Gravity is a Burden

Picture Credit: Lakshmi Ambady

“Your body and mind are just accumulations that you have gathered.  What you accumulate can be yours, but it can never be you.” Sadhguru jaggi Vasudev. 

Your body has weight. You do not. Let’s unfold this biologically, psychologically and spiritually.

The body is matter. It has mass, density, volume and gravity acting on it. Physics can measure it. A scale can quantify it. We have millions of chemical reactions happening in the body every second. Right from your cells to your hair strands to your blood to your bones. Reactions are occurring at the atomic and molecular level in each minuscule point of your body. Your muscles contract under load. Bones bear force. Fascia distributes tension, and blood succumbs to pressure changes. Your body literally lives inside the field of gravity. We are the twists, turns, wisps, knots, buds of space itself. The body is a biological structure that occupies a place in spacetime. We are made up of carbon, calcium, iron, hydrogen oxygen nitrogen, potassium, magnesium…the same elements as stars. Different combinations of these elements give rise to different body structures like organs, lymph, blood, bones, skin. We are extremely heavy creatures. We carry the burden of gravity. We are dense creatures.

Mother Nature is generous with man. She has given us the gift of being aware. Hence, we are also extremely cognizant beings. So, does this awareness have a weight? A mass? A smell? A boundary? As beings of experience, that experience has no weight. You can feel the weight of your body. But can you feel the weight of your awareness? Of your perceptual prowess? When we refer to ourselves as “I”, what is it that we refer to? Awareness? Consciousness? A sense of being? A witness behind sensations? A chassis? Are we able to feel the weight of this awareness? No. we cannot.

We cannot place consciousness on a scale. The mass of thought cannot be measured. Memory cannot be weighed. So, neurologically even though neurons fire, electrical impulses transverse and neurotransmitters cross synapses- all simple activities of the brain, that experience of being, the felt sense of “I am” has no measurable weight. Our brains have mass- about 1.5 kgs but the mind does not.

From a scientific angle, our sense of self arises from dynamic neural networks in the pre-frontal cortex part of the brain. The nuance here is that these networks only create representation. They do not create substances. What we call “self” is a process and not an object. Processes are patterns of activity. They do not weigh. Hence, we are patterns moving through the tissues of the body. We are moving in space through the burden of the gravitational force.

But what does this have to do with trauma? Every trauma carries a weight. Depression is like an anchor. Grief is exhausting. Shame feels too much to handle. Anger feels like a bomb. Fear feels like an implosion. The body can feel heavy because the heaviness is in sensation. But the awareness that notices this heaviness is untouched by it.  And this distinction is subtle but at the same time also powerful. Our bodies may carry history, but our awareness can only witness that history. Matter has weight. Consciousness does not. Even when the body ages, weakens or collapses into dream or sleep, awareness is unbound by gravity. Because you are that field of space in which heaviness appears. Try a tiny test-

Close your eyes for a few moments. Sit comfortably on a sofa. Allow your body to sink it. Allow the pelvis to clasp the seat. Allow the back to stick to the back of the sofa. Feel your feet on the ground. Get a felt sense of your shoulders, arms and hands. Notice your breath and the sense of the air going through the nose and coming out. Feel the weight of your body on the sofa. Tune into the body sensations.

Now ask yourself silently- even though I can feel my body on the sofa but does the awareness of these sensations have weight? Is gravity a burden for this awareness?  Or does my awareness carry the burden of gravity?

You may feel something subtle- spacious and borderless.

Did you realize? The body is located in space. But your awareness also contains space.

Were you able to weigh your thoughts? Like you felt the weight of the body on the sofa?

Analyze and see what comes up for you…

Coming back to trauma, when you believe you are heavy, you carry identity like a burden. That is when gravity also becomes a burden. But when you see that it is only the body that is heavy like in the above experiment, something in you will relax and you will stop confusing identity with sensation. And here is when depression will become a state, anger will be fleeting moments of expression and trauma becomes history. The body might belong to gravity, but you start to belong to something bigger. This blog is not meant to glorify transcendence. This is to acknowledge that it is the burden of gravity which allows the awareness of presence. We as human beings came here to land. We have not come here to float. Eventually even a mystic must sit. Even an enlightened one must walk. Even a yogi must bend forward and touch the earth. Gravity is a burden, yes, but it is also a promise:

That you are here.

That you are real.

That your presence matters enough to have weight. 

And that, just a simple awareness of these facts is the most spiritual truth of all.

“When you truly Experience Yourself beyond the limitations of the body and mind, there shall be no fear.”-Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev.