Working on the puzzle

The mind body connection, it has been haunting me lately. I have felt this pendulum swinging inside of me moving from mind to body and back again. I sense a possible slowing of the pendulum is near but not quite possible. As it is now, the pendulum continues to swing; from mind to body, in a constant state of flux.

I lived so much of my life only in my head. I feel safest and most secure when I am using my mind to navigate this world. Logic is a strength of mine and has served me well. I assumed I could think my way through this world and find success. I know I am not the only one because our culture teaches us to prize intellect over just about anything. We are raised to believe that how our mind works determines our worth in many ways.

I believed this fully. I understood that my life was a problem to solve. That there were answers to every question. That truth was determined. And if I was intelligent enough, I could win at this game called life. So I stayed in my head and let logic lead me down the path set before me. I kept moving in the direction that I thought was correct for me. The map seemed simple enough to follow and everyone else was doing it, so why did it never feel quite right?

I now know that our mind is only half of the equation. I had been trying to solve the puzzle of life with the majority of the pieces missing. Or perhaps they weren’t missing, but flipped over. I couldn’t see how they would fit into the portion I had already figured out because of this. When you cannot see the picture on the pieces, it becomes incredibly hard to connect them.

By some sort of divine intervention, these pieces started to be flipped over in my life. Over the years, I began to gather them up and see how these portions of the puzzle fit together beautifully. These flipped pieces, the parts of myself that I felt so disconnected to, were the other side of the mind body connection; the body. I’ve been putting the puzzle pieces of the body together for years now but recently, it feels like I am finally figuring out how the whole puzzle fits together. The mind is not a separate side of the puzzle than the body, they require each other to complete the scene.

It has been a long and slow journey towards meeting and trusting my body over a handful of years. At first I did not have the language to understand what was happening. I had never allowed my body to be part of the way I navigated the world, I always led with my mind and logic. It was simple or so it seemed. But the logical brain wants us to see the world as simple. When in reality, there is far too much nuance to every aspect of our world. This is why, the mind is only half, or maybe less, of the puzzle.

Looking back on all the decisions I made from my lens of logic, I know my body was always there, attempting to be heard. She was quietly attempting to nudge me in one direction or another. I kept the volume so high in my mind that it was always drowning out the quiet voice of my body. In many belief systems the mind is masculine and the body is feminine. The mind is sharp, decisive, loud, assertive and often viewed as superior. The body is soft, feeling, quiet, adaptable and sometimes viewed as simply an accessory to the mind.

The body being a vehicle to move our thinking self through the world is not an uncommon belief. Or rather, most people never even consider the body to be a part of our intelligence. This is where we lose so much of ourselves in todays world. Where intelligence lives within the mind, wisdom lives within the body. Our world is not lacking intelligence but it is in desperate need of wisdom.

I always thought that wisdom was something I needed to receive from outside of myself. I needed to read it in a book, learn it from a teacher or hear it from an elder. I was never taught about the wealth of wisdom that I contain within myself. As I have collected the pieces of my body, and begun to connect them to my mind, the amount of understanding that has been unlocked within myself has been mind boggling. Every time it happens, a pearl of wisdom floats up from my body and makes itself known in my mind, I become giddy. It truly is an intoxicating feeling.

The desire to dive into my body constantly is intense. As I have allowed myself to explore this entirely new part of the puzzle over the past six months, it has shifted the way I move through the world in ways I cannot fully explain. I’m beginning to understand that this shift, from mind to body, has been so much of the resistance and discomfort that I have felt during this time. The mind is not only intelligent but it also loves to be in control. When it senses control slipping away, it is going to resist it with everything it has. It feels as if my mind is a little pissed that its not the favorite child at the moment.

My excitement about exploring this new side of myself is causing my mind to attempt every trick in the book to bring me back to its side. This tug of war has felt quite challenging at times but has become fascinating for me to observe. At first it felt like a very uneven game. You know, the picture with 20 people on one side of the rope and maybe two or three on the other. But now, it feels like the teams are balancing.

Essentially, where I used to feel conflict and competition between my mind and body, I am finding collaboration and support. As I continue to flip puzzle pieces over and find connections between both sides, I feel more and more whole. I know that completing the puzzle isn’t quite the goal, but every connection feels like an extra dose of courage into my system.

I stumbled on a quote near the beginning of my time off that struck me close to the heart.

“A mind all logic is like a knife all blade, it makes the hand bleed that uses it.”

-Rabindranath Tagore

I recently got an interpretation of this quote tattooed on my body. It felt necessary to do as soon as I read it. It will serve as my humble reminder that a knife cannot be used properly without a handle. As a mind cannot be utilized to its fullest potential without a body.

Life will always be a puzzle to me. But for now, it isn’t something I am trying to solve with logic alone. I know that intelligence and wisdom live within me, mind and body both accessible at a moments notice. It is shifting my perspective on the world and nothing makes me happier.