Our Spirit and Work

Our spirit is that which makes us alive.

Our work is the expression of our spirit's will to do two things:

Continue to live

Create, produce

Most, if not all, living beings work to continue living. Work is the activity we do to sustain our life. It's how our spirit sustains itself. It's what we do for food, water, and protection (clothing and shelter). It's how we take good care of our own spirit and other's spirits too.

When we are able and do not work and depend on others to care for for us, we fail at being responsible for ourselves. We make life harder for others by making them work for us. We thwart our spirit's own drive to sustain itself.

Some who have others do their work for them are called "leaders" and "business owners." Others are called "dependents", "lazy", or worse. There is little difference between the two. Both live off the labor of others.

We each have our own work to do to sustain ourselves and continue our lives. We do well when we do it.

Most, if not all, living beings also create and produce. Flowers create and produce blooms and aromas. Trees create and produce nuts and fruit. Spiders create webs and bees create hives and produce honey. 

We humans also create and produce: clothes, shoes, jewelry for our bodies, body paint, piercings, hair styles, houses, farms, machines, factories, music, dance, wood and stone carvings, paintings, poetry, stories, songs, and abundantly more. 

All living beings also naturally reproduce. 

All creativity, production and reproduction is the fruit of our work driven by our spirit.

Work is a natural activity. It's in-born. Our spirit compels  us to work. It drives us to sustain ourselves. It also drives us to create, produce, and reproduce.

Our work is a spiritual activity.

Spirit, Mind, Soul, Body? Part 4

Spirit and Body?

That which makes alive is spirit. 

First, beings are either spirited and alive or not spirited and dead.

Some spirited beings are visible and others are invisible to us. Put differently, some are within our perceptual capacity while others are too small, too far away, or too subtle for us to perceive.  

That we can perceive some and not other spirited beings says more about the range of our perception than the nature of other beings themselves.

We generally speak of spirited beings that we can perceive as having a body. In my view, we do not have a body, we are bodies. All that means is that we register in the perceptual range of humans and other beings.

From our human perspective, a body is either alive or dead. When a body is alive it is spirited. When it is dead it is no longer spirited. Once it was spirited, now it isn't. The body is a carcass. This is true of all plants and animals, including us humans.

Secondly, the spiritedness of beings varies. We can be more or less spirited. Our spirit can be high, low, or in between. Our spirit can strong or weak. It can be large or small, broadly influential or of no consequence at all. It can be hot or cold, mean or sweet. It can also be sick, wounded, and broken. Our spirit is as variable as the wind.

Our body expresses the variations of our spirit. 

Thirdly, bodies are spirited for a limited time. Generally speaking the spiritedness of embodied beings follows a pattern: conception, gestation, birth, growth to maturity, decline, and death. The duration of this pattern varies across species.

Fourth and finally for now, we do not know what happens with spirit at or after death. Does the mind remain spirited and live on or not? If not, what becomes of the spirit and mind? Do they dissipate like the body decomposes? If minds can remain spirited and live on, do all live on or only some? What do they do? Are they ever re-embodied?

There is much to wonder about and explore when it comes to the relationship of spirit and body. So many unanswered questions.

   

Spirit, Mind, Soul, Body? Part 3

Mind and Soul?

As I mentioned in part two of this series, I have little use for the word soul. It's loaded with too many religious connotations and too much New Age "woo" for my taste.

There is beauty in simplicity. I use spirit to refer to that which makes alive and mind to refer to the cognitive function of all living things.

While I might consider using "soul" to refer an "spirited mind" living apart from a physical body, I think doing so might confuse rather than clarify.

Spirit, Mind, Soul, Body? Part 2

Spirit and Soul?

Soul, like spirit, is another word we use with gross imprecision. We use it as if we all know what it means even though we have no general consensus on the meaning of the word. 

Many use it to refer to an invisible substance in us humans wherein resides our ability to think, feel, and will. Many also attribute to soul the animating aspect I attribute to spirit and deem it eternal. 

As such, our soul somehow enters our body for the duration of our life and escapes when we die. Some believe that after death our soul either ascends to heaven for eternal bliss or descends to hell for eternal damnation. Others believe that our soul reincarnates multiple times until we earn escape from the cycles of reincarnation.

Many seem to use the word soul in a dramatic but superficial way for its emotional affect. It can make the user seem profound, deep, and "spiritual."

Soul is primarily a religious or "spiritual" term and has little if any role in a scientific view of living beings. 

If I use it at all, I do so with the sense that James Hillman gives it. In his view, our soul is our perspective. To have a soul is to have a perspective. As such, soul is a function of our mind.

I have little use for the word. It does no work in Thumotics.

In Thumotics I use spirit to refer to that which makes alive, mind to refer to our cognitive function, and body to refer to our physical being.

 

Spirit, Mind, Soul, Body? Part 1

Spirit and mind?

Spirit and soul?

Mind and soul?

Spirit and body?

These questions I'll explore in this and upcoming posts.

I'll start with spirit and mind.

Spirit and Mind Defined

I define spirit as "that which makes alive" and mind as our cognitive function.

By spirit we are alive. By mind we are aware and able to think. 

The Relationship Between Our Spirit and Mind

In my view, spirit is prior to mind. Our spirit is that which animates our mind. Being spirited and alive makes it possible for us to be minded; that is, aware and able to think. Without spirit it is impossible for us to be aware and think. No spirit, no mind.

Not only does spirit animate our mind, it does so in varying degrees. Our mind can be more or less animated according to how spirited it is. A highly spirited mind thinks quickly. A low spirited mind thinks slowly.

However, the relationship between our spirit and mind is two-way rather than one-way. We can attend to and be aware of our own spirit and that of others. We can mindful of spirit.

In addition to being mindful of spirit, we can affect our own spirit and that of others with our mind. By our own self-talk we can lift, calm, contract, expand, withhold, and extend our spirit. 

By speaking our mind to others we can affect the spirits of others. 

The Exploration Continues

There is a growing body of scientific research that suggests that speaking our mind affects not only the spirits of other human beings but other animals and even plants as well. 

As we continue to explore spirit and what all spirit animates, no doubt we will learn more about mind as well

Being vs Becoming

Being is unchanging, unmoving, permanent, eternal, and now.

Being is beyond, supernatural.

It just is.

It's a mental concept, imaginary.

Those who believe in and value being

resist life and change.

They want to "be." They want eternity.

Spirit is invisible, non-sensible to them.

They close their eyes and seek to ascend, to transcend.

They seek escape from this world of becoming and change.

Becoming is changing, moving, temporary, mortal, and alive. 

Becoming is what is happening here and now.

It's natural, sensual, and experiential.

It's real.

Those who are and value becoming

embrace living and celebrate change.

Spirit is visible and sensed in all things by them.

They live seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting, and 

knowing without knowing how they know.

They love, give birth, grow, mature, decline, die, and decompose

to be reborn again. 

This is home to them, this mystery here.

Whose Responsibility is Your Spirit?

I'm talking about the health and well-being of your spirit. Whose responsibility is it?

Responsible For

To be responsible for something is to be able to respond for it, to speak on its behalf.

Do you speak for your own spirit?

Have you relinquished that responsibility to others? 

Can anyone else speak on behalf of your spirit?

I alone speak for my spirit. My spirit is my responsibility. No one else can be responsible for my spirit.

Responsible To

However, being responsible to is a different matter.

To be responsible to is to be able to respond to another.

I am able to respond to my own spirit for how I treat it. When I treat my own spirit well, I respond accordingly. When I treat my own spirit badly, I respond accordingly.

I am also able to respond to you and every other living being for how I treat your spirit. When I treat your spirit well, you respond accordingly and I am able to respond back.

Likewise, when I treat your spirit badly, you respond accordingly and I am able to respond back.

We're not responsible for each other's spirit. However, we are responsible to each other for how we treat each other's spirit.

Holding Each Other Responsible

I am responsible to you and everyone else for the health and well-being both my own and your spirit.

You're responsible to me and everyone else for the health and well-being of both your spirit and everyone else's.

I will hold you responsible.

Will you hold me responsible?

Contra "Spirituality": Part 4

From the perspective of Thumotics, creating a personal religion has little if anything to do with taking good care of our own spirit and that of others. If anything, given the current understanding of "spirituality", it distracts us from attending to our spirit and has us attend to our religious beliefs instead.

Creating a personal religion can also deceive us into believing that by having a personal religion we're taking good care of our spirit. We might not be. Taking good care of our personal religious beliefs is not the same as taking good care of our spirit.

Being spirited, alive, precedes having a personal religion. In order to have a personal religion we must first be alive. We must first be spirited. Without spirit we cannot create a personal religion. Spiritedness ontologically precedes our personal religion.

In order to create a healthy personal religion, we do well to first take good care of our body, mind, and spirit. Just as an apple tree needs to be healthy in order to produce healthy apples, so we need to be healthy in body, mind, and spirit to produce whatever we choose to produce, a personal religion or anything else.

This begs the question: How do we take good care of our own spirit and that of others? It also begs this question: Why?

Contra "Spirituality": Part 3

Religious beliefs have to do with beliefs (creeds) about divinities and other invisible beings, ourselves, the world in which we live, other worlds, and how we behave in relationships with divinities and others (codes and cultus). They may or may not say anything about our own spirit and that of others.

If a set of beliefs is not about our own spirit or that of others, why call it spirituality? If a belief has nothing to do with spirit, why call it a "spiritual belief"?

If it is a personal collection of beliefs picked from the world's religions, why not call it "personal religion"? Doesn't "personal religion" more accurately describe what it is?

Likewise, why not call personal religious beliefs what they are- personal religious beliefs rather than "spiritual beliefs"?

Those who are allergic to the "r" word can drop it and just say "personal beliefs."

Then we could use the word "spirituality" to refer to something actually related to spirit: a collection of ideas and practices related to spirit. We could also use the words "spiritual beliefs" to refer to beliefs about our own spirit and that of others.

If we are going to advance our love, knowledge, wisdom, and ability with regard to spirit, we need our use of the words spirit, spiritual, and spirituality to support rather than confuse our efforts.

More on this topic in Part 4, the final part in this series.

Contra "Spirituality": Part 2

When we use the word "spirituality" as a label for our own personal collection of religious beliefs, what word is left for us to refer to a collection of ideas and practices related to our spirit and that of others?

If we have no word to refer to a collection of ideas and practices related to spirit, how do we attend to them? How do we attend to our spirit and that of others without language for doing so?  How do we talk about spirit without a language for it? It's like trying to talk about physics or psychology or anything else without words for what we're talking about.

When we use "spirituality" to refer to a personal collection of religious beliefs we misuse the word. We misuse it by using it in a way that has nothing to do with spirit. We thereby put ourselves at risk of deceiving ourselves into believing that our collection of religious beliefs has something to do with spirit when it doesn't. What does belief in some of the sayings of Jesus, karma, remembering past lives, transcending ego, identifying with the divine and other religious beliefs have to do with our spirit and that of others? 

Likewise, when we use the words "spiritual beliefs" to refer to religious beliefs, then we have no words to refer to beliefs about our own spirit and that of others. We misuse the word "spiritual." We do so because of our allergic reaction to the "r" word: religious. In fact, what we call "spiritual beliefs" are, more often than not, religious beliefs.

More on this in Part 3

Contra "Spirituality": Part One

It is a popular, and apparently unexamined, belief that the word "spirituality" need not refer to our own spirit or that of anyone else. It can serve as a convenient label for our own personal collection of religious beliefs. 

For many "spirituality" is like a shopping cart into which we can drop our own eclectic collection of beliefs picked from the aisles of the religions of the world. To put into our "spirituality" cart we can from the aisle of Christianity pick some of the sayings of Jesus we like, hands on healing, prayer, angels, love, forgiveness, and helping the weak, sick, and poor. 

From the aisles of Hinduism and Buddhism, we can pick karma, reincarnation, non-violence, yoga, meditation, vegetarianism, mantras, mindfulness, devaluing our ego and identifying with the divine Self, and living in the present moment. 

On the Native American aisle we can pick love of Mother Earth and all of nature. 

From the Theosophical aisle we can pick Ascended Masters and Guides as well as the unity of all religions. 

And from the Occult aisle, we can add some Angel cards for guidance. 

Since there are many individual shoppers and many different aisles from which to choose, there are many different combinations of beliefs. Many refer to their collection of beliefs as their spirituality.

The "spirituality" label is convenient because it allows us to avoid applying the dreaded "r" word to ourselves: religious. So many of us are allergic to religion. We're "spiritual but not religious." It sounds so righteous, so "holier than thou" when said by some.

From the perspective of Thumotics, when we use of the word "spirituality" as a label for a personal collection of religious beliefs it begs this question: What word do we use to refer to a collection of ideas and practices related to spirit? More about this in Part Two.  

Contra Victor Frankl's Search for Meaning

When we use the word "spirituality" as a label for a galaxy of beliefs and practices that have little if anything to do with our spirit, we can distract and deceive ourselves. We can believe we are attending to our spirit when in fact we are attending to something else. 

Many so-called spiritualities are not about our spirit at all. Take for example the search for meaning as Victor Frankl presents it in his book Man's Search for Meaning.

Searching for meaning is very much an intellectual pursuit. It requires hours of thought. We have to ask questions, read, study, think, discuss, evaluate, and reach conclusions about the purpose of our life. Is our life inherently meaningful or not? Is meaning something that we ourselves create for ourselves or is it a given? If it is something we create for ourselves, then is what is meaningful the same for all of us or is it different for each one of us? If we create meaning for ourselves, how do we do it? The serach for meaning is a very heady endeavor.

From the perspective of Thumotics, engaging in the search for meaning has little if anything to do with our spirit. If anything calling it a spiritual endeavor distracts us from our spirit and deceives us into believing that when we search for meaning we're taking care of our spirit when we're not. 

When we engage in the search for meaning we're actually taking care of our mind and mental health. It's a psychological rather than a spiritual endeavor. Frankl was a psychiatrist.

Being spirited, alive, precedes our search for meaning. In order to search for the meaning of our life we must first be alive. We must first be spirited. Without spirit we cannot search for meaning. Spiritedness ontologically precedes our search for meaning.

So, let's be clear: the search for meaning is a mental activity that has little to do with our spirit. Since it is a mental activity it is an aspect of psychology not spirituality. Does this make it any less valuable? No, not at all.

Disthumia, Diffused-spirit

Have you ever felt that your spirit was scattered, spread out, and diffused? You might have felt spacey in both body and mind. You might have also felt that your energy was dissipated and your mind was uncollected and unfocused. Your might have stared without focussing your eyes on a specific object.

I created a word to refer to this condition of spirit: disthumia. It is from dis-, Latin for apart , and thumos, Greek for spirit. It refers to a condition of spirit characterized by one or more of the following:

- An overall spread out, scattered state

- A lack of visual and/or mental focus, diffusion

- Disipated energy, not necessarily fatigued, more like a lack of intention

- Feeling uncollected overall

- Having to force oneself to focus and concentrate

- No apparent physical or mental basis

As a condition of spirit, disthumia can be either acute or chronic. It might come on suddenly and last either a relatively short or long period of time. It might also come on gradually and either pass relatively quickly, last a relatively long time, or become a chronic, life-long condition. 

It could be that some have a tendency for disthumia from either conception or birth. 

Since this is a newly named condition of spirit and research (thumology) has not yet begun, there is much unknown about disthumia and everything to learn. Therapeutic interventions are still in the exploratory phase. 

Malthumia: Mean-spiritedness

Have you ever met a mean-spirited person? Were they that way all of the time, sometime, or for a short time?

Have you ever been mean-spirited?

I created the word malthumia from malus, Latin for bad, and thumos, Greek for spirit. It refers to a condition of spirit characterized by one or more of the following:

Meanness

Hostility

Being ill

Irritability

Anger

Actively aggressive, violent thoughts, speech, and/or behavior

Passive aggressiveness

Paranoia

Suspicion of others

As a condition of spirit, it can be either acute or chronic. It might come on suddenly and last either a relatively short or long period of time. It might also come on gradually and either pass relatively quickly, last a relatively long time, or become a chronic, life-long condition. 

It could be that some are malthumic from either conception or birth. 

Since this is a newly named condition of spirit and research (thumology) has not yet begun, there is much unknown about malthumia and everything to learn. Therapeutic interventions are still in the exploratory phase. 

Indications for Thumotherapy

The condition of our thumos, our spirit, naturally varies through the course of our day. We can be mildly hypothumotic at the beginning of the day. We can go through periods of athumoticity. We can also have periods of hyperthumocity, especially when we are engaged in an activity that is important to us and has a feeling of urgency about it.

Variations in our spiritedness through the course of our day, week, year, and life are normal. They are not indications that we would benefit from thumotherapy.

The key indicator that we would benefit from thumotherapy is when we are troubled in spirit to the point that it interferes with living our life as we desire. When we are so hypothumotic that we do not have enough spiritedness in us to get out of bed and go about our day, so hyperthumotic that we cannot sit still, focus, and finish a task, or so athumotic that we're neither here nor there, we do well to receive care for our spirit along with our body and mind.

Additional indicators that we would benefit from thumotherapy include the various types of dysthumia: 

Malthumia, ill- or mean-spiritedness 

Cyclothumia, cycling- spiriitedness

Disthumia, diffused-spirit, spread out, scattered

Melanothumia, dark-spiritedness

Photothumia, light-spiritedness

Stenothumia, constricted-spiritedness

Pyknothumia, dense, contracted- spiritedness

Schizothumia, split-spiritedness

I will discuss the above dysthumic conditions in upcoming posts

What is Spirituality?

I've asked hundreds of people. I've read countless books, articles, and posts. 

"Spirituality" is a popular topic among Westerners.

The number who describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious" is booming.

Things I have observed:

1. There is no general consensus on what the word "spirituality" means.

2. Frequently the word is used without defining it, as if everyone knows what it means.

3. It is often used to refer to an individual's personal, eclectic collection of religious beliefs.

4. Rarely, if ever, is it used to refer in any way to spirit.

Based on what I've learned up to this point in my own exploration of spirit, I decided to-

1. Advocate for a general consensus on the meaning of the word "spirituality."

2. Propose a definition for general consensus.

3. Liberate spirituality from both religious and psychological contexts.

4. Have the word "spirituality" refer in some way to "spirit."

Here is what I propose:

Let's use "personal religious beliefs" to refer to an individual's eclectic collection of religious beliefs.

Let's use the word "spirituality" to refer to "a collection of ideas and practices related to spirit."

Of course, we need to be clear about what "spirit" refers to. I propose that is refers to "that which makes alive." So, more precisely, "spirituality" refers to "a collection of ideas and practices related to that which makes us alive."

As I have mentioned in earlier posts, given this definition, there in not one spirituality. There are many spiritualities. For example, there as various Christian collections of ideas and practices related to that which makes us alive. There are various Jewish collections of ideas and practices related to that which makes us alive. There are also various Platonic, Aristotelian, Muslim, Hindu, Taoist, Native American, African, Pagan, Theosophical, New Age, agnostic, atheist spiritualities and more.

With this agreed on definition, we can have coherent exploration of and public discussion about spirituality. We can advance our love, knowledge, wisdom, and ability related to spirit.