philosophical disembodiment

i often find it strange that we have been given physical bodies. and even more strange is the idea that we interact with one another with these things as our sole focal point when the connection between our physicality and our self is not so apparent (at least to me...at least this morning).

i've been told that God looks at us and sees not flesh and bone but the heart (here "heart" is not an organ but a definition of self). it also seems that it would be useful to see others the way that God sees them. however when i look on another person, i see physical form and gesture and hear words. i do not see the "heart."

perhaps the most obvious window into what God sees in others is how we view ourselves. our self perspective is mental and emotional and about passion and intention. even our views on the physical are "views", internalized thoughts, emotions and beliefs.

the physicality we each embody is some strange tool that simultaneously binds us to this world and allows us to interact with it and within it. the connection is sort of just an open port though because this world is also able to interact with us. even if we say that we are not our bodies, what happens to this body affects in real ways who we are. when we, the true selves buried in the flesh, want to communicate or interact we use these bodies to produce sound, to gesture and point, to produce facial "expression." to communicate more powerfully we act on the body of another, a punch, hug, or kiss, which somehow has the ability to communicate what many words or all the gestures in the world could not.

i sometimes struggle to delineate the self from the tool and to understand the distinction between "tool" and "self-extension." today the connection between self and physicality just seems tenuous at best which is not morbid in this case just bizarre.