Re-Visioning Spirit is Now Available from BARNES & NOBLE : )

If you are interested in being more aware of your own spirit and the spirits of others, spiritual health and well-being, and spirituality, my first book is for you.

It is now available from BARNES & NOBLE here: Re-Visioning Spirit: A Brief Introduction to Thumotics

Why not be among the first of those bold enough to re-vision spirit?

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

Intro to My Second Book...

Here is part of the Introduction to my second book, Thumotherapy: Spiritual Healing Beyond Religion and New Ageism: 

We are ripe for a historic change regarding spiritual healing. The purpose of this book is to promote that change. But the change I propose in this book might not be what you think or want.

This book is for the few who are ready to go first in creating the much needed change regarding spiritual healing. It is not for those who are at home in and benefit from the status quo of mass confusion about spiritual healing, the status quo in which we have no general consensus on what spiritual healing is and relegate it to the private, personal domains of religion, metaphysics, existential psychology, psychism, and New Ageism. 

In the current reality we have created, we have no general consensus on what spirit is much less spiritual healing. “Spiritual healing” can refer to any number of very different things. In my first book, Revisiting Spirit: A Brief Introduction to Thumotics, I wrote-

"Spiritual healing" is part of our vocabulary, but we have no general consensus on what the words mean. For some spiritual healing is healing of a person's inner self or soul. It might involve the healing of one's past life, becoming enlightened, having one's soul saved from damnation, finding one's purpose, escaping the cycle of reincarnation, or ascension to a higher vibration or level of consciousness.

For some spiritual healing is healing by non-medical, religious, metaphysical or psychic means. The means of spiritual healing might be prayer, meditation, receiving healing energy, a shamanic journey, guided imagery, past life regression, connecting with one's Higher Self, crystals, or gaining insight through a form of divination. 

For others spiritual healing is healing from a supernatural or divine being such as a god, goddess, the Buddha, Jesus, a bodhisattva, angel, saint, or ascended master. 

For still others spiritual healing is something else.

I do not believe we should suppress or do away with our current reality and those at home in it. I believe we should create a new alternative that expands and thereby moves beyond the current reality. I believe in a creating a reality that is better by being more life-affirming. I believe in a reality in which more of us are spiritually healthy and well. I am devoted to doing what I can with others to help create that reality.

In our current reality “spiritual healing” means anything an individual wants it to mean. So do “spiritual health and wellness” and “spiritual disease.” Rarely do those who use the words define them.  As a result we cannot be sure what they mean. Neither can we develop shared scientific study or publicly recognized professional practices related to spiritual health and wellness, spiritual disease, and spiritual healing. Besides, much of what is currently called spiritual healing, requires dependence on and blind faith in and the spiritual healer rather than exercising one’s own freedom and ability to heal. 

Imagine what our current reality would be if we had no general consensus on the meaning of “physical health and wellness”, “physical disease” and “physical healing“; “mental health and wellness”, “mental illness”, “psychiatry” and “psychotherapy”; and “social health and wellness”, “social disease”, and “social healing.” What a chaotic mess that would be.

Fortunately, we have created general consensuses on the meanings of physical, mental, and social health,  wellness, disease, and healing. I believe in creating a general consensus on the meanings of spiritual health and wellness, spiritual disease, spiritual healing, and spiritual therapy.

Spiritual Healing, Part One

Defining Spirit

As I mentioned in my previous post, for the next few months, I’ll be writing about spiritual healing. However, it’s very likely that what I write about spiritual healing is not what comes to your mind with the words “spiritual healing.” So that you can better understand what I write I’ll define my terms as I go. Let’s begin with “spirit.”

I do not use the word spirit to refer to anything metaphysical, religious, or psychological. I base my description of spirit on the Homeric word thumos and define it as “that which makes alive.” It is the difference between being alive or not. It is principle of life in all living things. Spirit is the same in all living things, not different in or unique in us humans.

Spirit, Mind, Soul

Spirit is not to be conflated or confused with soul or mind. Soul and mind are associated with having an ego, personality, and mentality. Ancient Greeks believed the human psyche (soul, mind) survived death and went to Hades, the underworld realm of the dead. Whether or not all living things have a soul or mind is beyond the scope of this blog. What is important here is the distinction between spirit and mind or soul. 

Spirit is more primitive than soul and mind. It is simply that which makes alive, the difference between being alive or dead. For example, if an oak tree is alive rather than dead, it has spirit. Whether or not is has a soul or mind is a different matter. The same is true for all living things visible to us, from the very simple to the most complex. If there are goddesses and gods and other beings invisible to us, spirit is what makes them alive too.

Spirit: Quasi-physical, Natural

Spirit is quasi-physical, neither metaphysical nor psychological. It is associated with the wind, our breath, lungs, and heart.

We humans can feel it in the center of our chest, between our nipples, and behind our breast bone. Sometimes we feel it expand upward into our throat and downward into our solar plexus,  genitals, and rectum. Sometimes our spirit is low and we feel tired or weak. At other times our spirit is high and we feel energized and strong.

We can sense it in others. Some have sweet spirits; some have mean spirits. Some we recognize as having great spirits: Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus, Catherine the Great. When some enter a room we feel their spirit fill the room. We even recognize that some children have their parent’s spirit: “She has her dad’s spirit.” “He has his mom’s spirit.”

That which makes us alive, spirit, is in and of this world rather than other-worldly. It is natural, not supernatural.

This I Believe About Our Spirit and Health

This I Believe about Our Spirit and Health

I believe that knowing what health is can help us stay healthy. When we are ill or injured, our knowledge, our self-talk about and mental images of health, make it possible for us to do things that help us heal. That’s conventional wisdom these days. This wisdom is especially emphasized by those who believe in mind over matter and mind-body medicine.

Two Things Missing

But there are at least two things missing in the conventional mind-body paradigm: our sociality and spirituality. Conventional mind-body medicine gives little attention to our sociality, the fact that we have social connections with others. Our social connections can either help or hinder our healthiness.

Conventional mind-body medicine also gives little attention to our spirituality. By spirituality I do not mean any of the countless religious, metaphysical, or existential things many of us mean by that word. By spirituality I mean mere the fact that we have spirit. And I what I mean by “spirit” is “that which makes us alive rather than not.”

Our spirituality precedes our physicality, sociality, and mentality. To be physically alive, connected socially with others, and think, we must first have spirit. We must be alive. No spirit? A cadaver. No spirit? No relationships. No spirit? No mind.  

The Focus of My Blog for Upcoming Months

The focus of my blog posts for the next few months will be on our spirit. I’ll address the following questions:

What are the characteristics of a healthy spirit?

What are the characteristics of an ill or injured spirit?

What harms our spirit?

What helps heal our spirit?

What is the role of our spirit in our physical health and well-being?

What is the role of our spirit in our social health and well-being?

What is the role of our spirit in our mental health and well-being?

My Goal

My goal is to blog my way to my second book. It will be on spiritual healing.

Feel free to join me in this adventure. I welcome your companionship along the way.

My First Book....and Second...

My First Book

Last Friday I finished the initial draft of my first book, Revisioning Spirit: A Brief Introduction to Thumotics. In it I present a critique of our current view of spirit, spiritual knowledge and healing, and spirituality. I also revision these and present a new view. 

My next steps are proof-reading and editing. Then I will publish it. My goal is for it to be available by the end of this year.

Respect for Writers

Writing my first book lifted my respect for writers to extreme heights. Until I started writing, I  did not know how much mental and emotional energy it took. It can be exhausting to put thoughts and feelings into words for several hours a day.

My hunch is that the proof-reading, editing, and publishing processes will be even more demanding. By light years I prefer writing to proofing, editing, and publishing!

My Second Book

In order to keep moving forward practicing my arts of thought-leadership, writing, educating, and therapy, I started blogging my way to my second book, Thumotherapy: A Brief Introduction to the Therapeutic Care of the Human Spirit. I will start posting this week.

Please follow my blog and share your thoughts and questions. I welcome you and what you have to say! 

Future Posts

I started this blog in order to blog my way to my first book. I did nothing to promote it. All I did was discipline myself to publish at least three posts per week. It was a good discipline for me. It worked. I'm about three fourths of the way through writing my first book.

Since my first book is a brief introduction to Thumotics with many ideas crying for further development, I decided to use this blog to do just that. I'll develop and share my ideas here first. Then I'll refine them and publish them in future books.

So, if you are in one of the thirty-eight countries where I've had readers and are among those who like to be first, stay in touch. You'll be among the first to read my ideas regarding spirit.

Thank you for reading. Feel free to comment and ask questions as we go.

I'm Blogging Again!

So, it has been about a year and a half since my last post. During that time, I made my way through some of life's difficult challenges. 

Two Job Position Eliminations

For the second time in my 10 year career with one of our nation's premier hospices, my position was eliminated.

Creating My Own Position

Between those two position eliminations, I had the rare opportunity of envisioning, creating, proposing, and implementing my own position as the Clinical Director of Counseling Services. With the position I named my salary, picked my team, and designed and implemented a very innovative way of providing bereavement, music therapy, chaplain, and complementary and alternative medicine services. 

Even though many strongly opposed the innovative change I led, our patient and client evaluation scores were well above the national average in the areas we served. We also saw an increase in accessing our services.

The Director of Counseling Services was the second position I was in that was eliminated.

Foundation Work

I must have done something right. I was offered and accepted a position with our newly formed Foundation. I had the opportunity to help raise money for the hospice services I was so passionate about. After six months with the Foundation, I resigned and ended my ten and a half year career with hospice. It was simply time for me to move forward with my life's work: revisionsing spirit and everything related to it, writing about it, educating about it, and caring for clients. 

Legal Separation and Engagement

During the same period of time my marriage of thirty-six years ended and I met the love of my life. Now we're engaged. I'm happier than I've been since I was a little boy.

Writing

In the midst of the above mentioned difficult challenges, I continued to work on the first book that this blog led me to. My plan is to have it published by the end of this year.

My thoughts and practices regarding spirit have developed significantly since I wrote posts for this blog. Now it's time to start blogging again.

Purpose of My Blog

I promise you this, you will not be board reading my blog. You will get to think thoughts and experience things you never have before.

To allude to the introduction of my first book: The purpose of this blog is to disturb you. It's not for everyone, just the courageous few.

  

Spirit, Breath, Wind

Spirit, breath, and wind is spiritbreathwind. One. The same.

Spirit is breath. Breath is wind.

Where there is breath, there is wind, there is spirit.

No wind, no breath, no spirit.

No spirit, no breath, no wind.

Inspired, we breathe in wind and spirit and become alive.

Our breath is the wind and spirit in our nostrils, mouth, lungs, blood and cells. We inhale and breathe it in. We exhale and return it to inhale it again.

We know not the birth of spiritbreathwind. We know not where it comes from. We know not where it goes or how long it will be. It is a mystery.

Spiritbreathwind is invisible to our eye. We see, hear and feel its affects: Leaves speak rustled words and dance in the wind that rustles our clothes and hair. It has done so since long before we began walking the earth and will do so long after we're gone. It needs us not and yet on it our lives depend.

Sometimes it howls. Sometimes it's unnoticed it's so still. Other times it's gentle, refreshing and inspires a smile. At still other times it's warm, thick, and sultry too. Not just the wind. Our spirit and breathe too.

When we breathe out our last breath, we breath out our spirit into the wind never to breathe it in again. We expire.

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.   

  

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

The Spirit of Living Water

I live in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of Western North Carolina where the Cherokee once lived. They, as did my European ancestors, knew experientially the different spirits of different kinds of water. For example, they knew the experience of drinking living water. Later, confined and crowded together by European immigrants, they knew the experience of drinking dispirited water.

Growing up, I drank living water at my grandparents' homes in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of Northeast Georgia. Their water came directly from mountain springs on their land.

While living in Boone, North Carolina, as young adults, my wife and I with our two year son, drank the living lithia spring water in Ashe County.  Click the following link for more information:  http://www.cabinsathealingsprings.com/our-history.htm

As an adult, for several years my wife, children and I lived in East Tennessee. Our house was connected to the city water system. However, I got our drinking water from a spring of living water in New Market, a small town next to the one we lived in. Click the following link for information about the spring http://www.houstonsmineralwater.com

Over the years we've also made several trips to Hot Springs, North Carolina, where we drank the living spring water at Hot Springs Spa: http://nchotsprings.com

Living water moves. It's fresh, clean, and alive. It's found in clean springs, streams, creeks and waterfalls. It inspirits and enlivens those who drink it. It restores and lifts weary spirits, especially the spirits of animals, including us humans.

Now living water is difficult to find. Reckless, industrialization and greed for financial gain have and continue to pollute, chemically process, and dispirit the waters of fresh springs, streams, creeks, waterfalls, and almost all other natural sources of fresh water.

Many, if not most, Westerners, have lost the awareness and experience of the spirit of living water. To find living water to drink takes significant time and effort.

Perhaps if more of us experienced for ourselves the spirit of living water, we would also experience the lifelessness of the chemically processed water that flows from our faucets as well as the filtered water we drink from plastic bottles, including bottled spring water.

Perhaps then we would be inspired to treat the water of Earth with more respect. Perhaps we would protect, clean, restore, and revive the water sources on which our lives and the lives of all the living depend. Perhaps we would stop polluting the waters of life and no longer need to chemically process it. Perhaps.

It's really up to us. 

Our regard for water is a direct reflection of our regard for life itself.

  

We Are Alive! The Fundamental Fact of Thumotics

The fundamental fact that I acknowledge and affirm in Thumotics* is that we are alive. We have thumos, spirit, that which makes alive.

Everything else I present with regard to Thumotics emerges from the fundamental fact that we are alive rather than not.

Being mindful of being alive moves me to a state of wonder: Wonder of wonders! I am alive! You are alive! We are alive together! I want to constantly live in this state of wonder.

Since I do not know why we are alive, being alive is a great mystery to me: Mystery of mysteries! I am alive! You are alive! We are alive together! I want to constanlty live with this sense of mystery.

Descartes declared, "I think, therefore I am." I declare, "I am alive, therefore I pulse, breathe, hunger, thirst, see, hear, smell, touch, taste, feel pain and pleasure, emote, desire, imagine, think, speak, choose, move, and take action. The only reason I exist and can do anything, is because I am spirited and alive. Everything flows from being alive rather than not.

Since I am alive rather than not, I feel the drive to remain alive. This drive inheres in spirit. It propels me to do whatever I need to do to live. I am always answering with my actions the question, "What will I do to remain alive?"

I am not alone. I am alive because of others: my parents and ancestors before them, but also because of farmers, physicians, scientists, law enforcement officers, military personnel, and countless others. 

I live with you and all other living beings who are also driven to remain alive. So, I am always answering the question with my actions, "How will I live well with others?" How will we treat each other and all other living beings with whom we share this planet we call Earth?

*Thumotics is an umbrella term based on the Ancient Greek word for spirit, thumos. It includes thumology, thumotherapy, thumotic spirituality, and thumotic theology.

Goddesses, Gods, and Spirit, Part Five: Our Relationship

Goddesses, gods, and we humans share much that is significant: We are alive. We share spirit. We are conceived by parents and born. We grow up to become adults. We mate and have children.

We live in the same universe. We experience pleasure and pain. We experience the full range of emotions. We have our own strengths, unique abilities, and weaknesses. We make choices and take actions that sometimes help and sometimes harm. 

We communicate with each other. Some call our communication with deities prayer. Some call the communication of deities with us revelation. Others call it divination.

Some goddesses and gods have no interest in us. Some do. We have no interest in some goddesses and gods. In others we do. Some of us have only one goddess or god. Some of us have two or more.

The point: There are goddesses and gods. There are us human beings. And there is the relationship between us.

Some believe their god is the only god. They also believe there is only one right way to be in a relationship with their one true god. That's fine. They are free to believe as they so choose.

Some believe that everyone who believes in one god believes in the same god. They just call him by different names. Others believe their god is the one true god that all should worship and the one god others believe in is not the one true god.

Others believe there are many goddesses and gods and each is related to in their own way. That's fine too. They too are free to believe as they so choose.

The relationship between deities and us varies from deity to deity and human to human. The relationships are dynamic and complex. That's what makes them so interesting.

Goddesses, Gods, and Spirit, Part Four: Eternal Life? Cont'd

Instead of being eternal, I believe that goddess and gods are potentially immortal. Here's why:

First, within our visual range most, if not all, of the living things we see are conceived by parents in some sense of the word, they are born in some sense, grow to maturity, decline, die, decompose, and are reborn in some sense of the word. Consider the life cycles of oak trees and  cats for illustrations. It seems reasonable to me that the life cycles of living beings outside our visual range would follow the same pattern. Living organism too seen only with microscopes follow this pattern. It seems that goddesses and gods would follow the same pattern.

When we consider the narratives about goddesses and gods handed down to us from our Greek, Roman, and Norse ancestors, we see the same pattern with one exception. Goddesses and gods are conceived by their parents, born, and grow to maturity. The difference is that they consume food and drink that keeps them young and makes them potentially immortal. The Greek deities consumed nectar and ambrosia. The Norse deities consumed golden apples. 

The Greek, Roman, and Norse goddesses and gods can also die. For example, most of the Norse gods die in Ragnarok.

The deities of our Greek, Roman, and Norse ancestors live and act in the same world as do we and the rest of nature rather than an eternal, unchanging realm apart from this world. They even involve themselves in human events, such as war and and sex. Their existence is consistent with the rest of living beings that we know. Rather than devaluing life they value and live it as do we.

I can believe in such beings that value and affirm life.

Goddesses, Gods, and Spirit, Part Three: Eternal Life?

As mentioned in the introduction to this series, spirit, understood in terms of the Ancient Greek concept of thumos, is that which makes alive. Everything that is alive has spirit and is spirited, including goddesses, gods, and other beings invisible to us humans.

The question I address in this post is whether or not I believe goddesses and gods are eternal. In addressing this question I reflect on the meaning of "eternal", the effects of believing that goddesses and gods are eternal, the meaning of immortal, and the effects of believing that goddesses and gods are immortal rather than eternal.

First, I do not believe that goddesses and gods are eternal. Here's why:

In Western civilization "eternal" tends to mean "always has been and always will be." An eternal god is without beginning and end. He is unchanging. He has no parents that conceived him, no birth, growth, decline, death, and rebirth. Such a god by necessity exists "outside of time", apart from the universe, and in a supernatural/metaphysical realm.

The effect of such a belief is the valuing of a realm, life, and existence that is outside the world we live in. It exalts what is eternal, unchanging, separated from "this world." It values life before and after the life we live in "this world." Those who believe in eternity often speak of going to a better place than this world after they die. Such a belief devalues, and often denies, all that is temporal and mortal, all that changes, and all that is of "this world"; that is, all of nature.

I simply cannot believe is something so life-denying.

Goddesses, Gods, and Spirit, Part Two: What I Believe

When it comes to the existence of goddesses, gods, and other beings invisible to us humans, I describe my current perspective as that of an optimistic agnostic believer: I'm an agnostic because I do not know with certainty that goddesses, gods, and other such beings exist. I'm optimistic because I have good reasons for believing that they do exist. I'm a believer because I think it is reasonable for me to believe that such beings exist and I chose to do so. Here's why:

There's More Than Our Human Eyes Can See

First, I believe it is possible that divine and other beings invisible to us humans exist because I know that our physical senses are limited in their abilities. For example. our field of vision is within a very narrow energy range. It's between approximately 400 and 790 THz (terahertz). We cannot see in the ultraviolet range below 400 THz. Neither can we see in the infrared range  above 790 THz. Moreover, we cannot see gamma rays, microwaves, radio waves, x-rays or anything else outside our visual range.

Using microscopes we can see very small and otherwise invisible forms of life . But we do not yet have macroscopes with which we can see very large and otherwise invisible forms of life. I think it is reasonable to believe that there is much more that exists in the universe than what we are now able to see with either our unaided or aided eyes. I think it is reasonable to believe that living invisible beings that have been called goddesses, gods, angels, deamons, fates, geniuses, and other names exist. Why not?

The Weight of Testimony

Secondly, the testimony recorded throughout history and currently in the world today bearing witness to direct encounters with such beings carries weight with me. Reports of direct experiences with goddess, gods, angels (messengers), evil spirits, and other invisible beings are common throughout historical records and in the world today. Indeed, I am among those who bear such witness. 

A Conceptual Framework

Thirdly, Henri Corbin's article,  Mundus Imaginalis*, in which he articulated the differences between the imaginary and the imaginal, provides a conceptual framework for me to believe in the existence of goddesses, gods, other invisible beings, and other realms. 

So, when asked if I believe that goddesses, gods, and other invisible beings exist, I say, "Yes, I do and I am optimistic about one day developing our technologies that help us better know and communicate with them." In order to develop such technologies in the West, we will have to further shed the materialistic view of the universe that still dominates our culture.

* http://www.bahaistudies.net/asma/mundus_imaginalis.pdf

Part three of this series will present my current view on whether or not goddesses and gods are eternal.