Embodiment

Prompt 1: Inhabit Your Soul's Shelter ... the relationship between soul & body

Researcher Masaru Emoto demonstrated that human consciousness affects the molecular structure of water. He directed words and intentions at two glasses of water, then froze the water and took photos of the resulting ice crystals. The molecules steeped in benevolence and harmony formed beautiful, symmetrical structures. Those exposed to malevolence and discord were misshapen and discolored.

Human bodies — my Body — is composed of 70 percent water. What messages am I directing at it on a daily basis? I became aware that it is often a message of resistance and aversion. When my ankle hurts, I think, “Don’t.” When my fingers curl, I think, “Straighten.” When I look in the mirror to wash my face, I think “Banish the blemishes.”

A friend suggested trying love instead. When my leg spasms, love it. When my fat roll bulges, bathe it with loving energy. I tried this: My ankle hurt, and instead of fighting the pain, I sent love. I felt the tissues absorbing and expanding until there was no space left for pain. My ankle opened like a sponge.

A sponge swells, making room for what it receives. A sponge absorbs at its own pace and knows its own capacity.

Grieving & Receiving

In response to my work above, Brody asked me about the grief work I’ve done around the losses caused by my debilitating stroke. In pondering that question, I read about sacred wounds and acknowledged again that the stroke opened me in ways that benefit my Soul and make me of more service to others. I thought about what it means that in those moments when I did not want to be seen, a great sorrow surfaced for all to see. In the image below, I explored the tension of what has been lost and what has been gained — to honor and allow both to be seen. I continued to use the metaphor of the sponge, which knows its own capacity and must be wrung out of what it’s holding before it can absorb something new.

Prompt 2: Tree of Truth and Wisdom

Taproot 1: Family

tap-root noun:

the central, largest root of a plant that provides stability and nourishment.

The Assignment:

Find/create/collage an image of a tree and label the parts.

What are your roots? What philosophies, teachings are you rooted in? Name your taproot.

What life lessons are engrained in your bark?

What supports, nourishes and affirms your growth?

What are your branches reaching towards?

Who or what is nourished by your tree?

March 2022: I named my first taproot FAMILY because it felt to me that family relationships sustained me. The project consuming me at the time was planning my brother’s memorial and caring for his family in the aftermath of his sudden death. Securing his legacy was a continuation of a yearlong project completed just days before his death, in which my mother and I put together an album containing all the images, stories, and genealology of our ancestors.

Family was incredibly important to my mother and she expected her children to share that value. Remaining close (literally) to my mother and siblings determined the trajectory of my life, as I turned down a marriage proposal that would have taken me overseas.

It was not until the Purpose Discovery course beginning in Fall 2021 that I recognized the tremendous investment I had in my family of origin and began to question it.

Taproot 2: Creativity

April 2022: The tragic death of my brother exposed the vulnerable underbelly of my blended family. Grief, betrayal, anger, and resentment led to a rift that rippled through my remaining family causing damage I had not imagined possible. While I was years away from accepting the new reality of my changed family relationships, I quickly realized that FAMILY was NOT a reliable taproot.

I needed something that I could turn to always and chose CREATIVITY. At the time, the prompts I was receiving in the Purpose Discovery course encouraged me to explore my emotions, yearnings and learnings through words and imagery in creative ways that engaged and thrilled me.

By the end of 2023, I embarked on a creative project that fulfilled a lifetime dream of writing and illustrating a children’s book. Using the techniques introduced in Purpose Discovery, I developed an illustration style and completed my book with a rare sense of satisfaction. (See Wilbur.)

But with the completion of this creative project came a familiar sense of melancholy. No longer distracted, the deep heartbreak of my changed family circumstances troubled my thoughts.

I needed a more resilient taproot.

Taproot 3: God ... by any name

January 2025: Naming my taproot GOD may seem obvious given my 24 years in a 12-step program that has belief in a Higher Power at its core. But it wasn’t to me. I kept trying to root in the stuff of Experience. But all things in the Canopy of Experience change — just like leaves fall away and grow anew; like fruits bud, ripen and rot. These things cannot be a stabilizing, nourishing taproot.

If I picture my taproot as the immutable Life Force — sometimes called God, Higher Power, Universe, The Great Reality, Consciousness — I have a limitless, unwavering power. When I visualize my spine lengthening down to tap into it, it calms me.

My conscious contact with this Source, and my spiritual practice of connecting and being guided by this Source, strengthens my trunk. That, in turn, allows me to support whatever I choose to grow in my canopy.

It has taken almost three years for me to complete this assignment from Purpose Discovery in a way that feels eternal and helpful. My stance has shifted from one of reaching up as a formed identity and bartering with God for a better reality, to rooting down, drawing the power of Source into the vessel of my body and using the strength of that to uplift what moves me.