Body Intelligence (Rumi)
Your intelligence is always with you,
overseeing your body, even though
you may not be aware of its work.
If you start doing something
against your health, your intelligence
will eventually scold you.
If it had not been so lovingly close by,
and so constantly monitoring,
how could it rebuke?
You and your body’ intelligence
are like the beauty and precision
of an astrolabe.
Together, you calculate how near
existence is to the sun.
Your intelligence is marvelously intimate.
It is not in front of you or behind,
or to the left or the right.
Now, my friend, try to describe how near
is the creator of your intelligence.
There are guides
who can show you the way.
Use them.
But they will not satisfy your longing.
Keep wanting the connection with presence
with all your pulsing energy.
The throbbing vein
will take you further
than any thinking.
Muhammed said, Do not theorize
about essence. All speculations
are just more layers of covering.
Human beings love coverings.
They think the designs on the curtains
are what is being concealed.
From “A Year with Rumi” translated by Coleman Barks.
Again, to my Anam Cara.
Boy, I should listen to my body intelligence a little more. I’m reading Geneen Roth’s Women, Food & God – I think it might help me be able to listen a little more.
P.S. LOVE the dog poem…
LOVE you! We could all learn to listen to our bodies more … and to forgive our bodies. When we are tired, sit down, when we are hungry eat, and when we are hurting, STOP. Reach higher, move more. I’m as guilty as the next person. I’m reminded of the woman on tv … maybe it was on the “Hot in Cleveland” show with Betty White … when the 40-something year old said, “I look back at pictures of myself when I was in my 20s and I just want to shake that girl and tell her how beautiful she is and to stop obsessing over every bite and just LIVE!” … White says, “I say the same thing when I see pictures of myself at 70!”