What I Believe: The Thumotics Manifesto, Part 2

I Believe in Spirit

By spirit, I mean something as natural as our body and mind and everything else in the world.  By the word “spirit”, I mean “that which animates.”  Every living being is spirited; alive.  And spirit is that which makes living beings alive.  

I do not use the word "spirit" to refer to a goddess, god, or any other kind of non-physical being.  I do not mean anything religious, spiritual or metaphysical.  

My understanding of spirit is rooted in the perspective of the Ancient Greeks. The Ancient Greek word for spirit was thumos. To the Ancient Greeks, thumos was a quasi-physical aspect of living beings. In humans, it was located physically in the chest, and lends its name to the thymus gland and the herb thyme.

Thumos was also closely associated with the heart, lungs and breath. Fainting was understood as a temporary loss of thumos. When thumos returned, the one who fainted returned to life. Death was understood as the permanent loss of thumos. Death occurred when the thumos left and did not return to the body.

Part 3 will say more about thumos.

What I Believe: The Thumotics Manifesto, Part 1

Today I begin a multi-part series in which I present what I believe in. I call it the Thumotics Manifesto.

As many great women and men have dreamed big dreams of a better world and led movements to realize them, I too have dreamed a big dream of a better world and call others to join me in the adventure of making it real.

I dream of a world in which we humans value spirit as much as, if not more than, body and mind. I dream of a world in which we know spirit, care for spirit, and live spirit-focused lives. 

Why would I dream such a dream? Because I believe that a world in which we value, know, and care for our own and other's spirit and live spirit-focused lives is a better world. I believe in those who share this dream with me. Together we can and will make our dream come true.

For reasons I make clear below, I believe in Thumotics - the new science, therapy, and spirit-focused spirituality. This is the Thumotics Manifesto.

"Spirituality of Transcendence or Transformation of Spirit? Part 2

This is a continuation of yesterday's post.

On the other hand, life-affirming spiritualities tend to speak the language of transformation.  If life-denying spiritualities are vertical, life-affirming spiritualities are horizontal. They are about the spirit-driven organic growth, change, and development of all living beings. They are about nurturing and promoting the ongoing circle of life of all living beings. Life-affirming spiritualities of transformation are about boldly living our ever-changing lives in this world rather than trying to escape into a higher, non-physical realm. 

For those of us living life-affirming spiritualities of transformation, this planet, this world, this universe with all of its seen and unseen changing realms is our home. We are both in and of this world rather than in but not of it.

Since this is our home we tend to take better care of it than those who are just visiting to learn a lesson before they ascend back to their true home.

"Spirituality" of Transcendence or Transformation of Spirit? Part 1

In a previous blog post I distinguished between life-affirming and life-denying spiritualities. Life-affirming spiritualities inherently heal, empower and liberate our spirit. Life-denying spiritualities inherently weaken, tame, and suppress our spirit. 

In my view, life-denying spiritualities are not real spiritualities. They are anti-spiritualities.

Another difference between life-affirming and life-denying spiritualities is this: Life-denying spiritualities tend to speak the language of transcendence. They promote ascending, going up and out of this world into a higher and better non-physical (spiritual) plane of existence. In other words, they promote escaping all together the less desirable physical realm and life in it. 

I believe that the language of transcendence plays a significant role in the damage we humans do to the rest of the natural world. After all, why take good care of a place we're just visiting and looking forward to ascending out of? It could be called the "beam me up" approach to life.

My Proposal for the Meaning of "Spirit"

Since Renee Descartes it has been normal to speak of body and mind are as if they are merely abstract concepts and mental things to analyze and argue about. It is as though our body and mind exist only is the static realm of ideas like dead specimens to be examined in a lab. 

What's wrong with this? Spirit is missing; that's what's wrong.

We are alive. We're spirited. We're living, physical, emotional, thinking human beings. We do not have bodies; we are bodies, spirited bodies. We do not have minds; we are minds, spirited minds. 

Being alive, our body is constantly changing. We're conceived in our mother's womb. We're born. We grow up and mature. Then we decline and die. We're constantly processing the air we breath, food we eat, and fluids we drink. Our skin is new every twenty-seven days. Our bodies are living, organic processes rather than static mental things to be dissected in a mental Petri dish.

As with our body so with our mind. Being alive our mind is constantly changing. Thoughts come and go. Mental images come and go. From and to where they go, no one knows. Like our body, our mind is an organic process. It develops to a point and then it declines. It isn't a static, abstract thing. It's alive.

What makes us a living body and mind? What makes us alive rather than dead? Our spirit. It makes our body and mind alive. Without spirit we're a cold, pale, thoughtless cadaver.

Here is my proposal for what we refer to when we use the word "spirit": spirit is that which makes alive. If there is no better definition of spirt, let this be what we Westerners mean by spirit. 

Is Our Spirit "Spiritual"?

Just as we have  no consensus on the meaning of the word "spirit", so it is with "spiritual." The word "spiritual" can be a synonym for "religious." It can refer to something that is other-worldly, supernatural, or metaphysical.

If spirit is that which makes us alive, then it is no more "spiritual" than our body and mind. It is of and in this world. Our spirit is as much a part of nature as our body and mind. It is as natural as the the wind, rain, and fire. It's not something supernatural or metaphysical. 

The sooner we embrace that our spirit as much a part of nature as everything else in this world, the sooner we can get on with learning more about it. As we learn more about our own spirit, we can also learn more about the spirits of all other living beings.

Body, Mind, and Spirit?

The more I investigate the concept of spirit in Western civilization, the more I learn how confused we Westerners are about spirit.

We're not confused about what our body is. We're not confused about what our mind is. I'm not saying that we know all there is to know about our body and mind. Far from it. We have much more to learn.

I'm saying something less or perhaps more profound, depending on how we look at it. I'm saying that in general we Westerners know what we're referring to when we use the words "body" and "mind." However, we do not know what we're referring to when we use the word "spirit." We have no general consensus on the meaning of the word "spirit." We're confused.

Why is that? What does it say about us Westerners that we know what we're referring to when we use the words "body" and "mind" but not when we use the word "spirit?"

Could it be that our lack of a general consensus on what the word "spirit" means is a symptom of how little we value spirit? We value our body and mind. We know what "body" and "mind" refer to. We have accumulated a significant amount of knowledge about our body over millennia. Over the last hundred years or so we have also learned a lot about our minds. 

What about our spirit? Does it not make sense that if we valued our spirit, we would have a general consensus on the meaning of the word? Does it not make sense that if we truly valued our spirit we would know at least as much about it as we do our mind?

I value the spirit and humans and all living beings. I believe others do too. It is time to attend to our spirit. It is time to do the hard work of creating a general consensus about the meaning of the word "spirit", and to devote ourselves to learning all we can about it.