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.

Many Ways of Knowing

I know from the findings of scientific research that far more exists than I can perceive with my five physical senses. There are spectrums of light my eyes cannot see. There are high and low frequencies my ears cannot hear. There are fragrances my nose cannot smell, textures too fine for my skin to feel, and flavors too subtle for my tongue to taste. 

However, I do not need scientific findings to know that there is more "out there" than I can know with my five physical senses. My dog hears and smells things that do not exist to me. They are out of my ability to know with my physical senses. 

While it is impossible for me to know some things about the universe by my physical senses, I have other ways of knowing.

I have instincts and can, for example, "know" what to do in an emergent situation  and do it. 

I can know by intuition. For example, I can know without knowing how I know that something is going to happen before it happens. Then it happens. I can also intuit that I need to do something, do it, and discover that it was the right action to take at the time.

I can also see and hear things mentally. In other words, I can imagine what something will look like before I see it with my eyes. 

I can know things emotionally; I can feel fear that alerts me to a danger before I see or hear the threat.

I can also know things in my body; for example, I can feel another person's anxiety in my solar plexus. The muscles there tighten. 

I can also know things with relative certainty by deduction.  For example, all humans die. I am human. I will die.

I'm not always right. Sometimes I misjudge the information from my various ways of knowing just as I do with my five physical senses. But that has to do with my judgment not the information itself.

To deny my many ways of knowing is to deny the spirit in me that animates them. Rather than deny the spirit's work within me, I affirm it. I affirm it boldly.

I refuse to be like some who restrict knowing to what they can perceive with their five physical senses.