There’s something peculiar going on with us human beings. Some would call it an evolutionary misstep, others would call it a necessary springboard to higher states of consciousness.

What am I talking about?

Self-awareness of course.

We’re self-aware in ways and degrees which other animals are not, at least as far as we know.

Additionally, we have this peculiar feature of consciousness called reason or mind in which we can form images or mental representations of the world, whether they be verbal or sense-based, in the privacy of our own heads.

This defining feature brings with it certain pros and cons.

The pros being that we’re able to visualize, predict and model simple and complex things pertaining to our immediate reality, all of which can be done merely through the medium of thought. This leads to innovation, problem-solving, knowledge and a certain degree of understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

The cons of having a mind, is that we can get too preoccupied with this constant abstractification of the world, which in turn can lead to difficulties separating our mental representations of the world with the real world itself.

In these cases, when the mind turns mildly neurotic, it might hit you that you’d like to be free from this nonsense.

That said, in this article we’ll focus on the potential conscious merging of the mind with the physical body, we do this mainly as a means and method to alleviate redundant mental chatter, noise and imagery that might preoccupy your mind.

3 ways to merge mind with body

1. Cultivate conscious awareness of yourself as one living organism

The number one way is to cultivate conscious awareness of yourself as you are. Which simply means to start viewing yourself as one totality instead of fragmented pieces, parts and objects scattered in time and place. Thoughts in their nature are fragmented mental objects that appear and disappear. The mind is nothing but a puzzle of these fragmented mental objects that sometimes come together to create certain sensible patterns.

By cultivating conscious awareness of yourself as one physical organism, the blood flowing, heart beating, lungs breathing, eyes seeing, nose smelling, ears hearing, mouth tasting, skin feeling, you shift and train your attention to focus on what is immediate and direct.

The body is always here and now, and by directing your mental faculties to the physical body, you or the psychological mind as a separate self which it takes itself to be, can merge in this here and nowness.

This can lead to you being aware of the mental activity as just another feature of your biology like the breath, heartbeat etc. When this happens then you’ve definitely made some progress in uniting the two seeming separate realms.

2. Pay attention to your breathing

Breathing happens by itself yet can be manipulated through your sense of will. Breathing is essential to life, more than water, food and just about anything else.

By resting your awareness and attention on your breathing, you effectively lull the mind to merge with the natural workings of the body. However, the psychological monkey-mind does not want to be lulled to immersion, and that is why it’s so difficult to keep your awareness on your breath without thinking about something else.

There is a reason why one of the main methods used by the Buddha to reach nirvana was awareness of breath, vipassana. Some buddhists proclaimed that if you could be aware of your breath for one hour straight without thinking about anything else, well then that would be the evidence of your spiritual enlightenment and your mind would be merged with the natural workings of the body.

3. Realize deeply that the mind is the body, and the body is the mind.

Many of us think that mind and body are two separate realms, two realms that affect eachother yet are somehow distinctly separate. I maintain that this dualistic perspective, which has a long history in philosophy, only seems or feels real because of our innate power to believe things into “reality”.

From my own experience, understanding everything as one totality which inevitably includes your mind and body is a much more authentic and truthful perspective.

This “totality” can readily be seen from the perspective of consciousness, since everything you know and experience occurs in consciousness. If you then anchor yourself in this “absolute subjective” perspective then you gradually become somewhat free from this duality, and when the duality is overcome, the mind and body are seen as the same, or two sides of the same coin. You then also realize that their separateness was merely an illusion or a dream of the mind that merely tricked you into believing that they are separate.

To allow for this realization and to anchor yourself in consciousness, you’ll just have to stop what you’re doing and just look within from time to time. You can either go at it by simply paying attention to thoughts and feelings just as any other physical sensation or you can also now that everything functions by itself and through itself. There’s just life happening, and you are this life! Know this deeply!

Blessings,
Seeker