The Problem of Mindlessness of Our Own Spirit

For our body to develop and move, we must first be alive. For our mind to think and learn, we must first be alive. Before we can interact with others, we must first be alive. Our spirit is what makes us alive rather than not.

Our spirit is as natural as our backsides, brains, and best friends. It is this-worldly rather than other-worldly.

Our spirit precedes our physical, mental, and social activity. It is the agent of our life and the purpose of our life. It drives us to keep living and guides us toward fulfilling our purpose. It sustains us as we create the narrative of our life one action at a time. By our spirit we know when we are fulfilling our purpose, straying from it, how to return, and when we are back on track.

The father of Western medicine, Hippocrates, said, “The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well.” Our spirit is that natural healing force. It is the agent of our natural healing process that drives our recovery from injuries and illnesses.

One of our greatest problems as Westerners is our mindlessness of our spirit. We comply with other’s too readily. We rely on our minds too much. Our mindlessness of our spirit hinders our living healthy, purpose-fulfilling lives.

Be mindful of this: your own spirit. It is the agent of your life. It precedes your thoughts, actions, and interactions with others. Go with it. Act in harmony with your spirit. Discipline your mind to serve rather than constantly second guess your spirit. Interact with those who help rather than hinder you in fulfilling the purpose of your life.

For more about spirit, consider reading this:

Re-Visioning Spirit

The Spirit of Earth

Like a dancer on ice skates, Earth spins. Who knows how long her dance has lasted or will?

When I walk through the woods, I see that the path on which I walk differs from how it looked yesterday. Rocks appear today that weren't there yesterday. In some places the soil is dyer than it was. In other places, the wind has rippled sandy soil.

Earth moves. She's alive. Spirited.

Wind spirits Earth. So does water and fire.

No weak, demurring spirit is she. Her solid strength supports the weight of all. She bounds raging rivers and waterfalls and limits stormy seas.

And yet her strength is passive and receptive: She-

Absorbs all liquids, the heat of fire and Sun, and the cold of ice and snow

Allows herself to be blown by the wind and takes on wind's humidity and aridity

Hardens with dryness and softens with rain

Receives the remains of the slain

Earth gives her substance to the physical bodies of all:

Mountains, valleys, caves, and plateaus

Grasses, ivies, flowers, shrubs, and tress

Fish, bugs, animals, and birds

We all are her children: born of her through our mother's womb, nourished by her plants and animals throughout our life, and received back when we die.

We are kin.

We honor her when we live following her lead.

The Spirit of Fire

If it moves, it's alive.

If it's alive, it is spirited.

Doesn't everything move? Isn't everything alive, spirited?

I'm sitting in of my fireplace gazing at the fire I made. The flames dance and sing hums and snaps as they feed on the wood at their feet. They move. They're alive. They're spirited like every other living being.

As I watch and tend the fire, I notice that its spirit varies according to the wood and air it feeds on. When I serve it dry wood with a steady flow of of air, its spirit lifts and strengthens. It dances with delight.

When I serve it damp wood or lessen the flow of are, it's spirit calms. Its song modulates to a hiss of displeasure. Fed too much damp wood and too little air, its spirit departs altogether. It dies.

Fire can be smothered to death with water, earth, and either too much or too little air. 

It's mortal.

Like all over living beings, fire consumes and transforms what it feeds on. Ashes are fire's feces. Like all feces, they can be utilized in beneficial ways by other living beings.

In the wild, fire consumes and transforms. It kills, clears, and opens up spaces to allow in more sunlight and wind. New life comes forth. Thus fire affirms life.

For us humans, fire is both friend and foe. It gives warmth, cooks meals, protects, provides light in darkness, purifies, and helps us forge steel. It also destroys material goods and kills.

It's immoral and life-denying when it kills unnecessarily. It is moral and virtuous when it affirms life even in the taking of it.

We do well to acknowledge the spiritedness of fire. We do well to respect and befriend fire. We do well to not interfere with fire's freedom, except when it threatens our life and goods and those  for whom we care.

We do well to befriend fire.   

  

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.

 

Your Spirit at Work

Since spirit is that which makes us alive and our primary work is to survive and stay alive, our work is a spirit-related matter.

Spirit-centered work is life-affirming action taken from and for our own spirit and the spirits of others.

We Work to Sustain our Spirit

We work to provide for ourselves and those in our care the water, food, clothing, shelter, and protection we need to stay alive. Believing that our real work is something greater than sustaining our lives, denies the value of our lives. Is there any greater work that sustaining and promoting life?

Working to provide for ourselves water, food, clothing, shelter and protection easily becomes an opportunity for creativity and the production of art. It becomes an opportunity for each one of us to do what only we can do. Each one us is unique. We each have gifts to share that no one else can share.

The Slow Death of Capitalistic Industry

Capitalistic industry turned work into a form of economic slavery. Owners of the means of production were the slave bosses. Laborers gave their work and freedom in exchange for wages to spend on buying manufactured goods from other owners. It was a pretty good deal for both parties for a while.

Capitalism and its factories are dying a slow death. It's winning its race to the bottom where the cost of manufacturing so-called goods cannot be cut any further. Let us celebrate its demise. 

Emerging New Economies

A new economy continues to emerge. Now, we have the means of production and connection with each other at our finger tips with our computers and the world-wide web. 

Try this:

1.When you are working, pause and become aware of your spirit. Focus your attention on the center of your chest, behind your breast bone and between your breasts- your heart. This is your spirit's home. Breathe into and out of your spirit. Become aware of how your spirit feels at work. Does it feel affirmed or denied? Does it feel in place or not? Does it feel free or constrained? Do you feel that you are free to share your unique gifts at work or not?

Some will find that their work affirms their spirit. Others will not. In which group are you? 

2. Identify what is absolutely essential for you and your family (if you have one) to live. I mean absolutely essential.

Determine the cost of what is essential. Base the cost on where you now live.

Now, identify three things or services you are paying for that are not absolutely essential. You literally can live without them. 

Estimate how much time you spent buying, using, and maintaining those things for the time you have owned them.

What would you do with your time and money if you let go of those non-essential things?

Sex as Re-Creation,, Part 2

The second effect of sharing our spirit during sex is re-creation. I'm not talking about recreational sex in the casual, superficial sense. I'm talking about sex in a re-creational sense, in the sense of sex as a form of play.

Sex as Play

Play is any activity that is pleasurable. Pleasurable activities restore and renew our spirits. They re-create us. 

When sex is pleasurable, like other forms of play, it restores and renews our spirits. It re-creates that which makes us alive.

Two Basic Experiments

Try this: Set aside some private time for some sex play with yourself. Before you begin, focus your attention on the center of your chest. The area behind your breast bone and between your breasts. This area, often called your heart, is the home of your spirit.  If it helps, place one or both over this area and breathe into and out of your heart. Become aware of how your spirit feels. How would you describe the feeling?

After you have a good sense of your spirit, play. Have sex-play with yourself. Pleasure yourself to orgasm.

Afterwards, give yourself plenty of time to soak in the pleasure, then focus on your heart again. Breathe into your heart and breathe out.

How do you feel now? Do you feel different than before you pleasured yourself? If so, how? What effect on your spirit, if any, did your sex-play have?

When you have the opportunity to share your spirit with another during pleasurable sex, reflect on the experience afterwards. How did you feel before, during, and afterwards? Did your feelings change? If so, how?  What effect, if any, did the sex have on your spirit?

With these and other playful experiments, we each can discover for ourselves the connections between our spirit and sex. 

Our Spirit and Sex, Part 1

Our spirit is what makes us alive. We express and share our spirit with others in a variety of ways, with 

our facial affect, speech, tone of voice, gestures and actions.

Sex: A Spirit-Related Matter

Touching is one action by which we express and share our spirit with others. Since sexual touches and embraces are specific ways of touching, they are ways we express and share our spirit with others. So, sex is a spirit-related matter.

Sex as Procreation

In this post I want to highlight two effects of sharing our spirit during sex. The first is procreation. The woman gives birth to her egg. The man labors and with the final push of orgasm gives birth to his seed. His seed races to penetrate her egg. Their bodies and spirits merge at the cellular level and create new life. 

Sex is essential to life. By sex life continues and remains potentially eternal. As long as females and males embrace, eggs and seed merge, and healthy babies are born and nurtured to adulthood, human life goes on.

Sex as procreation-ovulation, sexual embrace, orgasm, conception, gestation, birth, nurturing and protecting our young to adulthood- these are life-affirming celebrations we do well to value and honor deeply.

In part two, I will discuss sex as re-creation and share some experiments to play with. 

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?

The Spirit in Play

Squirrels, cats, monkeys, and whales play.  Dogs, dolphins, and crows play. So do we humans.

What is Play?

It's natural. It's any activity during which we feel pleasure.

The pleasure we feel might be physical, mental or emotional. Since the seat of our emotions is our spirit, play is a spirit-related activity.

Play alternates with work, rest, and sleep. We work to provide for ourselves what we need to stay alive- water, food, clothing, and shelter. We rest and sleep to assimilate, recover and regain our strength. We play for pleasure and pleasure re-creates us. Pleasure renews our spirit, that which makes us alive.

The Necessity of Play

Re-creation, renewal of our spirit, is a basic necessity of life. When we do not play, we do not renew and replenish our spirit. We weaken our spirit and make ourselves vulnerable to illness and injury. We increase our risk of premature death.

We cannot not play. We naturally play just as we naturally breathe.

An article from Scientific American says this about play:

 “Free play,” as scientists call it, is critical for becoming socially adept, coping with stress and building cognitive skills such as problem solving. Research into animal behavior confirms play’s benefits and establishes its evolutionary importance: ultimately, play may provide animals (including humans) with skills that will help them survive and reproduce." You can read the entire article by clicking on this link

Here's a quote from an article from HelpGuide.org

"Playing can boost your energy and vitality and even improve your resistance to disease, helping you feel your best." You can the entire article here

Improving Your Game

It can be helpful to become aware of the activities we do for pleasure. Make a list of the things you do that give you pleasure.

When you play, be all in. Don't hold back. Play!

After you play, rest. Rest gives us time to soak in the pleasure of play and allow it to renew our spirit at deeper levels.

Conclusion

It's not much of stretch to say that our lives depend on play. 

The more we work, the more we need to play. It renews our spirit.

Spirit-Centered Sleeping: On Sleeping Well

In an excellent WebMD article, Camille Peri summarizes recent research on ten consequences of inadequate sleep:

1. Sleepiness causes accidents

2. Sleep loss dumbs you down 

3. Sleep deprivation can lead to serious health problems

4. Lack of sleep kills sex drive

5. Sleepiness is depressing

6. Lack of sleep ages your skin

7. Sleepiness makes you forgetful

8. Losing sleep can make you gain weight

9. Lack of sleep may increase risk of death

10. Sleep loss impairs judgment, especially about sleep

You can read the entire article by clicking on the link below.

Her article illustrates that sleeping well is essential to our health and well-being. It's essential to staying alive. Since our spirit is that which makes us alive, sleeping is a spirit-related matter.

So, we do well to assess how much we value sleeping well. How much we value sleeping well is a reflection of how much we value our own spirit and life. 

We also do well to assess how well we are sleeping. If we aren't sleeping well and want to do better, there is a lot of excellent research and information published about various things we can do to improve our sleep, heal and strengthen our spirits, and improve the quality of our lives. 

Sleeping well is a very individualized thing. It takes trying different things to find out what works best for us. So, enjoy the process of discovery. 

And be assured of this: you do not have to buy anything to improve your sleep.

http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/excessive-sleepiness-10/10-results-sleep-loss?page=1

Spirit-Centered Breathing, Part 4: Awareness

Once we've tried the basic spirit-centered breathing experiments, we have taken our first steps to no longer taking the air we breathe for granted.

Again, since we have to breathe to stay alive and spirit is that which makes us alive, breathing is a spirit-related matter. So is the quality of the air we breathe.

Our Homes

Wherever you are take note of the quality of the air you breathe. Often the air in our home is more polluted than the air outside. What chemicals and gasses affect the quality of air you breathe in your home? What can you do to reduce indoor pollution and improve it's quality? 

Simply switching from chemical-based cleaning products to vinegar, baking soda, lemon juice, and hydrogen peroxide can help. Adding air-cleaning in-door plants also helps. And, depending on where you live, opening the windows occasionally to let in cleaner outdoor air can help as well. 

Traveling

When you are walking, riding a bike, driving a car, taking public transportation, or flying take note of the quality of the air you breathe. Is it fresh and clean? Can you take alternative means of transportation or routes where you can avoid combustion engine exhaust and breathe cleaner, fresher air?

Our Destinations

When you arrive at your destination- office, factory, store, restaurant, someone else's home, a park, a hotel- what is the quality of air? How does it affect your spirit? Is the air helpful or harmful for you to breathe?

Conclusion

Unfortunately, in the highly industrialized West, much of the air we breath is polluted. Improving its quality begins with a heightened awareness of how essential clean, fresh air is to our health and well-being and the health and well-being of all the living.

Spirit-Centered Breathing, Part 3: Aromas

The breathe of life we breathe is often aromatic. Flowers, coffee, soap, recently cut grass, smoke from a chimney, steaks being grilled, freshly baked bread, cookies right out of the oven, perfumes and colognes, body odors, bathroom and liter box smells, chemicals, car exhaust, and a decaying carcass are just a few things that might scent the air we breathe on any given day.  

Have you noticed that it is when they change that we become aware of the aromas in the air we breathe?

Three Experiments to Try

Experiment 1 : When you become aware that the aroma of the air you're breathing changes, pause.

Focus on the core of your being, your heart, behind your breast bone and between your breasts. Breathe the aroma into your heart, hold, and breathe out. Repeat at least three times. 

What do you feel in your heart? How does the aroma in the air you breathe affect your spirit?

Experiment 2: Buy some dried white sage leaves, a small smudge bundle. You'll also need something to safely burn it in and some matches or a lighter.

Before you burn the sage, focus on your heart, the core of your being, behind your breast bone and between your breasts. Breathe into your heart and breathe out a few times. Take note of how your heart feels.

While focusing on your heart and breathing in and out, light the sage, let it burn for a bit, then blow out the flame.

Still focusing on your heart, breathe in the smoke of the sage, just enough so as not to be uncomfortable, and breathe out. Do this for several minutes and be mindful of any changes in your spirit.

What did you notice? Did your spirit change or remain the same? If it changed, how so?

Experiment 3: Buy one bottle each of the following high quality, pure, organic, therapeutic grade essential oils: lavender, peppermint, and lemon. Wait until after the following experiment to learn what all you can do with these oils.

Place the oils in front of you. Focus on your heart, the core of your being, behind your breast bone and between your breasts. Breathe into your heart and breathe out a few times. Take note of how your heart feels.

Open the lemon essential oil, put one or two drops in the palm of your hand, put the cap back on the bottle, and rub your palms together. Lift your palms up to your nose and breathe the aroma into your heart. Rub your palms together again and breathe in the aroma into your heart again. Repeat as many time as you like.

Focus on your spirit. Does it feel different than before smelling the lemon essential oil? If so, how so? How would you describe its effect on your spirit?

Do the same exercise with the lavender, then the peppermint oil.

Afterwards, learn what all you can use these essential oils for. Notice if you experienced for yourself what you learn from reading about the oils.

Spirit-Centered Breathing, Part 2: Wind, Breath, and Spirit

Thumos and spiritus the Ancient Greek and Roman words for spirit (that which makes alive) also referred to both wind and breath. The exercise that follows explores the connection between wind, breath, and spirit.

Go outside. Find a place to walk, sit or stand where you will not be interrupted.

Notice the wind. See and hear it rustling the leaves of the trees. It makes them alive. 

Feel the wind touching your face. How does it feel?

How would you describe the wind? Gentle or harsh? Hot, warm, cool, or cold? Humid or dry? Give it a personality. In Western culture, the four winds of the four directions are considered male spirits. Does the wind you feel, feel like a male?

Focus on the core of your being, your heart, behind your breast bone and between your breasts. Breathe into and out of your heart. Notice how your heart feels. Without forming an opinion about how you feel, just feel what you feel.

Breathe in and fill your lungs with the wind. Breathe out. Continue breathing in the wind and breathing out. Continue breathing the wind into your heart for as long as feels right to you.

How do you feel after breathing the wind into your heart? Do you feel the same or different than before you breathed in the wind? Do you feel more like how you described the wind or not? 

Whenever you have the opportunity, practice this exercise with different types and wind and see what happens.

Spirit-Centered Breathing, Part 1

Introduction

We can live three weeks without food, three days without water, and only three minutes without air. To stay alive we have to breathe. Since spirit is that which makes us alive, breathing is a spirit-related matter.

We do not just need air to breathe in order to stay alive, we need clean, fresh air. Breathing clean, fresh air sustains our spirit, life, health, and well-being. Breathing polluted air weakens our spirit, reduces our quality of life, causes disease, and quickens death.

And yet, it is so easy for us to be mindless of breathing and the quality of the air we breathe. It is so easy for us to take for granted the air that is essential to our lives and the lives of others. Worst of all, it is easy for us to take for granted polluting the air we breathe, as if polluting the air we breathe is just a natural part of life. It isn't.

An Exercise in Spirit-Centered Breathing

Try this: If you live in or near a city, pick a high traffic time, and find a place to walk or sit near the traffic. Focus on your heart (not the organ, the core of your being), the center of your chest, behind your breast bone and between your breasts. This is where our spirit resides. 

Breathe in through your nose, breathe out, and take note of how you feel in your heart. 

Still focusing on your heart, continue breathing in and out through your nose. Take note of what you see, hear, smell, feel, and taste. Take note of how you feel in your heart. Suspend forming an opinion about how you feel, just feel how you feel and remember it.

Next, take sometime to go to a highly wooded area during late spring or summer when there are lots of green leaves on the trees. Repeat the exercise you did in the high traffic area. Focus on your heart. Breathe. Take note of all of your sense perceptions and how you feel in your spirit. 

Compare and contrast the high traffic experience with the highly wooded experience. What was similar? What was different? Which feels more life-affirming in your heart?

Spirit-Centered Drinking, Part 4: Effect on Others

What effect does our drinking have on the spirits of others? Does it unnecessarily devalue, diminish, and deny the spirits and lives of others or does it help care for, support, and affirm their spirits and lives?  

Asking ourselves these questions might lead us to see that we can easily take for granted what we drink. We can drink mindless of the effect on others.

Asking these questions can lead us to understand that they are not easy questions to answer. Asking them can also inspire us to wonder and ask more questions.

I find it helpful to be specific. What effect does drinking this bottle of water have on others? My answers to this question differ from the ones I ask about drinking this cup of coffee, this cup of tea, and that shot of scotch.

Such questions can lead to me asking, "Where did this drink come from and how did it get to me?"

If I'm drinking bottled water, I can become aware of where it came from and how it got to me. When I do this I am amazed by the complex industrial matrix with which I connect when I take a sip from the bottle of water I hold in my hand. 

After I become aware of the matrix I'm in,  I can reflect on whether or not I want to remain in it or opt out for something more life-affirming for myself and others. If I choose to opt out, I can then explore my alternatives for the best life-affirming choice available to me at the time and take steps in that direction.