Our MindLESSness of Spirit

In an earlier post I wrote about what it means to me to be mindful of spirit. Put briefly it means being aware of spirit and attending to it closely. It means that when we encounter another animated being (and what isn't animated?) we do not just attend to how the other looks, sounds, smells and moves. We also pay attention to the other's spirit, that which makes the other alive.

I do not think I would be writing about being mindful of spirit if I thought most of us already are mindful of spirit. I write about it because I think most of us aren't mindful of spirit. That's right, I believe that for the most part we're mindless of spirit. As such we're missing out on the essence of life itself. We're missing out on what actually makes us alive rather than dead. More than that, we're harming ourselves and others in our mindlessness.

Being mindless of other's bodies can lead to unintentionally harming them physically. Being mindless of other's feelings can lead to unintentionally harming them emotionally. Likewise, being mindless of others' spirits can lead to unintentionally harming that which animates them and makes them alive rather than dead. Such mindlessness can lead to broken spirits. Attending to what makes us alive rather than dead seems like an important thing to me.

There is a good bit of public discussion going on about manners and civility . There is an outcry about a lack of both, especially in on-line communications. The outcry is possible because there is a history of good manners and civility with which to compare current behavior. Manners and civility are generally agreed on practices by which we avoid harming each other's bodies and emotions. For example, we generally agree that it is rude to hit or insult another person without just cause. We generally agree that it is a good thing to avoid physically injuring another person or hurting their feelings.

That being said, what is the etiquette for spirit? Is there such a thing? If there is I don't know what it is. If you know, please tell me.

If there is no etiquette for spirit, why isn't there? I suggest that it's because we are for the most part mindless of spirit. If we were mindful of our own and other's spirit, we would have an etiquette for spirit. We would have generally agreed on practices for how to avoid harming each other's spirit and treat each other's spirit well.

In later posts, I'll write more about an etiquette for spirit. For this post, I simply wanted to raise the awareness of our mindlessness of spirit.