Body and soul is the topic. Next to my bed is every book written by Thomas Moore, James Hillman, Alice Bailey and Carl Jung. Soul as keeper of the Mysteries, as opponent of the personality, as archetypal shaping force, soul as proof of God/dess, soul as transcendent influence throughout eternity… Night after night I’ve been feeding the fires of my inspiration… I’ve been courting my muse for months, yet nothing has surfaced. In the bathroom, my daily meditation calendar suggested that body is experienced while awake, and soul while asleep. I noodled this about for a week or so… seemed like a good starting place to me… and yet again – nothing. Eventually I began to consider defeat, maybe I can’t speak to this topic, maybe there are no words for me.
I got honest with myself. Granted, I am a writer. However, I am going through a divorce, and the disintegration of my house and friends and finances. This does not leave me at my finest when I sit down to my computer late at night in my little one room efficiency. This does not inspire confidence. And so I surrendered to the possibility that perhaps, for now, I could not be terribly effective with words on paper. So many other ways of defining myself, as “wife, friend, financially safe, potential mother”, these ways were gone, and maybe “writer” was gone too. The idea made me very sad, a state I’ve been spending a lot of time in these days.
So I took my sad self to get my hair done last Saturday. I’m a therapist among other things, and I preach “fake it till you make it” at the top of my lungs with my clients. So I knew that a haircut, and a new color, was just what I needed to fake being ok, until I could really feel ok. I took my journal, as I knew I’d wait both in the waiting room, and again under the dryer with my new color. Sure enough, I waited in both places, and jotted down general and random thoughts.
While under the dryer, a new and empowered color baking into my hair, a color that would somehow propel me through the entire divorce and the loss of my friends and the financial challenges and all the fear and sadness, a SUPER color in other words, my hair-guy brought me a cup of coffee. It was good coffee, maybe French Roast, and had the vanilla international cream in it. He handed it to me with an “I’ll be back to check on you in a few…”
Now this is not an earth shattering event – a cup of coffee under a dryer. Yet given my situation, it was honestly one of the most unconditionally nurturing acts of kindness I’d received in weeks. He didn’t see the tears in my eyes as he walked away, I hid behind the current issue of George magazine. After he left, I analyzed my own tears. “What’s up Betz?” I asked myself, and journaled my reply.
It had to do with the coffee.
For several years now, I’ve kept a “soulful moments” log. I got the idea from Thomas Moore, who suggests that the soul will reveal itself through small and personal captivations, like a preference for Converse high tops, or blue ink pens, or black jack gum. I used to write my moments down each night before bed, but now I do them in my head, as a part of my gratitude prayers. I try to acknowledge 10 moments throughout the day that were soulful. I define a soulful moment as one which helps me capture a piece of my true essence, a moment of my capital T Truth, a knowing of my immortal being, or a feeling of peace, safety or joy. As I’ve been doing it for years, I’ve come to hate it when I can’t find 10 at the end of they day, and this has trained me to look for the moments as I go about my business. I collect them here and there, so that I’ll for sure have 10 at bedtime. Having participated in this same ritual over a thousand times, I’ve noticed that some moments make the list over and over. One of the most frequently cited soulful moments in my life is a cup of coffee.
Now it’s not lost on me that the body is a necessary part of experiencing the soul. When I take my first drink of coffee each morning, I really take my first drink of coffee. I hold the cup and feel the warmth. Then I inhale the smell of the roasted beans. Lastly, I take my first sip. I taste the explosion on my tongue, then feel the warmth travel down my throat and fill my stomach. The first hints of caffeine hit my bloodstream, I begin to wake up, and I salute the day.
I do this every morning of my life, come rain or shine. I have friends who call themselves “caffeine addicts”, and as a psychologist I acknowledge that this is a bona fide diagnosis. But I will not go there with myself and my soulful moment. For me, it is a small meditation. I use my body to experience my soul. My soul speaks to me through the daily ritual of coffee. It says, “I value ritual. I value warmth. I value richness and depth. I value being awake for my life. I value taking time for myself. I value nurturing myself. I value sharing with friends.” All of this comes from my 10 minute cup of coffee each morning. It is the equivalent of tea in England – not just a beverage, but a philosophy.
I shared this idea with my friend who is a guitar player, and he said the same is true for him and his guitar. The music he composes expresses his soul, but his body needs the instrument. In other words, he uses his body to express his soul. I began to look around for other examples and found no shortage. I started to make a list, thinking I could write about each modality. I listed the obvious first: musicians, artists, writers, athletes, spiritual leaders…. but then I realized that I could choose any profession, any philosophy, and what I would see was people using their bodies to express their souls.
From that thought it was just a hop and a skip to the realization that we are all just souls walking around in bodies. We have the choice to respond to one, the other, or both in our daily rounds. I toyed with this idea as I walked through a week or so. I let myself be surrounded with souls. I watched how they showed me their capital T True selves using their bodies. I watched how my body helped my explore my soul – largely through my 5 bodily senses. Eventually I came to the conclusion that they depend on one another to exist much as the yin and yang, the light and dark… there can be no knowing of one without the other.
I took my ragged journal, and the thoughts I captured under the dryer, and I promised myself I would only work on this article in the mornings, when I had my first cup of soul-coffee at the computer with me. And so it has been, that this article has written itself cup by cup. It has come through the soul, into the body, and then onto the page. As I bring it to its completion, I see that it was born, and nurtured by coffee. And I realize that the Universe offers free refills. I just need to show up with my empty cup and my gratitude. This realization will be number one on my list tonight, and my morning coffee will be number two. I’m certain the partnership of body and soul will help me capture the rest of the list.
Betz King is a psychotherapist, bard, spiritual minister, reiki practitioner, humanistic journalist and Priestess of the Western Mystery Tradition. She drinks coffee in Berkley Michigan.