can walk to go see my children �?I can walk in the park �?Thank God for my knees or I’m so fortunate to have my knees because with my knees I can bend down and smell a flower �?Thank God for my hands because with my hands I can caress my lover.  How do we use our body as is purposefully?  Once you do that, then whatever changes you make are from a place that is genuinely centered.  

The second practice is specifically an exercise practice.  After all, having just joined a health club, I had to do something about the health club.  And this is an affirmation before exercise.  You see, it’s very bad to exercise if the reason you’re doing it is to look like a Madison Avenue advertisement for health clubs.  You know what’s that about �?actually that’s the sex show.  You have to exercise because you want to have more life yourself.  So I do different kinds of affirmations before I get on that treadmill: May this exercise make me a more vital parent �?May this exercise make me a more alive lover �?May this exercise allow me to work more passionately.  Now if you do these kinds of practices and you keep some of these ideas in mind, then actually what will happen is your awareness level of your body itself will rise, which is exactly what needs to happen when we have an explosion of capacity with body.  We’ll be able to redress the issues that we spoke about �?addressing the issue of idealization �?addressing the issue of whether you are fooling yourself or genuinely taking care of yourself �?addressing the issue of what you should eat and what you shouldn’t eat �?insuring that there’s a body/ spirit connection or insuring that there is a spirit/body connection.  Now here’s the amazing paradox �?the more capacity we have to transform our body actually means how much more seriously we have to take our thinking about the body.  What a paradox.  The more body �?the more mind.  The more we can do with the body on the outside �?the more we have to look inside.  And that’s “Simple Wisdom.�?nbsp; Thank you very much. I’m Irwin Kula, and I look forward to seeing you next time. 


I am
seeking
between
and
zip code
 

First  Previous  No Replies  Next  Last