ILLUMINATION IN THE GUT: ENLIGHTENMENT AS PHYSIOLOGICAL BIRTHRIGHT - Laura Hope-Gill
Anatomy and physiology are often linked and equated with destiny and identity. Such equations lead to exclusion and persecution as often as they lead to lionization and privilege. Color of skin, height, physical strength, gender-at-birth, sexuality, race, neurology, ability, and reproductive organs throughout history summarily lead to legislation for either protection or reduction of protections under the law. Never does the body entirely define a person, and yet there is always somebody or some group ready to declare that it does—women must have babies; tall, Black people must play sports; people with certain reproductive organs should be paid 30% more than people with other kinds of reproductive organs. The list of claims goes on.
In the West, our bodies, it is claimed, define us. They are not only what we are but who. In such a reductive culture as ours, versed in correlation mistaken for causation, science justifies atrocity more often than it directs our attention toward compassion. In the West, we are led to conclude, the body is an agent of war and the brain an agent of judgment. Such reasoning leads us to believe that life is for suffering for some and for inflicting suffering for others. In light of current scientific research, though, a body part has announced itself as the balance to the rule we are told our bodies must obey. Its mere existence within us proves that our bodies, when fully considered and engaged, are agents of peace and well-being. In my forthcoming book, I will show you that life is for joy, love, and compassion and that each of us is biologically destined to be kind.
At the start of the pandemic, I told my daughter, then a junior in high school, that we should each choose a self-improvement project so we would not turn into potatoes. She chose to heal her trauma with books and therapy. I chose to attain enlightenment. I wanted to attain enlightenment because every power structure in the West is predicated on the notion that the people filling its posts are "enlightened," or closer to it than the rest of us. All the power of these systems is derived from the implied impossibility of the everyday person's ever attaining enlightenment. Because it is impossible--so impossible that a tiny handful of people who lived long, long ago made it--we are told we need to be "led."
Think about it a second: humankind survived for 50,000-200,000 years before the Age of Reason, but we who eschewed creative imagination three centuries ago are in real danger. In 300 years we have demolished the planet and have antipaths running the country, whom none of the "enlightened-or-close-to-it" other people can solve. The Enlightenment failed. It failed because it took the material, five-sense path, which requires no imagination. Enlightenment isn't about being really smart by residing entirely in the intellect. It's about being universally compassionate by dwelling wholly in the gut, intellect's superior: intuition, the predominant mechanism for knowing what sustains survival.
While it is out of reach through "the pure light of reason alone,” it is readily available through the one thing we have not been encouraged to practice for three centuries. Creative Imagination. Enlightenment requires intense creative imagination, for this is how we develop the imaginal world of which the temporal/ontological world is a shadow. The reality is the wholeness. One world informs another. We need both. This explains why Indigenous cultures prize storytelling in its archaic forms. We enter the primordial story when we attain enlightenment. It flows into us, healing us. We ferment using stories, and this extends our life as much as it extends the life of fermented cabbage for instance. Without this vital information, we haven’t known that fermentation is not only available to all of us but that we have a body part that specifically serves this physiological mechanism, what we call "the gut."
Shifting into this body part in later life defines enlightenment. We go into the gut for short visits while we grow up so that when we reach mid-life we have prepared a place for ourselves there in consciousness. We find all we lost. And we take this imaginal version of all we lost with us when we depart our bodies. Doesn't this make so much more sense than any of the other things? Once we are in the gut for good, we fuse to nature in perfect intuition, and nature lures and leads us. The elders communicate these steps to the community, and the community lives on. Never once do we take our eyes off the unseen. Generation after generation parlays what we need to know. It even has a voice and talks in low tones. Much of the time, it sings.
We humans survived for so long by listening and learning from it. It gave us language and music. It gave us instructions for making fire. It led us through its music to wild strawberries and soon after taught us how to ferment them. Then it taught us how to ferment ourselves with our stories of the experiences nature created for us—so we could give it back in telling. That is the deal. It is the deal still, and we’re not holding up our side. We never took credit for the work of nature. The gut is the talk of the town now because nature is still guiding us, and we've become slightly better listeners. Once again, though, the theoretical language complicates things by leaving intentional engagement of creativity. At best the word is included in a list of things we find in the gut. Creativity isn't "in" the gut. It is the gut. That's what it is for. Knowing we have a bodily mechanism for transformation, we can take enlightenment down from its highest shelf and restore its attainment to everybody. It's literally within, but with a secret passageway to beyond. We need that beyond because that’s our life force source. We are dying without it. Shrinking ego takes discipline and is painful, but we must do it to get back on track.
Our holy books and sacred practices, preserved throughout the science years, provide clear guidelines for gut-dwelling. The ancestors saw how we could lose sight of imagination’s physiological home in the body, so they made maps for our return on parchment. Abide by them closely, they say, and you’ll enter the primordial mind. I went all-in on these without exception or rationalization. I committed to burning away the ego. Some nights I wanted to scream. Some nights I did. I held fast though, using tools from Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Kaballah, Christianity, Islam, and Romantic Poetry, all teachings in fermenting the self into the soul using imagination. These words delivered the goods far beyond meditation. That stuff is the user manual for self and soul.
From Judaism, the Ten Commandments limit our conduct. Not being allowed to lie, we must live a life that requires no deceit. We must be open with everybody. If we can’t tell the truth, we are deceiving ourselves and others, which goes against the laws of community. If we can’t kill anybody, we must observe our rage and deal with it. If we can’t have sex with somebody else’s partner or just anyone we want, we must address our craving. These ten rules are not about right and wrong. They are about cultivating compassion. When we live in compassion we stop seeing other people and things as “needs.” We can appreciate their beauty without having to possess and control it.
These tablets reflect the kleshas of Buddhism and complement the seven deadly sins, ever winnowing away our ego by forcing us to cease looking and reaching and blaming all that is outside our selves with pride, rage, craving, jealousy, and ignorance regarding the dual nature of reality. When moving through the process of the Lojong Slogans of Buddhism, I consistently envisioned Shiva of Hinduism destroying the aspects of my personality, while breathing Buddhism’s Tonglen and recalling the Psalm, “You will feel anger. Sit on your bed and meditate.” We each have a path to get life on earth in balance. If we're all worked up over our stressors and other people’s behavior, it can't reach us. The process awakens our heart by breaking it. This is tantra: instead of getting what you want, you feel the pain of not getting it. This sharpens our perception, and enlightenment is about perception. The burning pain of not-having is essential.
Enlightenment is seeing both sides of reality, intellect for the material and imagination for the imaginal, as our ancient ancestors did. It’s our reset where our emotions, perverted by ego, return to their original states. Love is for community. Want is for nourishment. Fear is for reaching out for comfort. Anger is for nothing at all. When we settle into the gut, we make sense again after far too long. This settling is not out of reach, nor is it connected to judgment, as we have conflated in the West. This said, it isn't a cakewalk. To attune to the earth, we have to de-attune to our individual wants and control. We hand these over to their aligned aspects: perceiving the voice of nature. The Age of Reason is predicated on transcending superstition with hard-core reality, which, as we are finding, is actually magical and supernally sensory. Real reality stands over linear logic, earning it the name superstition and that explains why the empire wanted to be rid of it. We have a deeper empire inside that holds the whole of the universe.
I recently saw a photograph of one of four framed human nervous systems dissected from a body. Sure enough, it looks like a holy spirit inside us. It resembles a shroud, explaining why in scripture Christ is wrapped in it following torture and death. It is also a tree and a cross draped with tattered cloth. It calls to mind “the voice in the wilderness” in the way it touches everything from inside this darkness. To hear and follow it is to be washed in eternal love. Writing and storytelling heal us because we deliver unto it our strong emotion and knowledge of language, and it gives shape to them in such a way that reveals the value of our suffering. Every time. We give it mud. It gives us lotus. Every time.
When I set out to attain enlightenment at the outset of the pandemic, I was in a lot of pain. At age 50, we have our stockpile of losses. This is why we have a body part for processing it. Unprocessed grief, which is at the root of our trauma and overwhelm, is the root of our depressions and our hungers. We’re empty. We’re rotten. I was. Inflammation and resentment ruled me. My monkey mind was a zoo exhibit. Every run at romantic relationships could be summed up with Wile E. Coyote’s flattened form under the ACME crates of my wanting. Viewing the first Pema Chodron recorded class in her series, Turn Your World Around, I saw my way out. I went for it and am now out. It isn’t impossible. We are just told it is impossible. We have the books still. The books never say it is impossible. In fact, they all say it is rather simple. The Renaissance artists say so, too.
Among the many disciplines in which Leonardo da Vinci excelled, dance is seldom mentioned. None of his paintings feature dancing people. Correct me if I’m wrong, of course. His drawing of Vitruvian Man is treasured as a diagram of the perfect proportions of the (male, white, and mobile) human body. I recall its being conflated with Protagoras the Sophist (this will not be on the test) who is credited with the statement, “man is the measure of all things,” a statement of trickery if there ever was one and one to which the West is securely tethered. There is just one problem. If we are told that we are the measure of all things, then, we assume, reality is our reflection. This makes us feel really good about ourselves, “hey, let’s be secular humanists for a while and see how it goes!” We surmise our own, and nature’s, limitation to that which we perceive with five senses.
Monobrain is death. Gut is rebirth, which explains the name of an entire era devoted to reclaiming both our brains. It was an era fueled by creative imagination, the natural philosopher—or alchemist’s secret fire. Our textbooks said it gave rise to The Age of Reason, but in truth The Age of Reason has done everything in its power to extinguish its flame. Monobrain asserts that the scrim of reality’s surface is all there is. One-dimensional five-sense perception and linear logic confirm themselves, leaving no room for doubt. It’s a brilliant business model. Even Isaac Newton knew it was, as we say, a load of bull. He just couldn’t prove it because proving a negative goes against the nature of proof. We have to see, feel, hear, taste, and touch it. The second brain shows up for none of these. It’s a ghost, a holy (which shares the root with healing and wholeness) ghost inside us that connects to all that is outside us. Pretty sneaky.
A materialist with an enormous ego—you know the sort— is like capitalism. They barrel forth without any known reason not to take over everything. With awareness of the finitude of natural resources and some basic ethics, this charging behemoth of a person can possibly slow down a little. Add empathy, and this being slows a bit more. Churn in compassion, and it just might change its ways. This is supposed to happen. We are supposed to evolve into depth. All the bad things that happen to us happen because life needs us to get wise. Ethics are good. Empathy is better. Compassion is best. If we act out of compassion, we reason from beyond the self. Compassion is the province of our second brain. The purpose in life is to move entirely into it, making compassion the sole response and motivation for all we do. The Age of Reason’s scientific overreach arrived at this same conclusion with narrative medicine: when we tell, we heal. What it has not yet stated is, “we were wrong.”
How do we get there? Through reflection, the process linear reason can’t provide. Consider Michelangelo’s Sistine ceiling: God and Adam’s hands are on the same level. Neither side is straining to reach. Adam’s on his terra firma of the intellect while God is suspended in a cherubim-populated human heart. If we don’t know about the gut-brain and that it is what is meant by “the heart” in comparison with intellect, we might think it is a giant cape, but no one is wearing a cape. Our beloved cadaver cutter, Michelangelo, knew exactly what he was doing. “A floating nebulous form made up of drapery and other figures” is how it is described on the “Italian Renaissance” website. Even if we don’t know about the parasympathetic nervous system’s “floating nebulous form” that “drapes” around our entirety comprised of “other figures,” we are still seeing it in this painting. And it matters. The Renaissance Men knew exactly what they were doing. They were teaching us that the Holy Bible is about the human body and the holy spirit that sustains it. The distance between their fingers isn’t closed because the five senses don’t apply. We don’t have to touch it to know it. Intuition just knows. Additionally, Adam and God are making eye contact. They know the other is there. They witness one another. For a person to be whole, Michelangelo whispers, a person embodies both brains, both realities, both worlds that they perceive.
The best part is that these artists were undermining the teachings of the Holy Roman Catholic Church and having the Empire and its wealthy patrons pay for it. If that’s not the definition of genius I don’t know what is. The Medici prioritized the translations of the alchemical texts, another term for attaining this balance of both. It is interesting to ponder their satisfaction upon seeing the hiddenness of alchemy acted out in plain sight in the artistic works they funded.
This is the sacred work of Renaissance People. The whole-minded, meaning using both brains, person can tune into the universe and glean knowledge. The knowledge comes in through the creative process. It arrives non-verbally though because intellect gets language. Knowledge comes in words and music, colors and brushstrokes, even in dreams that the Renaissance Person is open enough to receive and skilled in three-part wisdom of discernment for conveying gift and guidance to the rest of humanity. We don’t have to make it make sense. Every individual it reaches will create their own meaning from it. Even those it does not reach benefit.
This is how God-Cosmos-Nature-Collective Consciousness loves us and keeps us going.
The signs are all there directing our attention to this mystery. Linear logic just didn’t allow us to entertain synchronicity and primordial consciousness, the key elements of three-part wisdom, or “triadic logic” to the physicists. Now we know. Knowing isn’t enough, though. This worldview is not a spectator sport. It’s a hop-to for human evolution. We’re getting it from the source.
Laura Hope-Gill is the director the Creative Writing of Poetry and Creative Nonfiction at the Thomas Wolfe MFA Creative Writing Program at Lenoir-Rhyne University. You can find more of her work at laurahopegill.com and Laura Hope-Gill’s Quiet World.
