Healing Illnesses and Injuries of Our Spirit

Physical Health Care

In Western cultures, we have a fairly well developed care of physical illness and injury. The germ-based, industrialized paradigm has produced a wide-spectrum of effective antibacterial, anti-viral, and anti-fungal medicines. 

The machine-based paradigm of the human body has produced a wide-spectrum of effective reparative, replacement, and transplant surgeries.

Mental Health Care

Western approaches to care of mental illness and injury are still very young. They struggle under the social idominance of materialism, "hard science", social stigmata, and religious beliefs. Even so, much has been learned about the human mind and how to care for and heal it.

Care of the Human Spirit

When we consider care of illnesses and injuries of the human spirit, we are in the conceptual phase at best. There are mountainous obstacles to overcome in order to make progress.

We have no general consensus of what the human spirit is or even if it exists. We tend to speak of the human spirit as a metaphor, religious belief, synonym for mind, or concept of metaphysics or spirituality.  

We have no list of identified illnesses and injuries of the spirit.

We have no protocols for providing therapeutic care of the ill or injured human spirit.

Neither have we identified what a well and healthy human spirit looks like and what nurtures, strengthens, sustains, and prevents its illness and injury.

More pointedly, we have -

No definition of spirit

No science of spirit

No therapy of spirit

No practices for developing and sustaining a healthy and strong spirit

The Heart of My Work

The heart of my work is to care for the human spirit and lead the way in defining the human spirit, and developing a science, therapy, and spirit-centered way of living.

Life-Affirming Social Practices, Part 3

Contributing to the Collective Good     

We have our own work to do to sustain our own lives. However, we also have shared work to do that benefits everyone: protecting ourselves from threats to our lives, healing the sick and injured, and raising our children.

Protection from Threats

Protecting ourselves from what threatens the life of those dear and near to us is basic. Many threats are larger than we can address by ourselves. For example, climate change, storms, floods, earth quakes, draughts, and the greed and violence of aggressors. We do well to combine our efforts and work together to protect ourselves from threats. Divided we fall; united we stand.

Raising Our Children

We raise our children to become mature adults able to support themselves. Everyone benefits from children becoming self-supporting adults who contribute to the common good. 

Education is part of raising children. Since we all benefit from well educated children,  we all do well to share in the cost and work of educating our children. We do well to educate them to become self-supporting rather than cogs in the matrix of industrialized consumerism.

Healing the Sick and Injured

What affects one, affects all. We know this in our relationships with family, friends and co-workers. When one of them is sick or injured, it affects everyone connected with them. They all have to adapt. 

The same is true in our communities, countries, and entire world. 

For this post I tried to find a fairly solid answer to how many people in the world are sick. I was unable to find a well-researched answer and will keep searching. 

Perhaps the fact that this information is not easily accessible indicates that, generally speaking, we do not care how many of us are sick. Not caring how many of us are sick implies a lack of caring about living healthy, life-affirming lives.

Furthermore, as our industrial, factory-based economy continues to wane, we're becoming more aware of how harmful it has been to the health and well-being of all the living on this planet. 

We're also becoming aware of the fundamental flaw of industrialized medicine that treats humans and other living beings  as machines with malfunctioning and replaceable parts that can be serviced with tests, chemicals, and surgeries for huge financial gain. 

There is something fundamentally wrong with getting rich off of the sick and injured. There is something fundamentally right about helping to heal the sick and injured. We all benefit from everyone being as healthy as we possibly can be.

There is also something fundamentally right about supporting the dignity of and comforting the dying, regardless of their species. 

A Reflection

How do you contribute to the collective good? How are you contributing to the health and well-being of all other living beings?

What role do you play in protecting yourself and others from threats to life and well-being? Are you actively engaged or dependent on others?

What are you doing to help raise healthy, well-educated, life-affirming children?

What are you doing to keep yourself and others healthy for the common good?

What small steps can you take to do more?

Life-Affirming Social Practices, Part 2

Self-Support

When we adults support ourselves we work to obtain for ourselves the water, food, clothing, shelter, protection, and transportation we need to sustain our own lives. We do not expect others to support us. 

When we are self-supporting we do not depend on and add to the burdens of others who are working to sustain their own lives. 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.

There are times when we are sick, injured, or otherwise unable to support ourselves. Then we have to depend on others to some extent.  That is as it should be.

A Reflection

How dependent on others are you for the water, food, clothing, shelter, protection, and transportation you need to sustain your life? It might be surprising to become aware of how deeply embedded we are in the matrix of industrialized consumerism. 

We're so embedded in and dependent on the matrix of industrialized consumerism, that we have lost the skills of obtaining food and water for ourselves, making our own clothes, building our own shelters, protecting ourselves, and providing our own transportation.

Based on your reflection of how dependent you are on the matrix of industrialism, what are some ways that you choose to use the matrix to your advantage? What are some ways that you'd like to liberate yourself? What small steps in the direction of liberation can you take starting today? 

Life-Affirming Social Practices, Part 1

Our spirit is that which makes us alive. Spirit-centered living is about living from that which makes us alive. It's about saying, "Yes!" to life, not just to our own but everyone else's life too. Here are some simple social practices in three categories for affirming the spirit in others:

Social Courtesies

Social courtesies acknowledge the existence and validate other spirited beings. Social courtesies include but are not limited to the following:

Smiling

Greeting

Welcoming

Expressing genuine interest in others

Listening when others speak and not interrupting

Gift-giving, including giving compliments

Gift-receiving

Saying, "Please" and "Thank you"

Saying, "Farewell" or something similar when parting

Try This

Pick just one of the courtesies listed above and intentionally practice it today. Attend to the affect  the courtesy has on your own spirit. Attend to the affect it has on those to whom you show the courtesy.

My next post in this series will be about how supporting ourselves affirms the lives of others.

How Our Mind Affects Our Spirit, Part 2

Our Mental Images Either Affirm or Deny Our Spirit

What we see in our mind's eye affects our spirit. Generally speaking, our mental images can either affirm and strengthen or deny and weaken our spirit. 

When we consider how our mental images affect our spirit, it's important to distinguish between our mental images themselves and our opinions of our mental images. In my experience, for example, the mental image of a fire in my fire place on a cold day comforts my spirit. The comfort feels immediate, directly related to the image of the fire. I have no opinion about the fire. I just experience it.

However, the mental image of receiving an unexplained calendar invite to a meeting with my CEO  evokes fear in my spirit. It evokes fear, not because there is anything inherently fearful about meeting with my CEO, but because of my opinions about going into an unexplained meeting with my CEO.  

An Experiment

The effect of your mental images on your spirit is easy to test this for yourself.

First, attend to your spirit. Focus your attention on the center of your chest, behind your breast bone and between your nipples. We often call this area our heart. It's where we feel our spirit. If it helps, place one or both hands over your heart as you breathe into and out of your spirit.

How would you describe how your spirit feels? Make a mental note of it.

Now, imagine yourself waiting in a check out line at a grocery store. You're running late and feel a bit impatient. Then someone cuts in line two people ahead of you and no one does anything about it. 

Focus again on your spirit. How does it compare with how it felt prior to imagining the check out line scene? Has it changed? If so, how?

Now, change scenes. Imagine someone dear to you scratching your back and rubbing your shoulders. Feel the sensation of their fingers scratching up and down your back. Feel their warm hands on your shoulders rubbing the tension away.

How does your spirit feel now? Has it changed? If so, how?

This simple exercise might or might not illustrate for you how our mental images can affect our spirit. Whether it did or not, I encourage you to become more aware of your own mental images and the effects they have on your spirit. 

 

How Our Mind Affects Our Spirit, Part 1

Spirit-Centered Living and Our Mind

Spirit-centered living is about understanding spirit in terms of the Ancient Greek understanding of thumos. Thumos (spiritus in Latin, spirit in English) is what makes us alive. It's quasi-physical. We can feel it. It's located in the center of our chest, behind our breast bone and between our nipples. The Ancient Greeks associated it with the thymus gland. We often refer to it as our heart.

Spirit-centered living is about being mindful of and living from our spirit, our heart. It's about being aware of what affects our spirit and how. This post is about the relationship between our mind and our spirit. It addresses the question of how our mind affects our spirit.

Our mind affects our spirit in at least two ways: our thoughts and our mental images.

Our thoughts are what we say to ourselves in our mind. They are our self-talk. We can verify for ourselves whether or not our self-talk affects our spirit. We can also learn the specific effects our self-talk has on our spirit.

Basically, our self-talk either affirms or denies our spirit. It either strengthens or weakens it.

Experiment #1

Relax and focus your attention on the center of your chest, behind your breast bone and between your nipples, your heart. Breathe into and out of your heart. If it helps, place one or both hands over your heart as you focus on and breathe into and out of it. How does your spirit feel? How would you describe it? Make a mental note.

Next, recall a time when you put yourself down. Recall what you said to yourself. Did you call yourself stupid, a screw up, weak, not good enough, unlovable, undeserving, or some other denigrating, devaluing word? As you recall the scene, become aware of how your spirit feels. Has it changed in comparison to before recalling the self-denigrating scene? If so, how? Take note of the change.

Focus again on your heart. Breathe into and out of your heart. If you need to clear the scene and denigrating self-talk, say to yourself at least twenty times, "Don't think!"

Now, as you breathe into your heart say to your heart, your spirit, "I love you!" As you breathe out of your heart say the same, "I love you!" Do this for at least three minutes. Breathe into your heart saying, "I love you!" Breathe out of your heart saying, "I love you!"

After three minutes or so, again become aware of how your spirit feels. Does it feel different than when you said denigrating things to yourself? If so, how? Take note of the difference.

The next post will be about how our mental images affect our spirit.

 

Your Spirit at Work

Since spirit is that which makes us alive and our primary work is to survive and stay alive, our work is a spirit-related matter.

Spirit-centered work is life-affirming action taken from and for our own spirit and the spirits of others.

We Work to Sustain our Spirit

We work to provide for ourselves and those in our care the water, food, clothing, shelter, and protection we need to stay alive. Believing that our real work is something greater than sustaining our lives, denies the value of our lives. Is there any greater work that sustaining and promoting life?

Working to provide for ourselves water, food, clothing, shelter and protection easily becomes an opportunity for creativity and the production of art. It becomes an opportunity for each one of us to do what only we can do. Each one us is unique. We each have gifts to share that no one else can share.

The Slow Death of Capitalistic Industry

Capitalistic industry turned work into a form of economic slavery. Owners of the means of production were the slave bosses. Laborers gave their work and freedom in exchange for wages to spend on buying manufactured goods from other owners. It was a pretty good deal for both parties for a while.

Capitalism and its factories are dying a slow death. It's winning its race to the bottom where the cost of manufacturing so-called goods cannot be cut any further. Let us celebrate its demise. 

Emerging New Economies

A new economy continues to emerge. Now, we have the means of production and connection with each other at our finger tips with our computers and the world-wide web. 

Try this:

1.When you are working, pause and become aware of your spirit. Focus your attention on the center of your chest, behind your breast bone and between your breasts- your heart. This is your spirit's home. Breathe into and out of your spirit. Become aware of how your spirit feels at work. Does it feel affirmed or denied? Does it feel in place or not? Does it feel free or constrained? Do you feel that you are free to share your unique gifts at work or not?

Some will find that their work affirms their spirit. Others will not. In which group are you? 

2. Identify what is absolutely essential for you and your family (if you have one) to live. I mean absolutely essential.

Determine the cost of what is essential. Base the cost on where you now live.

Now, identify three things or services you are paying for that are not absolutely essential. You literally can live without them. 

Estimate how much time you spent buying, using, and maintaining those things for the time you have owned them.

What would you do with your time and money if you let go of those non-essential things?