Many of our teachers—and others, such as transpersonal developmen- tal theorist Michael Washburn (2003)—use the word “embodiment” to talk about how the realizations you receive can be integrated into your everyday consciousness. Embodiment involves giving concrete form to an abstract
concept (e.g., love or unity or belonging). When you embody something, you take what you’ve learned—the insights you’ve gained through your direct experience—and you give it form. For example, you can give some- thing form in the way you are and the spirit you bring to each encounter. Thus, your practice and the truths that are important to you become less of what you do and more of who you are as an embodied human being. As Adyashanti told us:
Some people awaken and basically the bottom drops out and never gets put back underneath them. But this is extraordinarily rare. What most people find is they have this great experience, this great awakening, and after they come back from the honeymoon—which can be anywhere from five minutes to five months to a couple years—they encounter their unresolved stuff, the parts of them that aren’t awakened, that the light didn’t penetrate. They’re really going to need to look at that. And that, for most people, is a gradual process.
One needs to ask, “At any moment, am I actually being what I know to be true?” It’s another one of those things that sounds very simple. Where the spiritual rubber hits the road is in relationship: Am I actually being what I know myself to be? When a situation gets difficult or intense, am I actually expressing and being what’s true? Or am I coming from reactivity? When people start to get the simplicity of this, what I call embodiment starts to happen much, much more quickly. They take one or two simple concepts, and actually apply them, actually work them. (2004)
Drawing on another perspective, Catholic priest Francis Tiso speaks of embodiment in terms of resurrection:
Christian spirituality is very much about embodiment. One of the criticisms of Evagrius [an influential fourth-century ascetic Christian
philosopher], for example, is that he seems to just be talking about a disembodied soul. But actually what he should be talking about is the whole human person. Body, soul, everything is participating in those experiences and will open out into full consciousness. That’s what we mean by the resurrection of the body, which isn’t just about flesh being reconstituted around bones in the grave—it’s about coming to life again in the wholeness of what you are. Your body, your mind, your virtues, your deeds, everything you’ve learned, everyone that you’ve touched—all of that is part of that resurrection of the body. (2002)
Although Adyashanti, Tiso, and Frager (in the previous section) come from very different traditions, they all emphasize the importance of embodying transformation. This means living in a way that integrates body, mind, spirit, environment, and society.
Life as Practice, Practice as Life
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MAKING YOUR PR ACTICE YOUR OWN
Many teachers noted that their lives became their practice after they stopped looking for what worked for others and found what worked for them. George Leonard, pioneer of the transformative practice movement, told us:
One of the things that I used to demand was reassurance that somehow my life was the correct spiritual life to be living. I know that’s not a question for me anymore because I have to live my life—I can’t live the life of some teacher. I’m never going to get there the way somebody else did. They didn’t get there the way somebody else did either… I would venture to say that the best thing that’s happened to me is that I now have a fundamental respect for my own way of doing it, and I don’t expect myself to follow some teacher and get there the same way. Now, I am more secure and less demanding.
(2002)
The essence of living deeply is bringing awareness to the simple ways you can make your life and practice a more seamless and graceful partner- ship. And as Leonard tells us, it is only by staying true to your own authentic methods of self-exploration that you can make your practice your own.
SUMMARY
In this chapter, we’ve seen that life and practice are fundamentally a seam- less whole. This idea is as revolutionary as it is ancient. Living deeply doesn’t require retreating to a mountaintop or embarking on a hero’s journey; rather, the convergence of life and practice is about the hero’s return—in which you bring the fruits of your journey of self-discovery back home, into your life, your family, and your community. Embodying transformation is a process of continual exploration. It can be a simple act of compassion, or a moment when you stopped and felt gratitude. By finding ways to remind
yourself to be aware, you can begin to live transformation in every thought and deed. As both Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast, who continu- ously looks for ways to practice gratefulness, and Anna Halprin, who has
made dance her form of devotion, show us, there are many ways to live more fully and more deeply. As we see in the next chapter, part of this involves a fundamental shift in your sense of identity—moving from “I” to a more engaging sense of the “we.”
For now, stop and consider the ways practice takes form in your daily life.