Welcome Player 1, you have been physically born through genetic DNA sharing between two human beings. You have been given a combination of traits and predispositions that these two other beings have, and will be subjected to the environments of the world called Earth. You have time to develop further skills and gain knowledge throughout your stay, you have the gift of free will just like everyone that is born into this world, choose for yourself. Remember that everything that takes place, happens for a reason. Those reasons are sometimes unknown to you in the present, and won’t be understood until further information is gained. Good luck, and don’t lose your life. (transmission ended, now transferring you to current circumstances.)
My skin continues to itch as I feel the tension grow and fade with every repetition. I feel my face getting flush and my heart starts speeding up as I push through the burn. When I complete my set, I feel the blood pumping through my veins. I look in the mirror and see someone flexing in the background, admiring their body definition. I also see, someone else looking at this person and shaking their head in disgust. I’m just watching, until I start again with my exercise. It’s the dreaded leg day.
In this game called Life, I have a firm belief that there are two different parts to our character. We have a physical body that consists of our emotions, mental capacities, and physical abilities that have been genetically passed down from countless combinations of ancestral traits as well as an adaptation to environments and drastic changes. Then we have a not so mentioned, hardly noticed shadow of sorts, our spirit. Some sources call it a spirit, others call it a soul. Some deny its existence, while others obsessively try to be consumed by it. I was able to observe the dominance of the physical focus that was happening at the gym, and it made me reflect on why I was there. But lets back up a bit and cover some other things before going into this example.
Baby Me
I have always been told that I have my dad’s nose, but look like my mom. I’ve heard many times, “I see a lot of your mother in you.” or “Your body type is a lot like dad’s.” That’s probably because I am a combination of them both and that’s who we all are when are first born into this world, a fresh tangible conglomeration of flesh and blood, organized by none other than my parents. We have each inherited genetic traits, physically, emotionally, and even personality wise. All of which are filtered through our environments, which I touched on with the different environments of our characters from my last post. Do mutations exist? Absolutely. Do abnormalities occur? All of the time. Physically, we are born imperfect, our environments aren’t perfect, and the risk factors we are born into are definitely not perfect.
I don’t think I really even noticed my surrounding environments until I was about the age of 8 or 9, my world consisted of my home, school, and church life. My acknowledgment of society was probably hidden in the clouds of my developing judgement. I was also made aware that I had something called a spirit. My first impression was that I had a ghost inside of me….and ghosts were scary blood sucking murders….whatever that meant.
I also started to see the role of me being the oldest child materialize into all of my choices having consequences on my siblings. One of the conclusions that I’ve come to from being the oldest in my family, has been the different skill sets and abilities that everyone has.
For example, I’ve always been the leader/counselor in my family. Meaning I get a lot of the questions about life perspectives that my siblings are curious about since they havent experienced them yet. My other siblings have traits and talents like being a mediator, comedy, drive, empathy, spiritual, friend and many others. My parents also have traits that we have all been able to observe and adapt with. So far, we are a pretty well oiled machine when everyone is working together and the weaknesses are put aside.
Probability of circumstance
Throughout this development of life and within my systematic environments, the meaning of ‘everything happens for a reason’ wasn’t really comprehended until I was about 16 or 17 years old. I remember the distinct thought, “There have been an estimated total of 107 billion people that have ever lived on this planet. I just so happened to end up as the oldest of 6 other kids, being brought up in the religious environment of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints? It’s just some crazy coincidence that I wasn’t in a different circumstance? I don’t believe in complex coincidences.”
One important fact here, is that because of our unique circumstances and if everything happens for a reason, we are the only us. You are the only you! You are the most complex, unique, individually talented organism on this planet. Thank you for being here to read this. Don’t ever forget that.
It was also around this age that a quote from one of the religious leaders or a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Boyd K. Packer quoted, “We are not physical beings going through a spiritual experience, but a spiritual being going through a physical experience.” (He quoted Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French philosopher).
My first initial experience in hearing this wasn’t very impactful, I didn’t really grasp the intensity and deeper meaning until later in life. These words stuck with me and I never actually forgot them. But now? Am I not just a human being? Top of the food chain? Product of Evolution? What is my spirit? How does my spirit work?
There are a lot of questions, because my brain does that sometimes. Until recently, I didn’t start trying to calculate the answers to these questions until this blog post. I have also recently had personal experiences and observed consequences of certain behaviors that have made me think more and more about the physical vs. spiritual. So lets go.
Physical
With my mind being focused on this topic, I happened to have a dream. This dream was a weird one, something very visual and very abstract. Strange enough, to remember and to create a ‘paint’ depiction 😛
Ok, let me explain. In this dream, each person was categorized as two parts, physical and spiritual. The brain represents our physical self (which is also our mind and emotion). Our eyes are the windows of perception. From a previous blog I shared a diagram that explained Bronfenbrenner’s systems, and here they are depicted as lenses. With each system, the more ‘lenses’ the darker and darker the perspective. I’m not meaning dark as in bad or evil, but as a form or clarity. The more information you add, the more complex things become, the less and less you can see. Now you can also see, that this is primarily under the physical aspects of human beings because these are physical outlooks and perceptions. You can say that some of these systems of information can influence the spirit in a way, with religious and cultural values, but these are considered outside sources and not directly our own spirit.
Why is clarity important? If you remember I referenced a TED talk called the “5 Hinderances of Self-Mastery” and during that presentation this story was shared: A man was living close to a mountain, and every day he was thinking: How would it be to climb that mountain and what would I see on the peak? So finally, the day came, and the man went on the journey. Arriving at the foot of the mountain, he met the first traveler. So he asked, “How did you get up the mountain, and what did you see from the top?” And so the traveler shared his path, and also the view that he had. But then the man was thinking, “The way that this traveler described to me sounds very exhausting. I need to find another way to climb.” So he continued to walk on the foot of the mountain until he met the next traveler. So once again he asked, “How did you climb up that mountain, and what did you see from the top?” And so again the traveler shared his story. Still not being determined on which direction and which way to go, the man asked 30 more people, 30 more travelers. When he finished talking to all of them, he finally made up his mind. “Now that so many people already shared with me their paths and especially what they all saw from the top, I don’t need to climb there anymore.” It is very unfortunate this man never went on the journey. Now, to conclude this story, firstly, each individual needs to find the most suitable way to climb that mountain. But secondly, there is information possible to be shared with words, but it is impossible to share the experience of clarity.
Jumping back to the lenses depiction, you really can’t see something clearly or with clarity with so many different lenses. You have to see through those lenses, but that doesn’t mean you should let those perspectives dictate what enters your mind.
Spiritual
As you noticed, I didn’t have anything listed in the picture under Spirit. I think that’s because not a whole lot of information is out there, in a uniform sense. Also, I think by personal interpretation and experience, everyone’s spirit is very very unique and diverse and isn’t as observable. Depending on your religious upbringing, the idea of your spirit could be on one end of this “spiritual spectrum” while someone else on the other side of the world would have a very different version. In my “research” I was able to come across a few ideas that the world defines our individual spirits.
One research paper I found mentioned that there were three origins or beginnings of our spirit:
- The spirit is a concept of the mind.
- Which to me an example is that of like an Olympic runner, running to the very end with little to no energy and having the “spirit of a champion” or like the endurance spirit.
- The spirit is an individuals essence.
- In modern terms, this seems to be another way of saying someone’s ‘vibe’ or overall aura.
- I can remember that this is something my mom was really good at picking up when I was a kid. “I don’t have a good feeling about this”
- I also remember a time when a very disorderly man was walking down the street outside our house and my neighbors dog went ballistic when she normally was a very calm and quiet natured dog.
- In modern terms, this seems to be another way of saying someone’s ‘vibe’ or overall aura.
- The spirit is a vital energy
- Literally the spirit is what is keeping us alive in our bodies. “Life Force”
Pretty interesting perspectives eh?
Here are some other interesting and cultural ideas that I found. To preface first, the term ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ have been interchangeable for a lot of the things I read up on. I’ll explain more about the difference from what my personal experience has gathered later.
Culturally the bible states that beheading another person, is one of the worst crimes to commit because the of the beliefs of the soul. Egyptian belief was that the soul resided in the head, so if a beheading occurred the soul would be destroyed.
There was documentation from a Dutch missionary, Albert Kruyt, that depicted the cultural beliefs of the indigenous groups in Indonesia. One of the practices of the time was head-hunting which was valued because they contained the soul-substance. The soul-substance was considered a source of strength that could be transferrable from one person to another, it could be stored, and it would be a great benefit to the community.
My last example hits close to home, because of my allergies. From one of the stories in the Torah, when someone would sneeze their soul left their body. In this story, Jacob prayed that he would keep his soul after a sneeze, and that is why we commonly say “bless you” to wish the “sneezer” to keep their soul and their life.
Personally, a lot of the understanding that I have is based from my religious beliefs as well as an accumulation of other insights that I’ve experienced. I also think that the more information that you gather the more of an understanding that you can have, but of course you will only have clarity when you experience the “mountain” yourself. With that being said, I’ll share my experience.
My understanding of a spirit is that it’s a version of yourself that is connected to your true being. That being comes from the understanding that we are spiritual children of our Heavenly Father, that is where our spirits were organized from the intelligences available. After a period of time we reached a point of progression that required further expansion, which instituted the Plan of Salvation. Simply, we were to come to earth with a physical body to undergo further tests and experiences to further our progression. We initially started out as a spirit and then gained the physical body, hence the quote about us being spiritual beings. Now the time for us on earth is to be tested and to use our choices and agency to become more like our Heavenly Father. (basically focus on our spiritual growth through our physical experiences).
Focusing on my Spirit?
With the lack of information, it’s really difficult to gain a perspective on how to grow spiritually. Of course there are the religious aspects of studying the Word of God in the form of scriptures and from the words of divinely directed modern day prophets and apostles, who were formed as a leadership group after Jesus Christ was crucified and ascended back to Heaven. I also think that you can strengthen your spirit by figuring out who you really are. Some of those ways is based on the physical experiences of the world, maybe you are connected to someone that mutually feel have known each other for a long time but have never physically met. Perhaps you have a spiritual experience when you are able to observe the wonders of nature and other creations. I know that I have specific types of music that focus on the religious aspects and help lead me to further clarity. Maybe you can even know more about yourself spiritually, by directly praying to the source of your spirit. Music, Scripture, Prayer, Mutually profound experiences, God’s creations, and many other specific examples can allow you to feel and progress your spirit. The important part to remember here is that YOU can do anything that YOU feel like is specifically inclined to help. Something are easier for other to grow spiritually maybe because of certain gifts or traits physically, while others are better equipped to understand other ways. Your spirit is yours.
The Real Question
The real question comes down to what type of being you want to focus on…a physical animal or the spiritually focused soul. I have noticed in my own life, that when I tend to dive into the physical side of myself the spiritual side is hard to recognize. Vise versa, when I am feeling very spiritual the physical aspects of life really don’t matter anymore. I am not a perfect person as many can vouch, but I do know that you are the most perfect YOU, and your spirit is the long term version of that. You can say “YOLO” (you only live once) or decide that reckless enjoyment of life’s vices is really all that life is for. You can think whatever you want. But I want to end by telling you, that you matter. You are so special and unique and the more you focus on your spirit the more you’ll be able to see that. I know that we are all spiritually family, and as an older brother I want to make sure that my family knows that I am here to help. Physical life is full of adventures and fun experiences, but we are truly spirits first. Anything that involves our physical selves, whether it be personal preferences or addictions or weaknesses, we can solve those things when we focus on the spiritual first. The physical world is a very noisy one, as you have seen there are a lot of perspectives that cause our viewpoints to get a little murky and unclear. You can also think of it as noise, the world is a very noisy place and a lot of people/things say numberless perspectives at any given time. When I choose the spiritual side…it’s like getting out of the city and camping out amongst the stars, I feel at peace. As I am still trying to climb the mountain of clarity, I know that when I see through my spiritual lens first, my other physical lenses tend to just be baggage.
Thanks for reading! See you next time 🙂
Mind Puke 