Know in Your Heart, See in Your Mind...

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.

 

Thumology and Psychology Contrasted

Psychology attends to the human mind and its cognitive functions: attention, memory, language, learning, reasoning, problem solving, and decision making. Historically, psychology also included the study of human emotion.

Thumology attends to spirit defined in terms of thumos, "that which makes alive." Its field of study is broader than psychology's because it attends to thumos in all living beings, not just humans.

The primary function of thumos is to animate and enliven. It is prior to cognitive functions and makes cognitive functions possible.

In thumology, thumos and emotions are very closely related if not the same. Emotions are viewed as direct expressions of the thumos.

While thumos has a unique cognitive function in human beings, specifically inner deliberation, the cognitive function is of less importance in thumology than in psychology.

Object of study:

- Psychology: human mind

- Thumology: spirit in all living beings

Functions studied:

- Psychology is primarily the study of the cognitive functions of the human mind

- Thumology is primarily the study of the animating, enlivening function of spirit

Scope:

- The scope of psychology is primarily human beings

- The scope of thumology is all living beings

Emotions:

- Psychology: emotions are caused by cognitive functions of the mind

- Thumology: emotions are direct expressions of spirit

Cognition:

- Psychology: cognition is limited to the mind

- Thumology: there is a type of cognition associated with the thumos, deliberation

Ontological status:

- Mind must be spirited, alive, to exist

- Spirit does not have to be cognitive to exist. Being spirited precedes being cognitive.

How Our Mind Stirs Our Spirit

If our spirit is that which makes alive and our mind is our cognitive function, what role does our mind play in our emotions, the up-stirrings of our spirit?

In my view, our mind often plays the key role in determining what emotions we feel.

For example, when we're taking a walk, see an object in our path, and interpret it to be a snake, we might feel fear. However, when we see it clearly and correctly interpret it to be a stick, we might then feel embarrassed and relieved. 

Perceiving a snake is not just a matter of our sense sight. Neither is it merely a cognitive interpretation. It's a bio-psycho-social-spiritual event. It involves our physical sense of sight, our cognitive interpretation formed by our society.  Our spirit not only makes the whole process of perceiving and interpreting possible but also responds to our interpretation by either being stirred up or remaining homeostatic.

Our spirit is what makes us alive and therefore able to perceive and interpret our perceptions. No spirit, no life; no life, no perception or interpretation; no perception or interpretation; no emotion (up-stirring of spirit). 

Put affirmatively: spirit makes both perception and interpretation possible, interpretation makes emotion (up-stirring of spirit) possible.

Interpretation of perception is a function of our mind. How we interpret our perceptions determines how our spirit is stirred; that is, what emotions we feel. 

The process is cyclic, beginning and ending with with spirit.

The moral of this story: we can manage our spirit with our mind.

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

Spirit Essentials, Part 1: Define Spirit for Yourself

It is essential to have a definition of spirit.

I recommend that you develop your own definitions, descriptions, and images of spirit rather than borrow them from someone else.

First, answer this question for yourself: What is spirit? Write your current understanding of what spirt is. It doesn't have to be your final word or even polished. It's a place to begin. Your answer will probably change over time as you learn more about spirit.

Second, imagine spirit. How does spirit sound, look, smell, feel, and taste? What is it like? What images come to mind? Is it always the same or does it change? What happens when something or someone who was spirited no longer is? 

Third, do some reading on the meaning of the word "spirit". Start with a few dictionaries. Explore the meanings of words that contain spirit. Explore, for example, the meanings of aspire, conspire, dispirit, expire, inspire, transpire, and esprit de corps. 

Study the etymology of the word. Find out if there are equivalents in other languages. 

Study related words like soul, mind, energy, and consciousness. Are these different words for the same thing or do these words refer to different things?

Next, rewrite your definition of spirit in light of what you have learned so far. Again, understand that as you learn more your definitions, descriptions, and images will change.

Now you are a thumonaut, an explorer of spirit.

Contra Descartes

That I am a spirit means that I am spirited, alive. Spirit is that which makes me alive. Without spirit I would not be a living body. Without spirit I would not be a living mind. 

Spirit precedes body and mind because spirit is the life of both body and mind. By my spirit my body functions. By my spirit my mind produces thoughts and images. By spirit I am alive. 

Descartes declared, " I think, therefore I am."

Contra Descartes: I am spirited, therefore I live.

I Do Not Have a Body

I do not have a body. I am a body. I do not have a mind. I am a mind. 

Likewise, I do not have a spirit; I am a spirit. I am a spirited body-mind. 

As a spirited body-mind I do not have an ego. I am an ego, a unique self. My ego is not a part of me. My ego is me. 

There is only one of me. When I am here, I am here. When I am gone, I am gone.

While I am here, I cannot lose myself. I cannot find myself. I am my self. 

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.