Anorexia of the Spirit

A very unpopular topic for most people is death.

We are so loathe to face it that we spend ungodly amounts of time and money fighting it — by creating an incredibly unrealistic obsession with preserving and strengthening our bodies. In America, it seems that the entire culture is devoted to human "forms" . . . making them beautiful, thin, healthy, and eternally youthful — despite the inevitable and irrevocable truth of their ultimate decay and demise.

Nevertheless, overall, we don't have a problem with the demise of other animal forms. Most of us eat meat and even, occasionally, run over squirrels that dare to cross our paths while we are driving. Many of us respond by feeling bad for a short period of time, we may say a prayer — we may even try periods of vegetarianism or fasting — but the truth is that our culture puts a far higher value on the "form" of the human animal.

Does this make any sense, overall, in a "Christian" culture? Jesus Christ made it quite clear that it was not His "form" that brought His true presence or *any* kind of salvation into the world. We sit in church, weekly, hearing about how He lives within us . . . that He was "resurrected" and lives eternally. We study constantly about how we, too, have inherited this destiny, regardless of our "works." With a slight broadening of ideas, we learn about reincarnation — a concept that was part of the canon of the Catholic church for many of the early years of Christianity and is the backbone of Eastern thought. And yet, still, we are so engrossed in the culture of "body" that we allow ourselves to hate a body that isn't *beautiful* according to some marketing ideal. Some of us even seek to starve it, exercise it, or otherwise mutilate it with cosmetic surgery, until it is "perfect" and finally deserving of love.

To me, this only serves to bring a sad and poisonous version of self-hate into existence . . . which infects our view of ourselves, distorts how we see others, and generally creates falseness and division between people who should be looking for ways to love one another. Instead, we measure our worth by how we look to the world, and judge others for "failings" that we sense in ourselves. All of this in an attempt to cheat death, somehow . . . ??? As if *hate* will bring redemption on *any* level??? This makes absolutely no sense to me.

I find solace in the works of the spiritual masters . . . who find the topic of death almost funny. Meher Baba says, in Discourses:

When a loved one dies, there is sorrow and loneliness; but this sense of loss is rooted in attachment to the form independently of the soul. It is the form that has vanished, not the soul. The soul is not dead; Taking as important the unimportant emotions, and thoughts in its true nature it has not even gone away, for it is everywhere. Nonetheless, through attachment to the body, the form was considered important. All longings, desires, were centered upon the form; and when through death the form disappears, there is a vacuum, which expresses itself through missing the departed one. If the form as such had not come to be surcharged with false importance, there would be no sorrow in missing the one who has passed away. The feeling of loneliness, the lingering memory of the beloved, the longing that he or she should still be present, the tears of bereavement, and the sighs of separation — they are all due to false valuation, the working of Maya. When an unimportant thing is regarded as important, we have one principal manifestation of the working of Maya. From the spiritual point of view it is a form of ignorance.

There is much written about finding the "unimportant" things in life important. Every philosopher has his own version of what is important and what is silly to worry about. In fact, there are coaches, personal trainers, diet gurus, cosmetic surgeons, and fashion mavens who will tell you exactly what *they* find to be important . . . and many of them would disagree with me heartily on the subject of the body. All I can say to that is . . . show me, friends, exactly *how* you intend to take this body with you after death and perhaps I will start listening a little more carefully.