Incarnation

(Originally written Sun., Nov. 16)

Merriam-Webster Dictionary
CARNAL
- Having to do with life on earth especially as opposed to that in heaven
- Pleasing to the physical senses

After yesterday’s post about my frustration with the lack of apparent progress toward achieving the intended goal of this tour, I had a rather lurid dream and awoke to reflect for much of the day on both what IS the significant difference of my current experience and also about how I would know if I were achieving the goal of this tour.

I have long had the question: “What is it like to be a “normate?”” By this I mean – to myself – what is it like to live with the experience that one’s body moves relatively freely at one’s will. I have this question after a lifetime of experience that typical people do not easily understand what it is like to be me, a woman who at 59 years of age has the muscular strength of a 7 month old human child. People think I cannot move. In actuality I can move almost every part of my body to a tiny degree but these movements are mostly imperceptible to anyone but me.

I have led a life that includes many of the same trials and successes of any middle class Canadian single woman and so I easily discount the gulf of experience between me and a similar but walking woman. However my mission is to establish a valued position in society for those of us with atypical bodies, emotions, perceptions and cognitions – those of us labeled disabled – and so I struggle to communicate to “normates” what our experiences and contributions are.

A few years ago it dawned on me that I spoke to typical people as if they were like me and that perhaps I was discounting a perceptual difference that so skewed the interpretations of what I was saying that I could not be understood if I did not fundamentally shift my message. So my question was born – “What is it like to be a “normate””?

I fully acknowledge that the question cannot lead to a valid conclusion, at least as long as I keep on trying to answer it centred in my own biases. Just the same, I feel enticed by it, perhaps out of a semi-suppressed annoyance at the hegemony of thought, organization and control of resources enjoyed by “able-bodied” people at this time. Let me objectify “them” as much as “they” objectify me!

Back to yesterday’s post – I awoke today to the thought that the last ten days of trailer travel, living and working with Gabor and Erin have given me a “carnal” experience that has previously be unattainable for me. To repeat some of yesterday’s thoughts:
- we live in a small space, in a semi-tropical marshy location, and so are continuously exposed to the physical stimulations of smell, dirt, various alarms for propane, electricity, etc., bodies in contact, flies and bugs of all sorts, warmth and cold, unusual accents, and more;
- Erin and Gabor express their relationship in a physical and teasing way, not just in the trailer but at any time in public, beyond the typical boundaries I am accustomed to;
- Gabor, as my chief and often only personal assistant, has unusual strength. This is of course a very important gift considering all he has to accomplish everyday for the next six months. For example he can sit me up from lying flat in bed by simply grasping the back of my neck and lifting. On the one hand this is giving me an unusual capacity. On the other it throws off every rhythm and routine I have established since I first started having personal assistants 40 years ago. As a result I am frequently on edge, just as I was when I was six and my four year old brother drew extreme pleasure from creeping up behind me and screaming in my ear.

I realized over the last few days that I am utterly unused to so much stimulation in and from my body. I am also unfamiliar with the distraction of so much physicality. Just getting through a day of washing, dressing, eating, warming up or cooling down, going to the bathroom, being enthralled by wondrous birds and beaches, and engaging and disengaging from the personal dynamics is as much as I can and want to do.

Steiner and Anthroposophists, the spiritual group that gave rise to Camphill, talk of the incarnation of the etheric body as a significant developmental stage that occurs when we are about 7 years old. They say that a person who has a large head relative to their body, as I do, may have an incompletely incarnated etheric body. I googled the etheric and physical bodies, to discover that some believe that while the physical body is not the source of thought, emotion and experience, being in the physical body is required to fully grow from these processes.

In this model being a person such as myself would give me a clear sense that thought, emotion and experience are not individual, but I would struggle to fully “incorporate” my understanding into my own development and into the world’s evolution. Being a “normate” would give one an edge on development and evolution but could give one the misimpression that one is alone and is the centre and driver of one’s thought, emotion and experience.

So that’s what’s going on – perhaps! I have a mission, but I need to both incarnate more myself in order to get the lessons I am looking for at this time and I am learning to have understanding and compassion for those who are so much in the “carnal” circumstance that they are in a sense fascinated by it and do not fully realize how much more they are than their own physical bodies.

As to the other question I have been reflecting on: “How will I know when the conversation about the peace engendering capacity of Inclusion is permanently rooted in our culture?” – after speaking about it today with Gabor, I realize that the first step is to ask it of other people than myself. As long as it is my question only it isn’t going to get answered!

So at least today I am more willing to believe and feel that the World Peace through Inclusion Tour is still on track. I am learning and experiencing and being prepared to do this work with more effect.

Judith