It is said that we are created in the image of God, a material reflection of an immaterial reality. At the base of our capacity to have a radically different experience and spiritual potential than animals is the distinguishing aspect of our upright structure. By contrast, for animals down on all fours, there’s a front end and a back end, they’re pinned to the ground – that is their turf and limitation. In the forefront of their consciousness is watching very closely what’s around them, where is food, where is danger. This is not a cosmic consciousness down here! For that, it would take being upright as we are.
Coming up off all fours was a massive change evolutionarily. It’s a completely different world up here. Suddenly, we are face to face with space, the invisible, and a wide view of things of which we are a part. We are in a position to scan, see, notice, and to understand our larger relationship to the outer world from a wider perspective than the narrow scope and orientation of an animal. We can fully partake of a world and the nature of a world that has things in it and opportunities available that have little to do with our survival needs, which opened the door to man’s aesthetic appreciation and man’s quest for meaning. What’s this all about that I see? What are we here to do? A uniquely human question that only we get to ask.
We were catapulted toward the heavens and were simultaneously able, at a great distance and resonant depth, to feel our feet firmly planted on the earth. We were suddenly free in eternity of the infrontness and behindness of four legs, the linear flow of time past and time present. We could stand enough outside of time to not merely be reactive to and lost in the flow of events, but could plan beyond the present and alter the nature of outcomes in time. With our newly enlarged brain, to which so much energy suddenly surged upward, and upright stance, we were in a position to exercise greater volitional control over our powers of attention – to choose what should be the proper use and focus of our attention. The back – there suddenly was a new significance to the back. It gave us the capacity to stand back, to observe, and assess before choosing and acting and to hold back from badly considered impulsive actions. It was no longer a question of things going in one end and out the other, because we could now hold back and regulate outlays of energy and be directive outside the realm of impulses to ends in the future. We now had the capacity to be ourselves first, stand our ground and move from there with authority.
With our newly enlarged brain, our newly freed arms and hands and our newly bared and exposed skin, our actions were no longer fully preprogrammed by instinct, as animals. We were challenged to utilize the inventive faculty of our large brain and our arms and hands to create, on our own scale, in a way comparable to the wonders of the universe, our own world, by altering and manipulating the building blocks found in the natural world around us. Free from the dictates of instinct, and unprogrammed, it became possible through training and practice to wonderfully adapt the body to doing things not immediately apparent in our natural stance and movement patterns.
Our chest and the area of our lungs and heart, so basic to our capacity to deeply feel things, was suddenly very open and exposed, and more directly positioned to be fully impacted by the experience of the present moment and all the forces and energies around us. Our free arms, open and upright chest, enlarged and largely unprogrammed brain, made possible the volitional control of the breath, and the resultant clarity, power, and energetic upsurge and effect on our states that could result from understanding and tapping into this unique phenomenon.
And finally, with the aboveness and clarity of our new position, and the sensitivity and vulnerability of our newly opened chest – we could be both keenly aware of our separateness and otherness from what we see in the external world and simultaneously be so fully impacted by everything as to feel deeply connected and linked – this is the amazing paradox of our humanity.
But much of the time, we don’t know how to take advantage of all this. It’s really scary up here! We’re very exposed, we’ve very vulnerable to the world around us. That’s what comes with openness. What do we do with this life and all these new options we have? We have a tendency to want to shrink back down to the animal world, secure in the limited territory of objects and things and what’s close by – my house, my work, my wife and kids, my possessions. We are not always open to the powers up here and all the incredible opportunities we have. To be truly human, to use this body to its full potential, we have to learn to stand upright and really discover and claim this new world.
What’s the best way to use this body? Is it to go around dejected and drooping and saying “Oh God, I hope I can handle this.” Or am I going to walk out and get in touch with my uprightness, get in touch with the ground, open up my chest, open my eyes, breathe deep and full, contact all the powers that are in me, and get in touch with all the energies out there that I can take in – and stand face to face with the whole universe, feeling the implicit truth of phrases such as “Man is created in the image of God,” “Atman/Brahman” and “Thou are That.”
