Reimagining Flesh and Spirit When the Two Become One

 For as long as humanity has been able to articulate its longings, it has been trying to escape its own skin. Nearly every religion that has endured—from the ancient Vedic hymns to the desert fathers, from Buddhist monks to medieval Christian theologians—has, in some way, elevated “spirit” and politely (or not so politely) pushed “flesh” aside. Flesh became suspect. Spirit became pure. Flesh was called weak, fallen, distracting; spirit was hailed as eternal, untainted, and ultimately real. And yet, the older I get, the more I recognize a profound flaw in this inherited dualism. The flesh is not some unfortunate garment forced upon the soul. It is not a lesser substance waiting to be sloughed off at death like a snake shedding worn-out skin. Instead, I have come to see flesh and spirit as complementary modes of experience—two ways through which the divine explores itself within creation. And I am convinced that the goal was never escape, but integration. Never rejection, but a marriage.

I find myself stepping back from the long lineage of theological frameworks that subtly (or bluntly) pit spirit against flesh. Even in Christianity—especially in Christianity—this divide runs deep. Much of it stems from a literalistic reading of Paul, as though “flesh” in his writings referred to skin, bones, and bodies, rather than egoic consciousness caught in forgetfulness. And because of these misunderstandings, Christianity inherited a nervousness about the body, sexuality, pleasure, sensation, emotions, and just about anything that makes us embodied creatures. But what if Paul wasn’t the enemy of flesh at all? What if he was speaking of something entirely different, and the Church fathers—shaped by Plato more than by Jesus—cast his words into a rigid dualism he never intended? What if “flesh” in Paul didn’t mean “your body is evil,” but rather “your false sense of separateness,” and “spirit” meant “your awakened identity as part of the divine”? Suddenly the whole equation changes. The conflict is not between spirit and skin—it is between remembrance and forgetfulness, between awakened consciousness and the illusion of isolation. And if this is the case, then flesh is not the problem. In fact, flesh becomes the very arena in which awakening happens.

This is why the Gospel of Thomas resonates so deeply with me. Unlike the later doctrinal structures built around dualism, Thomas preserves Jesus as a wisdom teacher who directly confronts the illusion of separation. His words are not about escaping the body but about bringing the divided self back into unity. When Jesus says, “When you make the two one… then you will enter the Kingdom,” he is naming the very process I have come to believe lies at the heart of spiritual transformation. Thomas expands this integration into multiple dimensions: making the inside like the outside, the above like the below, and even making male and female into a single one. This is not about erasing embodiment but healing fragmentation. It is the same teaching repeated in several sayings: “If two make peace with each other in this one house…” and “When you make the two one, you will become children of humanity.” These are invitations to an inner reconciliation—what I would call the marriage of flesh and spirit. Even though Thomas does not explicitly say “make the three one,” the layers in Saying 22 imply a triple integration: personal, cosmic, and embodied. That is, the self, the universe, and the body all participating in one unified consciousness. Thomas presents a Jesus who understands the human being as the meeting point of heaven and earth, not the battlefield between them.

This recognition that Jesus taught union rather than dualism reshapes how I see my own body—not as temporary scaffolding but as a sacred instrument. It reshapes how I view aging—not as decay but as transformation, a shift in the way consciousness expresses itself through flesh. It reshapes how I understand suffering—not as punishment but as part of the polarity through which soul learns compassion, empathy, patience, and the full range of human experience. And it reshapes how I view death, not as the abandoning of flesh but as a transition into another mode of perception. The flesh is not a problem to be solved. It is a lens. Spirit sees the whole; flesh sees a fragment. And that fragment, with all its limitations, becomes the microcosm through which the macrocosm examines itself.

Imagine, for a moment, the polarity of love and grief. Only embodied beings can feel grief the way we do. Only those with nervous systems, hormones, heartbeats, and memories shaped by time can experience love with such intensity that it breaks and heals simultaneously. If divine consciousness wanted to taste this, it could not do so in pure spirit. It needed flesh. This is why the mystics who embrace embodiment speak to me so deeply. Taoism teaches that the body is the vessel of the Tao. Tantra teaches that flesh is Shakti, the dynamic energy of consciousness. Hermeticism teaches that humanity is a cosmic hybrid, a child of the stars and the earth. Kabbalah teaches that matter is divine light in contraction, waiting to be liberated. Even the more esoteric Christian traditions—Valentinian, Johannine, and certain strands of early mysticism—teach that salvation is not escape but awakening within embodiment.

The more I explore these traditions, the clearer it becomes that my own evolving perspective stands in a line of ancient wisdom, one that was overshadowed by dualism but never extinguished. I see flesh and spirit as two vehicles through which infinite potential experiences itself. One is dense, tactile, sensory—the world of form and polarity. The other is subtle, expansive, formless—the world of pure being. But they are not strangers. They are lovers. And the human being is their meeting place. This realization transforms the very meaning of incarnation. It reframes Christ himself. Jesus does not come as a spirit trapped in flesh; he comes as the embodiment of unity. His transfiguration is not the denial of the body but the revelation of what the body becomes when spirit fully shines through it.

I reject the idea that we must escape flesh to find God. Instead, I believe we discover God in and through our embodied experience. Every sensation becomes part of the divine dialogue. Every breath is the ongoing marriage of spirit and matter. Every moment of awakening is spirit remembering itself in flesh, and every moment of compassion is flesh responding to spirit. This is the heart of the Thomasine insight: the Kingdom is not elsewhere. It appears when the two—or the three—become one.

When Jesus says, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you," he is describing this process of integration. What is “within” is spirit. What must bring it forth is flesh. Together they form the fullness of what it means to be human. We are not here to flee the body but to reveal the divine through it—not by rejecting our humanity but by sanctifying it. This is the ancient, forgotten teaching: that the human being is the intersection of heaven and earth, and that our task is not ascetic withdrawal but conscious embodiment.

This is why I believe the marriage of flesh and spirit is the true purpose of our existence. This is the work of awakening, the culmination of mysticism, and the heart of Jesus’ teaching in the Gospel of Thomas. To be fully human is to inhabit both dimensions—matter and consciousness—as one unified being. It is to become “a single one,” as Thomas says. It is to live as the harmony of flesh and spirit, two expressions of the same eternal presence, fully joined in one unfolding life.