You can trust your body
Some of us have had the 'sense' taught right out of us.
We don't know how to trust our bodies - sight, touch, taste, sound, and smell or intuition or pain or heart.
We're afraid of what we may come across if we let our physical senses interact with our spiritual nature.
Many of us were/are taught (and this was hurled at me on social media just this week) that the human "heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9 NKJV). The Message Bibles says: "The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful, a puzzle that no one can figure out." It seems to be a foundational pillar in many modern faith circles that there is nothing fundamentally good about us at all.
The word used for deceitful in Jeremiah 17:9 is 'aqov.' It comes from the root word we get the name Jacob from, which means "to grab the heel."
Because of Jacob, we think that this word automatically means "to deceive," and most biblical translations use that word. But 'aqov' just means heel. The Septuagint (which is the earliest Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament completed around the 2nd Century), used the word 'bathuno' when translating 'aqov.' Rather than meaning something willfully concealed and deceptive, it is the idea of deep things, things that may seem hidden because they run deep. It was often the word used to describe the deep sea.
Our early Church Mothers and Fathers took the word 'aqov' and translated it not to the idea of deception, but deep knowledge that we cannot comprehend, that we have to dig out, that might even lean more toward intuition. There's something in the story of Jacob that we modern folk miss (more on that in a future series). And if we look at that verse in context, it makes sense that "the heart is 'deep' above all things," especially when you pair it with its outro, "who can know it?"
The Ancient Hebrew word for "desperately wicked," means nothing of the sort. It's the word "Anesh" and it means "mankind in a state of weakness and helplessness." The word we would use for it today is...
Vulnerable.
It's not that our hearts are evil and deceitful and desperately wicked. Our hearts are deep like the ocean, an endless exploration of sense and knowledge and memory and feeling. Our hearts are beautifully, and often tragically, vulnerable, at the mercy of life and those we share the world with. In other words, your heart is a sensory playground/minefield. You feel, you experience, you go deep. That's how we’re made to be.
It isn't a verse steering us away from trusting our hearts. It's a verse about what we do with those experiences and the stories our bodies tell us.
Thomas Merton said:
"At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God… This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us."
Come to your senses.
The rest of that passage in Jeremiah says:
"But I, God, search the heart and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human. I get to the root of things. I treat them as they really are, not as they pretend to be."
The deception happens when we leave our senses out of the equation; when we don't include them. The way to find out who you really are, what you really believe, and what you really should do, is to go deep, go within, find that point of pure truth that's connected to all of you, body, soul and spirit.
If you feel like a deep-sea of experience and emotion, and you feel like you've lost the connection between your body and your spirit, don't run for the shore! Dive beneath the waves. As Thomas Merton said, that's where God is. Eternity stitched into the heart of every single one of us. It comes from within, not without.
(This post is an excerpt from The Practice Co App series called "Come To Your Senses", available to download for iOS and Android! It includes daily devotionals, phone wallpapers, a daily mindful prompt and more included. Start with a free trial or subscribe to get access to each new series as they come out.)
Mindful prompt: Pick one or two senses: sight, taste, smell, touch, hearing. Start by focusing on your breath, in and out, in and out. This will help your mind release its control-freak nature on the story going on around you. Keep breathing. Come to one of your chosen senses like it was a dear friend, a teacher, a loving parent. Come to that sense, and pay attention to it. What is it telling you?
Much love from Liz Milani.
Instagram: @thepracticeco
