I found a book at a small, local bookstore. I bought it for my grandson and have been reading it to him as often as possible. The title? Bodies Are Cool. It celebrates all types of people. He asks me questions which I answer candidly. Future generations should not be tied into shame and gender stereotypes. Future generations should not be as miserable as we have been about our bodies.
Your loving debate w/ Tolle was beautiful and true in content and form. I especially enjoyed the surfacing submarine as the ultimate message rose from the dialectic seas. Thank you. 🙏
This is gold, though I’m not sure it is fair to argue with another great mind in his absence. Still, the distinctions you make are elegant and useful, and I know the pains you took to compose it. Thank you. I also appreciate the Scorpio horoscope. I’m considering breaking my no-pay for Substack rule.
I am a big fan of Walt Whitman. Last fall I wrote a newsletter titled "The Body Electric," in which I discussed alternative medicine and a lot of the things conventional medicine deems hogwash. I quoted Whitman, who used that phrase in Leaves of Grass. He believed the body was part of the soul. Here part of what I wrote (referencing acupuncture and other "magical" alternative healing modalities) :
"The American poet Walt Whitman surely knew something about this too. He wrote "I Sing The Body Electric" for his epic 1855 collection, Leaves of Grass. It is divided into nine sections that each celebrate the body and human physicality. It also seems to equate the physical body with the soul. The final section begins with the lines:
'O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and that they are the soul.)' "
I love this so much. I am sick of this society, expecting Crones to look as they did in their twenties and thirties. All I know is that I am expanding with the Universe. LOL. Personally, I love having an invisibility cloak at age 71. LOL. I have padding to help my Crone bones if I fall. We need to accept all body types at any age. Curves are valued in other cultures. It breaks my heart when older women talk about the weight of other older women. I think this could be their own body dysmorphia. Venus of Willendorf rocks! Thank you, thank you, thank you, Rob.
Your newsletter is always filled with such profound wisdom. I couldn't help but think of Poet Andrea Gibson, who is embodying so much of what you speak of while she is journeying through cancer. Thank you for another beautiful post.
I have never written you before, as much as I identify and appreciate your writing about the things I have been talking about my whole life and have always felt like, Ms. Understood! I love this discussion of our bodies! How appropriate as I am facing a critical time in my breast cancer treatment. I have doing this late September 2024. I have changed hospitals and doctors until I found the best in Boston. But still, I find that hospitals & doctors do not respect or revere my body for all the good. intelligent, and miraculous things it has done and can do! They think they know more about my cancer, but actually very little about the good health of my body for all these years! I have been subjected to health care as a business that is all about money and scheduling as many procedures as possible. I love my body with all of my Soul and know this incarnation is key to it's evolution. I wish more respect was paid to Our Amazing Bodies!
I love your writing and your perspective and I have for many years since you’re astrology is in the back of the Austin chronicle. I have to say I wrote a song using a line from one of the recent ones in the past year that you wrote. It was about using our rage to show compassion. I was having an astrology reading with your wife and I told her about that. I hope she is well and thank you for what you do.
The message in this week’s newsletter perfectly articulates & validates my love and amazement of being in this body. The ecstasy of movement, stretching, dance…love-making, eating, sleeping…and occasional pain & discomfort to provide comparison, is why we immediately want to go back and “do it again”, it drives us to reincarnate over and over again. I’m particularly fond of this lifetime with a very curious and willing body and adventuresome mind. I only really allowed my full enjoyment after years of work shedding the “I’m not worthy” bologna! Thank you for reinforcing this truth!
My Body, My Temple, where I receive the Divine and become the oracle......a both/and.......cleaning the temple with somatic practices and cognitive processes facilitates the Truth and Beauty you so delightfully encourage.
This is so interesting and timely. I have a group of coaches I meet with regularly, who had decided to read A New Earth (which I had read a good 15+ years ago. After reading the chapter on tthe Pain Body, I both remembered how it was enlightening in providing some space between awareness and what arose and was painful. However sense, I've immersed myself in Somatic Integration work, cultivating my connection with my own beloved body as consciousness, wisdom, intelligence and information. in-form-ation. I brought this up to the group..."what about the body?" Knowing at this time in my life that connection and relationship with it is so necessary when healing trauma. Several others concurred. And, as life would have it, it, your posts lands in my mailbox.
Thank you, Rob, for the extraordinary forwarding piece before this week’s astrology readings!
Your dream conversation with Mr. Tolle, I found deeply resonant, and get from it to focus on both human and being parts of (who) I am - aiming in my awareness for their growing mutual, respectful acknowledgment and integration!
For me it’s also about the ongoing transition from 3-D to 5-D consciousness (which you’ve written about for years) and thru this gift of my body, honoring it by right living as a daily reminder to “be here now”!
I found a book at a small, local bookstore. I bought it for my grandson and have been reading it to him as often as possible. The title? Bodies Are Cool. It celebrates all types of people. He asks me questions which I answer candidly. Future generations should not be tied into shame and gender stereotypes. Future generations should not be as miserable as we have been about our bodies.
And Nora Merias Swenson , a co founder of #OurBodiesOurselves passed this weekend. Talk about changing ideas
Wow. I am sorry to hear this. I bought this book when it was first published and also bought Ourselves Growing Older. Groundbreaking books.
I did not know that. What a ground breaking book and movement.
That was such a valuable book, especially back then.
Your loving debate w/ Tolle was beautiful and true in content and form. I especially enjoyed the surfacing submarine as the ultimate message rose from the dialectic seas. Thank you. 🙏
This is gold, though I’m not sure it is fair to argue with another great mind in his absence. Still, the distinctions you make are elegant and useful, and I know the pains you took to compose it. Thank you. I also appreciate the Scorpio horoscope. I’m considering breaking my no-pay for Substack rule.
The Scorpio horoscope actually gave me a full bodied (ha!) chill!
Me too, Kris.
I am a big fan of Walt Whitman. Last fall I wrote a newsletter titled "The Body Electric," in which I discussed alternative medicine and a lot of the things conventional medicine deems hogwash. I quoted Whitman, who used that phrase in Leaves of Grass. He believed the body was part of the soul. Here part of what I wrote (referencing acupuncture and other "magical" alternative healing modalities) :
"The American poet Walt Whitman surely knew something about this too. He wrote "I Sing The Body Electric" for his epic 1855 collection, Leaves of Grass. It is divided into nine sections that each celebrate the body and human physicality. It also seems to equate the physical body with the soul. The final section begins with the lines:
'O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and that they are the soul.)' "
I love this so much. I am sick of this society, expecting Crones to look as they did in their twenties and thirties. All I know is that I am expanding with the Universe. LOL. Personally, I love having an invisibility cloak at age 71. LOL. I have padding to help my Crone bones if I fall. We need to accept all body types at any age. Curves are valued in other cultures. It breaks my heart when older women talk about the weight of other older women. I think this could be their own body dysmorphia. Venus of Willendorf rocks! Thank you, thank you, thank you, Rob.
Loving this love letter to divine embodiment. Transcendence and embodiment are dance partners. 💜
Your newsletter is always filled with such profound wisdom. I couldn't help but think of Poet Andrea Gibson, who is embodying so much of what you speak of while she is journeying through cancer. Thank you for another beautiful post.
Hi Bob,
I have never written you before, as much as I identify and appreciate your writing about the things I have been talking about my whole life and have always felt like, Ms. Understood! I love this discussion of our bodies! How appropriate as I am facing a critical time in my breast cancer treatment. I have doing this late September 2024. I have changed hospitals and doctors until I found the best in Boston. But still, I find that hospitals & doctors do not respect or revere my body for all the good. intelligent, and miraculous things it has done and can do! They think they know more about my cancer, but actually very little about the good health of my body for all these years! I have been subjected to health care as a business that is all about money and scheduling as many procedures as possible. I love my body with all of my Soul and know this incarnation is key to it's evolution. I wish more respect was paid to Our Amazing Bodies!
I love your writing and your perspective and I have for many years since you’re astrology is in the back of the Austin chronicle. I have to say I wrote a song using a line from one of the recent ones in the past year that you wrote. It was about using our rage to show compassion. I was having an astrology reading with your wife and I told her about that. I hope she is well and thank you for what you do.
The message in this week’s newsletter perfectly articulates & validates my love and amazement of being in this body. The ecstasy of movement, stretching, dance…love-making, eating, sleeping…and occasional pain & discomfort to provide comparison, is why we immediately want to go back and “do it again”, it drives us to reincarnate over and over again. I’m particularly fond of this lifetime with a very curious and willing body and adventuresome mind. I only really allowed my full enjoyment after years of work shedding the “I’m not worthy” bologna! Thank you for reinforcing this truth!
My Body, My Temple, where I receive the Divine and become the oracle......a both/and.......cleaning the temple with somatic practices and cognitive processes facilitates the Truth and Beauty you so delightfully encourage.
This is so interesting and timely. I have a group of coaches I meet with regularly, who had decided to read A New Earth (which I had read a good 15+ years ago. After reading the chapter on tthe Pain Body, I both remembered how it was enlightening in providing some space between awareness and what arose and was painful. However sense, I've immersed myself in Somatic Integration work, cultivating my connection with my own beloved body as consciousness, wisdom, intelligence and information. in-form-ation. I brought this up to the group..."what about the body?" Knowing at this time in my life that connection and relationship with it is so necessary when healing trauma. Several others concurred. And, as life would have it, it, your posts lands in my mailbox.
WOW, Poet! Beautiful, powerful, insightful words and images. “Partners in the Dance” indeed. THANK YOU! 🌟
I love this!
Thank you, Rob, for the extraordinary forwarding piece before this week’s astrology readings!
Your dream conversation with Mr. Tolle, I found deeply resonant, and get from it to focus on both human and being parts of (who) I am - aiming in my awareness for their growing mutual, respectful acknowledgment and integration!
For me it’s also about the ongoing transition from 3-D to 5-D consciousness (which you’ve written about for years) and thru this gift of my body, honoring it by right living as a daily reminder to “be here now”!