Category: Wisdom

The bones know. There is such a thing as bone knowing.

Not too long ago, I went to listen to a man give a talk on awakening and living truth. He’s wise and vibrantly alive. He spoke of not knowing, about how there is so much we really don’t know if we just allow ourselves to be honest with ourselves.

I’ve come to realize that what I’d been holding onto as truth was really just a belief system to help me manage the unknown. Not knowing can generate so much fear. We unwittingly develop a worldview stuffed with beliefs to manage the fear. Yet, when we feel into the nature of the unknown, really feel into it, it’s not so frightening. It’s actually really pregnant with possibility, with aliveness, with the divine. It is spacious and vibrant, a pulsing sea of love without conditions.

It’s funny how we want to put conditions on it, even though we crave and thirst for unconditional love!

During this man’s talk, and then follow-up question and answer session, as he spoke of not knowing, others began to speak to the feeling that they realize they don’t know anything. That’s not quite right – what I heard, was the recognition of a similar understanding, yet what I also heard was a disowning of things we do know. My ears perked up, because in my experience, while I do know this pregnant sea of possibility and silence, I also know that there are things I know, really know, deep in my bones. I could feel myself squirming as the discussion of not knowing kept going – in particular, when I heard this one woman speaking of not knowing and how she didn’t know what to trust.

Something in me had to speak. I had to speak about the wisdom of the bones. Something pushed me to speak.

So, I did. I raised my hand and said, “Yes, yes, I understand about the not-knowing. If I am truthful with myself, there is so much I don’t know. I really don’t know what is going to happen in the next minute, or in the next, or the next. My rational mind thinks it can know, and I can see it’s my mind’s way of thinking into the unknown. I get this.”

“And, there are some things I DO know, some things I know so deeply in my bones, things I just can feel and when I speak of them I feel the knowing so deep that it feels like it’s in the marrow. It’s the feminine knowing, the wisdom of Sophia. It’s a kind of knowing that runs so deep below the surface of things it could be easy to miss, and is easy to miss if I am not in my body. This river of knowing winds its way through my body – through the cells, the flesh, the blood and the bones. My bones know. They know. I know this. I know this wisdom. It is real and alive.”

Then, I asked him, “Can you speak to that?” I was asking him to expand on this idea with his wisdom. He looked at me and said, “I don’t need to. You just did.”

I realized, my bones had spoken. I knew this. I didn’t need anyone to help me understand what I already knew. He knew I knew. He honored this. He didn’t need to say anything. So lovely.

In my spiritual life and the experiences I have searched out in a almost-rabid attempt to ‘wake-up’, I’ve spent many hours, sometimes days, even weeks, attempting to lose myself in the attempt to know the numinous. Looking back, I know none of it has been in vain. In fact, questioning the worth of it is a bit silly, because it is what I’ve done and where I’ve been.

One thing I’ve discovered, though, is that no matter how often or much I experience this transcendent quality of the divine, I still end up back here, alive in this body called Julie. It’s taken me some time to want to be here. It used to be that so much of what I felt in my body was painful. There were so many old fears, wounds, and raw experiences that I just didn’t want to feel or remember. But, something in my life was missing, too. The everyday, seemingly mundane, things were calling to me. Life was calling to me to come back home to here, to the body, to the senses.

There is this Oneness, this vast emptiness and fullness, the transcendent. And, within this Oneness there is this real, human life. There is the spirit and there is matter. Bones know. Wisdom is real.

A woman’s spirituality is really centered in this humanness, this expression of humanity that is at the heart of a woman’s experience. It is of the body, the earth, the bones, and flesh and blood. To know this realm of wisdom, we have to come down into the cells that make up the body; we have to come down into the cells and feel.

Yes, we may find things we don’t want to feel, things that caused us to go up into the head to begin with. Yes, it isn’t just wonderful and light and flowers, but even the things we don’t want to feel are part of this very real gift that is life.

This is the doorway to healing. This is the door to the sacred. This is the doorway to the soul, to the wisdom of the bones. This is the doorway to joy, the joy of an embodied life. This is the doorway to living the numinous right here on earth, right here in these bones that know.

These bones are not separate from the numinous, luminous spirit. The sacred is bone. The sacred is blood. The sacred is flesh. The sacred is woman – all of her beautiful wild self, including the fire, including the fierce, including the, “Hell no, this is not okay and I won’t stand for it anymore.”

Trust the bones for very practical reasons. The bones will guide you as you maneuver through your day. They’ll guide you as you raise your children or birth your creations. They’ll help you navigate your relationship with your honey and make major life decisions. Yes, your rational mind has a purpose; and, when you bring it into right relationship with your bones, you’ll find it’s a powerful combination to guide you through life. It’s a good balance between your own masculine and feminine.

Trust this. Trust you. Trust the body. Trust your voice. Trust the bones as you speak your voice. In fact, let your bones speak. You’ll be amazed at what they know and share.

::

This post was originally shared here as part of the Fall Tribe, ’12, for Roots of She.