Blending

So, one of the coolest findings in my palm reading with MR was this star kinda halfway between the outside of my palm and my life line. MR pointed it out on my left hand but I can see one on my right hand, too. MR called it a "blending" star, because it was situated between spirit and body and she suggested it may be part of my life's work since stars symbolize a point of intense energy and light. I've been thinking about that idea quite a bit since the reading. Here are some of my thoughts:

Perhaps one manifestation of the blending star is my simultaneous fascination with the physical aspects of mind/body (like the actual physical workings of the brain and those pesky molecules of emotion) and with the transcendent/spiritual knowing that seems to come from both outside and within you at the same time. I love to learn how emotions have a physical root and also think emotions are clues to a wider reality (like intuition, precognition, etc). It's taken me a long time to realize that emotions are embodies - not just charged thoughts. Actually feeling emotion in my body has been a revelation to me.

Perhaps the star is an indication of how my intuitive knowing often manifests as a physical knowing. For example, I often feel pulled to a particular place, like there's a compass in my body pointing in a particular direction. If I am giving someone a massage, my hands feel pulled toward tender spots. I have often felt a pull to go down a particular aisle at the store, where I have found something I needed but had not put on the list (this happened just tonight actually). I have felt a pull to go down a particular road, then months later realized my familiarity with that particular road was crucial. My eyes are drawn to correct answers on tests and my hands feel a pull toward the right answer. My hands feel the tarot card I want to look at in readings. My innate sense of direction is very tied to this physical manifestation of intuition.

I'm not sure if anything is non-physical, that is, outside the realm of molecules and atoms. I believe that there is a knower, a choser, that is me, that is an actual thing and that thing has been me since there was anything. I am profoundly influenced by the LDS idea that each of us is, at base, an "intelligence," something that has always existed and will always exist. Orson Scott Card named the "intelligence" an "aiua" in the later Ender books. When I read this little bit from Xenocide, it connected to me in a deep way:

 I think that we are free, and I don't think it's just an illusion that we believe in because it has survival value. And I think we're free because we aren't just this body, acting out a genetic script. And we aren't some soul that God created out of nothing. We're free because we always existed. Right back from the beginning of time, only there was no beginning of time so we existed all along. Nothing ever caused us. Nothing ever made us. We simply are, and we always were. p. 386, 1991 paperback.

Yet, even if we have always existed, our aiuas/intelligences/spirits are powerfully influenced by our bodily experience. How we know things fundamentally changes depending on the particular chemical/hormonal balance in our bodies in any given moment as well as how our childhood experiences shaped the unique neural nets of our brains. Our experiences and worlds shift in meaning and experience with each subtle body change - for example, my skin color, gender, and size have all profoundly shaped my understanding of the world around me. And at a simpler, most basic level, I know that, for myself, my choices are profoundly influenced by things as simple as hunger, thirst, tiredness. I think better, act better, make better/kinder/more loving choices when I am well fed, well rested. I'm a nicer person when my body feels good.

So, I believe on a deep level that "I" am something different than the body "I" live in. Yet my body is also me and I feel on the same deep level that this is the body "I" chose. Blended and blending.