This I Believe About Our Spirit and Health

This I Believe about Our Spirit and Health

I believe that knowing what health is can help us stay healthy. When we are ill or injured, our knowledge, our self-talk about and mental images of health, make it possible for us to do things that help us heal. That’s conventional wisdom these days. This wisdom is especially emphasized by those who believe in mind over matter and mind-body medicine.

Two Things Missing

But there are at least two things missing in the conventional mind-body paradigm: our sociality and spirituality. Conventional mind-body medicine gives little attention to our sociality, the fact that we have social connections with others. Our social connections can either help or hinder our healthiness.

Conventional mind-body medicine also gives little attention to our spirituality. By spirituality I do not mean any of the countless religious, metaphysical, or existential things many of us mean by that word. By spirituality I mean mere the fact that we have spirit. And I what I mean by “spirit” is “that which makes us alive rather than not.”

Our spirituality precedes our physicality, sociality, and mentality. To be physically alive, connected socially with others, and think, we must first have spirit. We must be alive. No spirit? A cadaver. No spirit? No relationships. No spirit? No mind.  

The Focus of My Blog for Upcoming Months

The focus of my blog posts for the next few months will be on our spirit. I’ll address the following questions:

What are the characteristics of a healthy spirit?

What are the characteristics of an ill or injured spirit?

What harms our spirit?

What helps heal our spirit?

What is the role of our spirit in our physical health and well-being?

What is the role of our spirit in our social health and well-being?

What is the role of our spirit in our mental health and well-being?

My Goal

My goal is to blog my way to my second book. It will be on spiritual healing.

Feel free to join me in this adventure. I welcome your companionship along the way.

My First Book....and Second...

My First Book

Last Friday I finished the initial draft of my first book, Revisioning Spirit: A Brief Introduction to Thumotics. In it I present a critique of our current view of spirit, spiritual knowledge and healing, and spirituality. I also revision these and present a new view. 

My next steps are proof-reading and editing. Then I will publish it. My goal is for it to be available by the end of this year.

Respect for Writers

Writing my first book lifted my respect for writers to extreme heights. Until I started writing, I  did not know how much mental and emotional energy it took. It can be exhausting to put thoughts and feelings into words for several hours a day.

My hunch is that the proof-reading, editing, and publishing processes will be even more demanding. By light years I prefer writing to proofing, editing, and publishing!

My Second Book

In order to keep moving forward practicing my arts of thought-leadership, writing, educating, and therapy, I started blogging my way to my second book, Thumotherapy: A Brief Introduction to the Therapeutic Care of the Human Spirit. I will start posting this week.

Please follow my blog and share your thoughts and questions. I welcome you and what you have to say! 

How to Solve Problems

When I Have a Problem

Dr. Hew Len taught me one of the most important life-lessons I've learned to date. He taught me to see that whenever I have a problem, I am always there. It is true. Every time I have a problem, I am there. 

Where is the Problem?

He also taught me to ask, "Where is the problem?"  When I have a problem, I'm the one with the problem. The problem is in me.

Responsibility and Gratitude

Once I take 100% responsibility for my problem, rather than attribute it to others, I am "response-able", able to respond to my problem. I can be grateful for the opportunity and ability to solve my problem. Solving my problem will help me move forward with fulfilling the purpose of my life. For this opportunity, I am grateful.

Where is the Solution?

With gratitude I can then ask, "Where is the solution to my problem?"

The problem is mine. So is the solution. The solution to my problem is in me. It is my solution. Not only do I take 100% responsibility for my problem, I do the same for my solution. I take 100% responsibility for my solution. 

Consequences

When I take 100% responsibility for my solution, I also take 100% responsibility for the consequences of implementing my solution.  

Here's the thing about implementing solutions: solutions both solve problems and create new ones.

My challenge with solving my problems is doing my best to make sure I prefer the problems my solution creates in comparison to my current problem.  My best at this varies. 

NOTE: Another challenge I have is this: Taking 100% responsibility for my problems. I tend to want to make others responsible for my problems.

Orlando Massacre

Here is my view of the Orlando massacre:

It was an unprovoked, horrible, gruesome, bloody assault inflicted by one man on many other human beings. It was a glaring instance of life-denying behavior that has inflicted far-reaching trauma on countless others.

Then it was glorified by all outlets of media, including social media. I want to minimize my participation in glorifying it by giving it more attention. Instead I want to draw attention to what I believe is a life-affirming solution.

Some say that the solution to such violence is stricter gun control. I disagree.

I believe a since of divine favor, dominance, violence, and bloodshed are dominant and dominating themes in American culture. These themes the founding Northern Europeans, that include my ancestors, brought with them. The United States of America was founded and is maintained by this Christo-European sense of divine favor, dominance, violence and blood shed.

We are hypocrites to the degree that we feel horrified by violence done to those we consider "us" and justified in inflicting it on those we consider "them."

The solution to the problem is for us to renounce our Christo-European values of divine favor, dominance, violence, and bloodshed and change how we view not just human beings, but all living beings. When we see and value all living beings as "us", related, kindred, with valuable lives to live, then we will begin to do great, life-affirming things together, things that now we only dream of. 

Future Posts

I started this blog in order to blog my way to my first book. I did nothing to promote it. All I did was discipline myself to publish at least three posts per week. It was a good discipline for me. It worked. I'm about three fourths of the way through writing my first book.

Since my first book is a brief introduction to Thumotics with many ideas crying for further development, I decided to use this blog to do just that. I'll develop and share my ideas here first. Then I'll refine them and publish them in future books.

So, if you are in one of the thirty-eight countries where I've had readers and are among those who like to be first, stay in touch. You'll be among the first to read my ideas regarding spirit.

Thank you for reading. Feel free to comment and ask questions as we go.

Mindful of Spirit: I'm Blogging Again!

Mindful of Spirit: I'm Blogging Again!: So, it has been about a year and a half since my last post. During that time, I made my way through some of life's difficult challenges....

I'm Blogging Again!

So, it has been about a year and a half since my last post. During that time, I made my way through some of life's difficult challenges. 

Two Job Position Eliminations

For the second time in my 10 year career with one of our nation's premier hospices, my position was eliminated.

Creating My Own Position

Between those two position eliminations, I had the rare opportunity of envisioning, creating, proposing, and implementing my own position as the Clinical Director of Counseling Services. With the position I named my salary, picked my team, and designed and implemented a very innovative way of providing bereavement, music therapy, chaplain, and complementary and alternative medicine services. 

Even though many strongly opposed the innovative change I led, our patient and client evaluation scores were well above the national average in the areas we served. We also saw an increase in accessing our services.

The Director of Counseling Services was the second position I was in that was eliminated.

Foundation Work

I must have done something right. I was offered and accepted a position with our newly formed Foundation. I had the opportunity to help raise money for the hospice services I was so passionate about. After six months with the Foundation, I resigned and ended my ten and a half year career with hospice. It was simply time for me to move forward with my life's work: revisionsing spirit and everything related to it, writing about it, educating about it, and caring for clients. 

Legal Separation and Engagement

During the same period of time my marriage of thirty-six years ended and I met the love of my life. Now we're engaged. I'm happier than I've been since I was a little boy.

Writing

In the midst of the above mentioned difficult challenges, I continued to work on the first book that this blog led me to. My plan is to have it published by the end of this year.

My thoughts and practices regarding spirit have developed significantly since I wrote posts for this blog. Now it's time to start blogging again.

Purpose of My Blog

I promise you this, you will not be board reading my blog. You will get to think thoughts and experience things you never have before.

To allude to the introduction of my first book: The purpose of this blog is to disturb you. It's not for everyone, just the courageous few.