Emotions: Choose Well

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.

 

Contra "Mind-Body" Duality

The Mind-Body View

In our current Western scientific view of being human, we put everything about our body in the physical sciences folder and everything not about our body in the psychological sciences folder. We have only two folders: one for body, another for mind.  It's a crude, simplistic system.

Questioning the Mind-Body View

One problem with this view is that we associate everything in the psychological sciences folder with "mind." When we look closer at everything associated with "mind" questions arise: Is associating our spirit with our mind the best way to view either our spirit or our mind? Is associating our instincts, desires, drives, and emotions with our mind the best way to view them? Is all of our self-talk limited to our mind?

My answer to all of these questions is "no." 

Proposing a New View

I propose a third folder: one for spirit. Everything about our spirit goes into the thumological sciences folder.

And what might go in the thumological folder? Everything associated with spirit, that which makes alive: our spirit itself; our instincts, desires and drives (to live, associate, eat, drink, have sex, reproduce, nurture, protect); our emotions that fuel and express our desires and drives (fear, anger, sadness, joy, guilt and others); and our self-talk directed at these things.    

 

Some Benefits of the New View

I believe this three-folder view makes possible a more elegant and refined view of what it means to be human. It affirms our spirit and helps us see our instincts, drives, desires, emotions, and  some of our self-talk in a new light, the light of our spirit. It also helps us see how our spirit relates to both our body and our mind.  

In upcoming posts, I'll say more about how our instincts, desires, drives, emotions, and some of our self-talk are matter of our spirit.