“Postmodernity has had a grievous effect on our awareness of our metaphysical nature. It has wounded our spiritual boundaries. The proliferation of constructed images and experiences has caused us to place all our belief in the copy, not the original; in the mask, not the essence. The postmodern soul has lost its awareness of its unique material reciprocity with the sacred Macrocosm. It is not as if we don’t understand that life is lived through our bodies. But similar to the individual wounded by psychological dysfunction, we may hold the spiritual belief that the material body has nothing of the metaphysical presence of the Divine in it. Like the individual who lives a heady, disembodied existence, the rest of us live lives that do not flow between body, mind, and soul.

“Dualism has permeated our consciousness. In the West in particular, we have not only separated the physical body from the thinking mind, but we have also elevated rational intellect above intuitive knowledge that resides in part, in our bodily instincts. Yet we are a society obsessed with the body. Obesity and thinness both are the shadows of our dualistic separation and denigration of the body and it’s instinctual and intuitive life apart from the rational mind. With our modern sensibilities and scientific knowledge, we no longer know the miracle of the human body. When we suture the split between our bodies, our minds, and our souls, however, we will begin to remember both our unique human being-ness and our soul’s connectedness with the ultimate Essence.” Pierrete Stukes, Healing the Postmodern Soul