faces, just as we learn to “bless ourselves” with the sign of the cross, and how
anointing people with smoldering sage was almost exactly what we did with
incense at our Catholic High Masses. All these practices have one thing in
common: they are acted out, mimed, embodied expressions of spirit. The soul
remembers them at an almost preconscious level because they are lodged in our
muscle memory and make a visual impact. The later forms of rational
Protestantism had a hard time understanding this.
So let’s try a practice leading to embodied knowing. I discovered an especially
good one in The Book of Privy Counseling, a lesser-known classic written by
the author of The Cloud of Unknowing. I especially like this practice because it
is so simple, and for me so effective, even in the middle of the night when I
awake and cannot get back to sleep during what some call the “hour of the
wolf,” between 3:00 and 6:00 a.m. when the psyche is most undefended. (Others
simply call it “insomnia”!) I warn you: this pattern gets worse as you grow older,
so you will do yourself a favor to learn the following practice early! I have
summarized the author’s exact words for our very practical purpose here. This is
my paraphrase: