BELLY

Once upon a time there was a well-known story in the Western world that captured the imagination and stirred hot debate as to its veracity: Jonah in the belly of the whale. Putting aside whether you are familiar with it or what you typically think of it, what we are about to do is dive into the imagery of the story and embark on a psychological exploration of the Belly.

In order to understand the Belly, we need to know the story, so here is a quick recap.* Jonah is an Israelite who has a special connection with the divine. Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrian empire, has gone haywire manifesting more evil than good and is hurling towards destruction. God extends an invitation to Jonah to go to Nineveh and wake them up, let them know they have options, they can turn their ship around before it is too late. Instead, a terrified Jonah hops on his own ship taking him to the edge of the then-known world. During a great storm at his own insistence he is reluctantly thrown overboard by his fellow sailors as the perceived, self-confessed culprit of the great calamity. Then, very oddly, he finds himself in the belly of a whale. There he spends three days and nights after which the whale releases him and off he goes to Nineveh. Jonah relays the message to the Ninevites and to his utter amazement, they turn their ship around and Good manifests as a result.

What happens in the Belly is a significant piece of this story’s puzzle. It is smack in the middle of the ‘before’ and ‘after’, so the question is: how does one go from running, hiding and fearing to facing one’s Everest head on and succeeding? What is it that enables this transformation? Something happens in the Belly, but what? We briefly touched on this in the Bridge – it is Jonah’s Crossing Over, his Nietzschean Übergang and Untergang .** The Belly is our undoing and remaking. The Belly seems to me to be a universal truth, the blueprint of a transformative, mysterious and significant experience in our journey to become our whole Self. But why return to this topic (as though we had exhausted it already)? We return to uncover more of its contours and features. No matter where you live on this globe, how you put bread on the table or which book is on your nightstand, this is essential if we are to grow on our individual journeys.

So what is the Belly? It is the dark depths of the sea, far, far from the surface. That is where it all happens. That’s where mystery resides, where the Ineffable, Inexplicable, Indescribable and virtually Unthinkable happens. There, there are no friends, no family, no blood, no connections, there is just you, your core, bare, deconstructed to the uttermost. Once the deconstruction has happened, when you have felt it with all of your fragmented self, then you begin to be remade, there in that Belly.

It is a struggle to accept, embrace and allow our undoing. We kick and scream and oppose the process, it hurts, makes no sense, what is this falling apart, what is this deconstruction into nothingness. But therein lies the paradoxical invitation – to trust and let go, to let it wash over you, to allow your undoing as you exhale. Let go of your control, your worries, your fears, let go of your ‘what ifs’, your ‘I wishs’, your ‘I can’t live withouts’. That is when your roots are finally exposed and there they glisten in that darkest of depths of the Unknown.

You are remade in the Belly, the Womb of Reality. You are reconstituted with the best of who you are, because only that remains. You are the gold refined in fire; all silver and no dross. You have paid the ultimate price – your death, for your life.

As mysterious is the making of a child in its mother’s womb, so is your remaking as divine hands begin to reassemble you. It is quiet, not a shuffle is heard, not a murmur, not a rustle. It is stealth and subtle. It is the still, small voice after the fiery tempest. It is the lingering sound of the orchestra after they have just stopped playing their last chord. It is Invisible Beauty. It cannot fully be felt as it happens because it is in many ways undetectable. It can only be fully appreciated, heard in hindsight, when rewound. After ‘three days’ of this shattering experience that forever changes us, we emerge, different. Not in an obvious way, but in a fundamental way. It is as though the building blocks of our DNA have been reassembled, A-D-G-T but in a different order. Same notes, different melody.

How are we to convey what happens in the Belly? How does one describe the Indescribable? Partially, insufficiently and imperfectly, but that is all we can do. It is an ongoing process of taking hold of the metaphysical and like clay, moulding it into words and concepts in an attempt to show others a story, perhaps the story: the story of our wondrous Making, our Becoming.

And what is the purpose of our Belly, you may ask, of all this? Why bother reflecting, questioning, being challenged and uncomfortable? Why deviate from your well-oiled crusty routines? Why venture into the storm when it is so cosy inside? What is the purpose of the Belly? To become who we could be, to become whole. Yes, but beyond being whole (wonderful as that is), what is the purpose? It is to go into our Ninevehs and do what we could not do before, be who we were unable to be before. It is to tip the scales in favour of the Good in the world. It is to be in such a way that transforms our surroundings, to be a domino that causes entire cities and nations to fall differently than would otherwise be the case. To cause rivers to change their course. To move mountains. To be a kind of person. And what kind of person is that?

A person who has been to their Belly is deeply, intimately and harmoniously woven into Reality itself. Like a pure metal, they are of a substance and beauty that has been distilled in the fiery furnace of their suffering. It is a person who is. When they walk into a room, when you talk to them or are simply in their presence, you sense them, you feel their being. They are who they are and they are. They are not shadows nor masks, imitators nor holograms. They are their own manifestation of Reality and there is no other configuration like it. They are a beauty to behold, but not just to behold. If we open ourselves to them, to who we are, with them, in their presence, then we both become changed. And so Reality continues to weave its strands of beauty in unexpected ways.

If you have not yet ventured into the dark depths of your Belly then now is as good a time as any, to break with your stale status quo and begin to reach for who you could become. Maybe you have just lost your job, or started a new one, had a baby, moved countries, ended a relationship, received a difficult diagnosis… Maybe nothing dramatic has happened at all and your daily monotony is eating away at you. Could this be an invitation to plunge into your Belly? How could your unique path of undoing and remaking look, what kind of stories might you live to tell? If, on the other hand, you have already come through your Belly, imagine what it would be like to meet another such fellow traveller, just dare to imagine what could emerge from such an encounter, what creation, what Good. The potential is so great, perhaps infinite, that it simultaneously terrifies and delights. That is a whole new world.

What if this is the greatest of adventures, the highest of purposes – to continually uncover the profound mystery of Beauty in one another, and in doing so, in the Infinite or God, the Transcendent or whatever you choose to name that which extends beyond? Who could you become? What manner of Beauty could you uniquely manifest? To Belly or not to Belly, that just might be the question.

 (c) Belinda É. Samari

* If you are interested you can read the whole story (which is very short) from the actual text.

** In depth psychology and particularly in Jungian terms it is a core component of our process of individuation (or integration), in biblical terms it is the process of rebirth and e.g. its imagery of the seed (cf. John 3:3, 12:24).

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