No Body Needed

Debra Redalia

Yesterday while I was writing How I Got What I Needed This Morning By Using Cooperation I typed the word nobody.

I looked at it and suddenly realized that the word was “no body.”

I was at my credit union and I had asked for customer service and was told, “nobody is available right now.”

Hmmmm. No body was available. No mention of the mind or spirit, just the body. What if, instead of saying no body was available we said there is no mind available or no spirit available?

But I didn’t want a body to help me. I wanted a person, a spiritual being, to help me because the spirit is the essence of the person. Someone who could perceive and think and solve a problem. But in this culture what we are mostly aware of are bodies, so the word is nobody.

Bodies alone can’t do anything without the mind and the spirit that goes with them to make a living human being. The spirit, through the mind, guides the body.

Interesting that in our body-oriented culture that people are referred to as bodies even in our language.

Technically, I supposed, she should have said, “There’s no spirit-mind-body to help you,” but that’s a bit awkward.

This morning I was noticing how many people I interact with in ways that don’t involve their body being there at all. I read what they write, I watch a video or television, I talk on the phone. And what I get is thoughts and feelings, information, ideas, pictures, but it doesn’t require their body to be there to receive these other aspects of them. Conversely, often a body can be present and these other aspects aren’t.

So bodies really aren’t needed to be present to communicate or create, though I think they are rather nice to have around.