15 BEFRIENDING YOUR ANIMAL HUMANITY
This blessing takes one look at you and all it can say is “Holy.” Holy hands, holy face, holy feet, holy everything in between. Holy even in pain. Holy even when weary. In brokenness, holy. In shame, holy still. Holy in delight. Holy in distress. Holy when being born. Holy when we lay it down at the hour of our death. So friend, open your eyes (holy eyes). For one moment, see what this blessing sees, this blessing that knows how you have been formed and knit together in wonder and in love. Welcome this blessing that folds its hands in prayer when it meets you: Receive this blessing that wants to kneel in reverence before you—who are temple, sanctuary, home for God in this world.
JAN RICHARDSON, Circle of Grace
When beginning to soar into expanded states, it is tempting to just transcend the body and no longer be bothered by its increasing needs and limitations. Embodying Grace calls for a fresh exploration of our human vessel itself. Our animal humanity, with its hungers for comfort and sensual pleasure, has often been regarded as a difficult beast to be tamed by classical spiritual traditions in both the East and West. Thus we have inherited models of practice that have viewed the body with disregard and sometimes disdain, often encouraging us to push past authentic signals of pain from sitting too long on a threadbare cushion and to squash the fires of sexual desire by blanket celibacy, even though that might not be good for our relationships or our health. While overidentifying with our physical form reifies the sense of separation and ultimately limits our freedom, at the same time, our human vessel is a profound mystical system. If you are called to live in the world and serve its evolution, it is important to approach your body and the forces that move it with reverence.
Most people I know have a complicated relationship with their body. For some, it is a source of shame when the body refuses to yield to their will to be slimmer, fitter, or wrinkle- and cellulite-free. For others, it is a source of pride that swallows their attention in endless cosmetic maintenance to ensure desirability. Sometimes when challenged with sickness, the body can feel like a prison of pain. Perhaps you feel awkward in your body, trying to ignore its embarrassing quirks and cravings. Even when you finally learn to accept your form, being a human animal brings a mixture of gifts and challenges.
WHAT IS A HUMAN BODY?
All wisdom teachings invite us to know that our subtle depths are not limited to the contours, age, or shape of our form. Disidentifying with the body as who we are makes sense given that the body is destined to be temporary. Yet this vehicle is way more than it seems. All bodies contain subtle energetic portals that have the potential to transmit great love and beauty, bridging the gap between heavenly and earthly realms of being. Taoists, rishis, and Kabbalists all discovered maps to track our subtle energetic physiology, each developing healing philosophies and practices that help the body to open and become more refined so there can be more traffic between the realms. Given that the body is the densest aspect of our consciousness and the slowest to change, practices like hatha yoga and qigong and somatic modalities like cranial osteopathy and acupuncture can be very helpful in awakening and vivifying the body so it can integrate refined spiritual states.
Even when you know you are not your body, there is no escaping the forces of life that move through us all. Common to all animals, human beings have three primary instincts: the drive to survive, the drive for pleasure, and the drive to belong. These drives are more powerful than a nuclear bomb, forming the underbelly of our humanity. They directly influence everything we do but often remain in the unconscious. To paraphrase Carl Jung, that which remains in the unconscious appears in our lives as fate. Deny or try to push past these forces, and they inevitably end up sabotaging our cherished spiritual intentions.
I am sure you have heard incidents of seemingly realized masters falling from Grace into some painful acting out. Inevitably, spiritual abuse always has something to do with these instinctual drives spilling out sideways, manifesting as primitive behavior with sex, money, or power. Sadly, it brings immense devastation and often undermines our faith in the lofty teachings and transmission they shared. The more light that flows through our vessel, the more pressure it will put on anything that is not fully integrated. Whatever our state of spiritual realization, as long as we still have a body, it is not wise to think we are over being a human animal.
Living the embodiment of Grace requires a different approach than merely trying to subjugate, repress, or transcend these drives, as has been the classical spiritual approach for Christian mystics, Hindu ascetics, and Buddhist monks and nuns. Those approaches might work well within a monastic setting, but I have not seen them work well for those living in the West. As long as the body is here, these drives are here. It serves us better to understand and befriend them. Then perhaps like a well-treated pet, they can curl up in our lap and relax, ceasing to cause trouble. Perhaps they could even help us to live a full-bodied, integrated, juicy realization.
UNEARTHING OUR GUILTY SECRETS
I cannot count the number of times a mature practitioner finally plucked up the courage to confess something they felt deeply ashamed of still being caught in. I can almost predict what they are about to tell me: a pattern of compulsive overeating they just cannot seem to stop or some illicit sexual compulsion, either with pornography or an affair they know is not healthy and could deeply hurt another. Often, it is an addictive need to maintain their social status at the top of some pecking order, even though it contradicts their egalitarian values. I always feel great compassion when hearing these kinds of “confessions.” I know how powerful these forces can be, even when we understand that letting them run our life is destructive to our spiritual integrity.
Since our instinctual drives are the primal hungers of the human animal, they have a “guttural” feel. They rarely flow through filters of reason. Rather, they are about immediate gratification. That can lead us to act from instinct only, without thinking of the consequences. How can we be graceful with this? It starts with refusing to hide in shame about being a human animal. This means accepting that it is normal to have wants, needs, and desires. If you insist that you should not have them, then there will be no option but for the instinctual part of your nature to go underground into the shadow. This guarantees that at some point, when you least expect it, your animal nature will seep out of you sideways, causing trouble. It is much wiser to understand and integrate these drives.
THE SELF-PRESERVATION DRIVE
Let us begin by bowing to the brilliance of our self-preservation instinct, without which none of us would be here. This drive sparks the signals in your mind and body that say, “Time to eat.” If you listen, it will also tell you what to eat and when to stop, to rest when you’re tired (rather than drink more coffee), and to move when you feel stagnant. This force naturally drives you to take shelter in a storm, get out of the way of oncoming traffic, remove yourself from an unsafe environment, save for retirement, and make smart choices that provide basic security and comfort.
Our self-preservation instinct is all about keeping the body and mind alive, thriving, regulated, and stable. When this instinct is balanced, you naturally do what is needed to create a workable foundation for your practical well-being. A balanced self-preservation instinct helps you be more grounded and graceful in ordinary life. It serves your deepening realization by not creating unnecessary survival stress (thus supporting a life of ego relaxation).
Dismiss this instinct, and you will likely struggle with self-care. When you ignore, push past, or dismiss the intelligence of the survival instinct, you might resist going to sleep at a reasonable hour, forget to eat regularly, or struggle to find a regular rhythm of shopping for and cooking healthy food. This sets you up for weight or health problems. The self-preservation instinct also governs your relationship to money and security. Dismissing this instinct might express as not tracking your spending or neglecting to find a sustainable source of income. You might be following your bliss but not paying attention to the practical viability of it.
A further level of devolution is being caught in the grip of one of your instincts. Gripped by your self-preservation drive, you become either very disassociated from your body or overly obsessed with it. Both extremes elicit guttural, primitive behavior that inhibits graceful embodiment. For example, gripped by your self-preservation drive, you can get greedy, always chasing after more money, even at the expense of your relationships, inner peace, or stress levels. You might spend impulsively, without being aware of how much debt you are racking up. You can become obsessed with your exercise regimen or body-fat percentage and then swing the other way, binging without brakes like a pig at a hog trough. You can become overly attached to your creature comforts, turning having the “right” foods into a neurotic attachment that takes away from the simplicity of eating what the body needs, in moderate amounts, with flexibility in different situations. You can turn anything that originally was designed to help you settle and regulate into a false idol. Whenever you bow down to a false god, you suffer.
THE SEXUAL DRIVE
Sexuality is a huge subject that warrants several books. Our focus here is how the sexual drive affects our capacity to embody Grace. Reflect for a moment on how you and I came to be here. Clearly our very existence was ignited into being by a powerful, juicy desire to connect in ecstatic pleasure with another. What is this force that caused your parents to find one another so interesting? What causes the dance of masculine and feminine? What causes the force of creation to meet and merge with itself? When we look freshly at this juicy, sweet, vibrant force that runs through our bodies, as well as the plant and animal kingdoms, how could we not bow to the mystery?
The sexual drive makes life delicious and pleasurable. In its purity, the sexual instinct can surely take us to God, opening us through ecstasy to let ananda flow through our nerves. Powerfully rejuvenating, it turns us on, not just to mate but also to grow, connect, share, and discover creative new possibilities. Obviously when our bodies are younger, Mother Nature wants us to do our part in propagating the species. Yet aging and fluctuating hormones do not have to be the end, for Eros is not merely genital. There are many ways this pleasurable ignition of life can flow, whether you have a partner to enjoy it with or not—for example, by letting your body surrender to the beat of some fabulous music, getting high on the scent of roses freshly picked from your garden, or appreciating the sensual pleasure of slicing an avocado, sprinkling it with salt and fresh lime, and savoring how it melts in your mouth. You can relish the decorating of your new home, playing with paint colors in different lights and textured fabrics that soothe and stimulate the senses. Even getting dressed in the morning can be an embodiment of sensual enrichment that makes you so glad to be alive. When your sexual drive is in balance, you feel the sheer pleasure of existence. You have zip and energy and enthusiasm. You naturally want to create some kind of beauty—be it in the home, in your work, or in the world. Your way of being becomes richer, juicier, more artful.
When this drive is dismissed, suppressed, or ignored, you feel stagnant, unfulfilled, and dry. The life-giving force that lives in your sexual organs is literally the energetic pump that circulates nourishing energy to smooth out the rough edges. When this is stagnant, you tend to be harder, edgier, and not much fun to be around. It often plays a part in depression. At the very least, your human body needs to be touched, and not necessarily with sexual intent. Simply put, skin-on-skin contact with other human animals is a primary need. Even basic touch, like the warmth of a hand reaching for our own or a kind hug from a friend, triggers the release of stress-relieving hormones such as oxytocin that help our whole being relax and open up.
Many years ago, I had a shy, single, gay client come to me for regular spiritual counseling sessions. Without thinking about it, I would naturally put my hand on the back of his heart, just giving it a little rub as he walked out the door. It was a nonverbal embodiment of my care for him. Many months into our work together, he told me that he so looked forward to that simple touch. It was so powerful he would sit in his car and cry with relief, driving home much lighter. That magical, healing exchange of energy with others can often do more for us than anything else.
Yet it is very easy to get gripped by our sexual drive into ungraceful ways of being. When we overidentify with our body, not only are we objectifying ourselves but we cannot help but objectify others, relating as if they exist to meet our needs. This can make us energetically greedy, pulling for satiation, affirmation, or manipulation with our sexual magnetism. This erodes the true life-enhancing beauty of Eros into an egoic exchange, ultimately leaving us unsatisfied. We are equally gripped by the sexual drive when we just close the door to touch and juicy connection out of fear of getting hurt, fear of losing control, or fear of being opened to a level of vulnerability that scares us.
Given that our sexual instinct governs the pleasure and reward signals of our brain, its most difficult grip is surely the hell realm of addiction. This force naturally drives us away from pain and toward pleasure. I have observed many who have struggled with serious addiction, be it to alcohol, drugs, food, or pornography, and at the core is the drive to change our state by chasing the quick high. Driving this is inevitably some unmet anxiety, insecurity, or suffering that we have not yet been able to stay present with and feel all the way. If you have even a minor form of addiction, I strongly recommend that you be thorough with all of the earlier teachings and practices of this book and seek specialist support.
THE SOCIAL DRIVE
We will come home together, or not at all. This succinctly captures the essence of our drive for community, to be part of a greater whole, and to somehow find our place within the greater scheme of things. Just as most animals will not survive if they find themselves outside of the herd, you will not thrive on any level in isolation. We humans are relational beings. Thus living the embodiment of Grace asks us to grow in relationship—not just in our intimate relationships but our relationships with groups of people. At the deepest level, the social drive helps to ensure not only that we do not get left out in the cold but also that our life has meaning and value as part of a greater whole.
The social drive can bring out your best to give, receive, collaborate, and share. This will ask you to evolve beyond self-centeredness, learn to speak your truth without attack, allow and appreciate differences, harmonize your talents with those of others, receive help with things you are not naturally great at, and open to the way that best serves the whole. We all want this, but if you have spent a week living under the same roof as your family of origin, you surely know that it is easier being an angel when no one is ruffling your feathers.
Maintaining real connection with groups of people can be a challenge. I have taught within pioneering intentional communities, all who have gathered around agreed spiritual principles, such as Venwoude in the Netherlands, the Findhorn Foundation in Scotland, and the Esalen Institute in California. Furthermore, I have founded two spiritual communities, in the United Kingdom and the United States. Even when everyone sincerely gives their best, it is not always easy to let go of “my” way and harmonize around “the” way. Being graceful with the social instinct does not mean withholding how you really feel to keep the semblance of harmony. It asks you to participate authentically with your “tribe”—be that your family tribe, your local community, your fellow spiritual companions, your colleagues, or your cluster of friends. This is ultimately an ongoing inquiry throughout our life.
If you dismiss the importance of the social drive, you will likely end up isolating yourself from circles of support. You then run the risk of becoming off center in many ways, purely because of the lack of objective feedback that can only come from the reflections of many. You can get subsumed in your work and become overly eccentric, unbalanced, or just plain disconnected. When your life lacks the stimulation of varied kinds of conversation, you become too narrow. Even if you are an exceptionally gifted artist, musician, writer, or coach, ultimately your art form does not fully flourish without cross-fertilization with others. Some of the most fertile moments in the evolution of philosophy, art, science, and spirituality emerged when individuals with different kinds of illumination came together, as in the Renaissance or around the ancient Great Library of Alexandria.
When gripped by the social instinct, we become obsessed with keeping up appearances and being successful in the world. We instinctually orient ourselves toward what preserves our status as an important person in the pecking order of our choice. This can suck us into being obsessed with outer symbols of success, such as the latest car, stylish clothes, or a trophy partner. It most commonly takes the form of staying connected to those we believe are the important people, often relegating others to the B-list. This is all an unconscious attempt to get value, meaning, and affirmation from others. Author Neal Rogin calls it “opinion management.” It can swallow our life force into endless rounds of hot air through some of the lowest forms of social media. Bow to this false idol, and it will devour meaningful relating and block the flow of Grace in your life.
The following inquiry and meditation practices are designed to help you see where you can significantly tune the dial on your ongoing spiritual practice and show you exactly where you most need to practice presence.
INQUIRY Integrating Your Instinctual Forces
Perhaps, dear reader, just by reading this chapter you are gaining insights on what parts of your animal humanity you tend to dismiss and how that diminishes the embodiment of Grace in your life. You might have seen where you are most vulnerable to getting gripped. Whatever is emerging, it is crucial that you view this with compassion for your humanity. Remember, there is no one alive that does not have to ride these forces of life.
Which instinctual force most bumps you out of spiritual integrity?
If you are not sure, explore where you have the most trouble in your ordinary life, where you find yourself acting contrary to your deepest prayers. Refuse to demonize yourself for this.
Allowing space for this force to be here, what’s the energy within it?
What is this actually like in your body? For example, do you feel it most in your deep belly, pelvis, genitals, mouth, or hands? Remember, the instinctual forces are primary hungers, so let yourself feel this hunger for what it is.
Opening into the energy within this instinctual force, what is the true need here?
See if you can welcome that true animal human need, just as you have been learning to allow everything else.
Feel into the deepest prayer for your life. Your purest motivation for being. Now ask: What’s truly needed for my animal drives to harmonize with the prayer of my deepest heart?
Journal what comes to you, and commit to one action that embodies this wisdom. ~
MEDITATION Circulating the Nectars
This meditation is inspired by a practice that I learned many years ago from Taoist master Mantak Chia. It also synthesizes elements from the Mountain of Presence practice (chapter 3) and Resting in the Shower of Grace (chapter 7). It is powerfully rejuvenating and nourishing and is a great support for integrating the body of teachings and practices we have worked with in this journey. This is a great practice to do if you find yourself gripped by any instinct. It is also great to do if you have been feeling a little dull energetically.
1. Sit in your sacred space where you will not be disturbed.
2. Focus on the rise and fall of your breath. Let each inhale call you deeper into the present moment, into your body, into presence. Let each exhale invite melting.
3. Receiving the holding of the cushion, chair, or floor, take in the ground underneath you. Not just the physical ground of the earth you can see and sense but that primordial ground of Grace, with its power and dynamism. Feel as if you are sitting in that mountain of presence, in and part of the primordial foundation. Stay there until you feel deep, grounded, and settled.
4. Simultaneously, receive that shower of light that contains every blessing, all love, as if the molecules of light themselves carry the Grace of all the enlightened beings, bodhisattvas, and subtle forces of Grace. Just as the light of the sun that creates the day is already here, feel this sense of being in that shower of light, love, and refined qualities.
5. Now feel this ground of Grace and shower of light starting to circulate throughout your body. Beginning with the base of your spine, very softly “pulse” the perineum as you breathe in, and feel the energy and dynamism of the ground of Grace move up the back body. At the top of the breath, feel the energy moving up and over the crown of the head. On the exhale feel the shower of Grace and all subtle nectars pour down the front body, bringing all the nourishment you could possibly need.
6. As the breath cycle completes, pulse the perineum very gently on the in breath, feeling the life-force energy moving up the back body, reaching over the crown, and then on the exhale feel that divine shower pouring nectar through your front body again.
7. Find your rhythm with the breath, sensing and visualizing, letting the forces of life itself move through your body and subtle body, including and harmonizing all dimensions of your being—from the most primal to the most subtle. You might find that you feel your feet beginning to “drink” from the energy of the earth as well. You might feel as if your entire body is drinking subtle nectars that circulate more smoothly and freely as your practice progresses. This tends to happen when the practice gets more established. A further development of this practice is letting it become part of a walking meditation in nature, taking in the ground of Grace through your feet and lower body and receiving the shower of Grace as you receive the sunlight. Feel these forces of life itself revitalizing, renewing, and rebalancing body, heart, and mind. ~
The more you befriend rather than try to transcend your animal humanity with its needs, wants, and drives, the more it ceases to be an obstacle. Rather, you recognize its value as a holy vehicle for experience and cocreative expression. Honoring the sacredness of all forms while remembering the mystery that is always animating them, you naturally become more graceful here in the hubris of it all. You grow more balanced, moderate, and kind in the way you respond to the true needs of the body, listening to the invitations that aging, menopause, and even sickness bring. Perhaps more than anything else, this embrace grows you into your fullest humanity.