Spirit-Centered Living, Part Three: Relationships

This post is a sketch about how I relate to others, from spirit to spirit.

As I mentioned in Part Two of this series, I see everyone of us as spirited and alive. As such, I see us doing what we need to do to remain alive and do what we are alive to do. 

Kinship

So, I see a kinship among us all. We are related by the mere fact that we are spirited and alive rather than not. We are also related in doing what we need to do to remain alive and fulfill our purpose.

Because of our kinship, my basic way of relating to others is as a friend rather than a foe. At first, I'm a cautiously friendly. It takes me a while to know if you are a friend or foe to me. Being cautious protects and affirms the value of my life.

Friends

If you are a friend, then my basic way of relating is to accept you as you are and not interfere with you living your life as you choose. I give you space. Not interfering and giving you space is about a mutual affirmation of my life and yours. It's about both of us being free.

The only time I harm my friends, is out of the necessity to sustain my own life and the lives of those in my care. I am personally responsible for the deaths of countless friendly plants and animals that I eat to sustain my own life. 

Since the deaths of others sustains my life, I do well to honor them and their spirit by minimizing the pain of their death, wasting as little as possible of their bodies, and respectfully returning to Earth what remains.

Otherwise, being a friend is about helping each other if and when we need and want help. It is also about enriching each other's lives with gifts that only we can give.

Foes

If you are a foe, my basic way of relating to you is to avoid you. I want nothing to do with you. You go your way and I'll go mine.

If you threaten or harm me or anyone dear to me, then I will aggressively defend myself, family, and friends. In defense I will kill you if I have to. If you are eatable, I will eat you, waste as little as possible, and respectfully return to Earth what remains.

Context

Of course, I do all of the above to varying degrees in the larger context of a declining industrialized system. In that larger context, factory workers kill and process most of the food I eat. I know they do so with no respect for the spirits of those they kill. They make no attempt to use everything to honor the spirit and life of the each one killed but only to maximize share-holder profits.

Even so, I continue to develop my practice of living a spirit-centered life, of relating spirit to spirit, and respecting the life and freedom of every living being. 

Spirit-Centered Living, Part Two: The Spirit of Others

Not only am I alive, others are too. They too are spirited: 

Earth, water, wind, and fire-all moving, all alive. 

Stones, grass, flowers, vines, shrubs, and trees-all moving and alive. 

Every insect and animal, including us humans- moving and alive.

Even the moon, planets, and stars- all moving, all alive.

The spirit, that which makes alive, spirits us all. We share spirit in common.

We all are alive rather than not.

Let this great mystery move us all to wide-eyed wonder!

Some live lives that affirm their own life and the lives of others.

Some live lives that deny their own life and the lives of others.

Those who deny life, make the lives of those who affirm life necessary.

Those who affirm life, make the lives of those who deny life necessary.

We depend on each other.

Has it always been this way?

I don't know. I just know that it is this way now.

Will it always be this way?

I do not know. I just know that it is this way now.

Why is it this way?

I do not know. I just know that it is this way now.

Shouldn't we try to change it and make it better- more life-affirming?

The only way to make it more life-affirming is to deny the lives of those who deny life.

We who affirm life, affirm the lives of all the living, including those who deny life.

Spirit-Centered Living, Part One

This is the first in a series of posts about what it means to me to live a spirit-centered life.

Spirit-Centered Living Defined

Spirit-centered living is about living from my own spirit in relation to all other spirited beings. It includes being mindful of my own spirit, the spirits of others, and our relationships.

Mindful of My Own Spirit

Being mindful of my own spirit includes but is not limited to-

1. Being aware of and moved to wonder that I am alive rather than not, open to experiencing the mystery of being alive, and at peace with not knowing how or why I am alive.

2. Delighting in being alive.

3. Acting from my spirit,  engaging with my in-the-world experience, meeting the challenges I face, not avoiding what life presents to me.

4. Being what I do.

5. Synchronizing my spirit, body, and mind in all I do. Doing this defines integrity for me.

6. Naturally doing what protects and promotes my own life. Taking excellent care of myself also benefits others.

7. Fulfilling the life-affirming desires of my heart. Doing what I am meant to do.

Part Two of this series is about being mindful of the spirits of others

Healing Illnesses and Injuries of Our Spirit

Physical Health Care

In Western cultures, we have a fairly well developed care of physical illness and injury. The germ-based, industrialized paradigm has produced a wide-spectrum of effective antibacterial, anti-viral, and anti-fungal medicines. 

The machine-based paradigm of the human body has produced a wide-spectrum of effective reparative, replacement, and transplant surgeries.

Mental Health Care

Western approaches to care of mental illness and injury are still very young. They struggle under the social idominance of materialism, "hard science", social stigmata, and religious beliefs. Even so, much has been learned about the human mind and how to care for and heal it.

Care of the Human Spirit

When we consider care of illnesses and injuries of the human spirit, we are in the conceptual phase at best. There are mountainous obstacles to overcome in order to make progress.

We have no general consensus of what the human spirit is or even if it exists. We tend to speak of the human spirit as a metaphor, religious belief, synonym for mind, or concept of metaphysics or spirituality.  

We have no list of identified illnesses and injuries of the spirit.

We have no protocols for providing therapeutic care of the ill or injured human spirit.

Neither have we identified what a well and healthy human spirit looks like and what nurtures, strengthens, sustains, and prevents its illness and injury.

More pointedly, we have -

No definition of spirit

No science of spirit

No therapy of spirit

No practices for developing and sustaining a healthy and strong spirit

The Heart of My Work

The heart of my work is to care for the human spirit and lead the way in defining the human spirit, and developing a science, therapy, and spirit-centered way of living.

Life-Affirming Social Practices, Part 3

Contributing to the Collective Good     

We have our own work to do to sustain our own lives. However, we also have shared work to do that benefits everyone: protecting ourselves from threats to our lives, healing the sick and injured, and raising our children.

Protection from Threats

Protecting ourselves from what threatens the life of those dear and near to us is basic. Many threats are larger than we can address by ourselves. For example, climate change, storms, floods, earth quakes, draughts, and the greed and violence of aggressors. We do well to combine our efforts and work together to protect ourselves from threats. Divided we fall; united we stand.

Raising Our Children

We raise our children to become mature adults able to support themselves. Everyone benefits from children becoming self-supporting adults who contribute to the common good. 

Education is part of raising children. Since we all benefit from well educated children,  we all do well to share in the cost and work of educating our children. We do well to educate them to become self-supporting rather than cogs in the matrix of industrialized consumerism.

Healing the Sick and Injured

What affects one, affects all. We know this in our relationships with family, friends and co-workers. When one of them is sick or injured, it affects everyone connected with them. They all have to adapt. 

The same is true in our communities, countries, and entire world. 

For this post I tried to find a fairly solid answer to how many people in the world are sick. I was unable to find a well-researched answer and will keep searching. 

Perhaps the fact that this information is not easily accessible indicates that, generally speaking, we do not care how many of us are sick. Not caring how many of us are sick implies a lack of caring about living healthy, life-affirming lives.

Furthermore, as our industrial, factory-based economy continues to wane, we're becoming more aware of how harmful it has been to the health and well-being of all the living on this planet. 

We're also becoming aware of the fundamental flaw of industrialized medicine that treats humans and other living beings  as machines with malfunctioning and replaceable parts that can be serviced with tests, chemicals, and surgeries for huge financial gain. 

There is something fundamentally wrong with getting rich off of the sick and injured. There is something fundamentally right about helping to heal the sick and injured. We all benefit from everyone being as healthy as we possibly can be.

There is also something fundamentally right about supporting the dignity of and comforting the dying, regardless of their species. 

A Reflection

How do you contribute to the collective good? How are you contributing to the health and well-being of all other living beings?

What role do you play in protecting yourself and others from threats to life and well-being? Are you actively engaged or dependent on others?

What are you doing to help raise healthy, well-educated, life-affirming children?

What are you doing to keep yourself and others healthy for the common good?

What small steps can you take to do more?

Life-Affirming Social Practices, Part 2

Self-Support

When we adults support ourselves we work to obtain for ourselves the water, food, clothing, shelter, protection, and transportation we need to sustain our own lives. We do not expect others to support us. 

When we are self-supporting we do not depend on and add to the burdens of others who are working to sustain their own lives. Some who have others do their work for them are called "leaders" and "business owners." Others are called "dependents", "lazy", or worse. There is little difference between the two. Both live off the labor of others.

There are times when we are sick, injured, or otherwise unable to support ourselves. Then we have to depend on others to some extent.  That is as it should be.

A Reflection

How dependent on others are you for the water, food, clothing, shelter, protection, and transportation you need to sustain your life? It might be surprising to become aware of how deeply embedded we are in the matrix of industrialized consumerism. 

We're so embedded in and dependent on the matrix of industrialized consumerism, that we have lost the skills of obtaining food and water for ourselves, making our own clothes, building our own shelters, protecting ourselves, and providing our own transportation.

Based on your reflection of how dependent you are on the matrix of industrialism, what are some ways that you choose to use the matrix to your advantage? What are some ways that you'd like to liberate yourself? What small steps in the direction of liberation can you take starting today? 

Life-Affirming Social Practices, Part 1

Our spirit is that which makes us alive. Spirit-centered living is about living from that which makes us alive. It's about saying, "Yes!" to life, not just to our own but everyone else's life too. Here are some simple social practices in three categories for affirming the spirit in others:

Social Courtesies

Social courtesies acknowledge the existence and validate other spirited beings. Social courtesies include but are not limited to the following:

Smiling

Greeting

Welcoming

Expressing genuine interest in others

Listening when others speak and not interrupting

Gift-giving, including giving compliments

Gift-receiving

Saying, "Please" and "Thank you"

Saying, "Farewell" or something similar when parting

Try This

Pick just one of the courtesies listed above and intentionally practice it today. Attend to the affect  the courtesy has on your own spirit. Attend to the affect it has on those to whom you show the courtesy.

My next post in this series will be about how supporting ourselves affirms the lives of others.

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.

 

Spirit-Centered Protection

My life, health and well-being are primarily my own responsibly. It is primarily up to me to protect myself from harm and keep myself alive and healthy. It is a responsibility I refuse to relinquish to others. Since protecting myself is about keeping myself alive, and since spirit is that which makes me alive, self-protection is a spirit-related matter.

Spirit-centered protection looks at self-protection from the perspective protecting one's own spirit in order to stay alive and live a healthy, creative, and happy life.

Self-Protection is Inherent to Our Spirit

Based on observations of living beings, I think it is reasonable to generalize that every living being has a natural, basic instinct to protect itself from harm. When we feel threatened  we either fight, flee, or freeze. Self-protection is inherent in our spirit. That which makes us alive has a basic desire to stay alive, unharmed, and healthy.

Self-Protection is Life-Affirming

Self-protection is life-affirming. It is something we do well to become very good at if we value our own spirit and life. If we do not value our own spirit and life, something very serious is wrong and we do well to address it.

Self-Protection Takes Many Forms

For us humans, self-protection takes many forms. It includes breathing fresh, clean air; drinking fresh, clean water; eating fresh, organic whole foods; having sufficient clothing and shelter; sleeping well; doing meaningful work; and protecting ourselves from both predators and natural disasters. 

Being able to protect ourselves is one characteristic of living as a mature, adult human being.

Questioning Relinquishing Our Responsibility to Others

We do well to recognize that often those who encourage us to depend on them for our protection, do us no favors. They nurture a dependence on them that weakens our natural instincts and bodies, and limits our freedom. They put us at risk.

Questioning Self-Sacrifice

We do well to recognize that often those who call for self-sacrifice do us no favors. Those who call for self-sacrifice rarely sacrifice themselves. They call on others to do what they themselves will not. 

However, we also do well to recognize our natural instinct to put our own lives at risk for those who are dear to us. For example, it is natural for parents to risk their own lives to protect their young. It is natural for friends to risk their lives for each other. Such actions to protect the lives of those dear to us and unable to protect themselves, differ greatly from those where we are asked to sacrifice our lives for cowards who clothe their appeal in abstractions of greater causes and higher callings.

Some Question to Consider

How safe are you? Are you giving yourself the air, water, food, shelter, and protection from harm you require in order to not only live but thrive?

What do you need to do to better protect yourself from harm?

What can you do today to take some steps in the direction  of better protecting yourself from harm?

If you have relinquished you responsibility for protecting yourself from harm, what can do to take it back?

Why Practice Thumotic Spirituality?

Thumotic spirituality isn't for everyone.

It isn't for those at home in the status quo of the Western industrialized culture- capitalists and their machine-like factory workers building widgets and providing services in compliance with productivity numbers.

It isn't for those at home in the Western monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in which adherents alienate themselves from non-believers as well as the rest of nature.

Neither is it for those who seek an escape from Western industrialized and monotheistic culture by turning to Eastern religious ways and looking inward.

Thumotic spirituality is for those who can no longer deny the denial of life, destruction, depletion, depression, disease, and death in the wake of the so-called "progress" of Western civilization.

It's for those seeking a life-affirming alternative within Western civilization. 

It's for those who value life, all of life, and want to engage in rather than escape from it. 

It's for those courageous enough to be responsible for their own life in relation with others, blaze their own path out of the Western status quo, and shift the momentum of Western civilization, one person, one step, at a time.

Everything Follows From Being Spirit-Centered

The heart of thumotic spirituality is being centered in spirit, with spirit clearly understood in terms of thumos as "that which makes alive."

When we are spirit-centered we are within all of the other parameters of thumotic spirituality: clearly-defined, nature-focused, empirically-based, life-affirming, and Western-rooted.

When we are spirit-centered, we are mindful of spirit in ourselves and everyone else.

When we are mindful of "that which makes alive", we are mindful of nature and aware that it is alive.

We are mindful of nature by way of our own perceptions, our own experience; that is, empirically, not on the basis of an external authority.

When we are mindful that everything- or better, everyone-is alive, our natural response is to value and respect everyone, every living being. We naturally take life only when it necessary to sustain our own. We naturally take the minimum we need and nothing is wasted. In other words, we affirm, we say "Yes!" to life, our own and that of others.

When we do all of the above, we Westerners are deeply rooted in our own civilization and culture, the civilization of our ancestors, who gave us life, and whose spirits live on is us and those who come after us.