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.
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