Tuesday, August 17, 2021
3:25 a.m. To resume: Last time you thought we would continue by looking more closely at the “real situation,” you said, of soul and spirit.
Analysis followed by synthesis, followed again by analysis, and on and on. That is the surest method we know. So we look closely at something, in some detail, then zoom out to look at how it fits with other things, then back in for a close look at some other aspect and its relevance.
So, in this case, spirit and soul. Two different things? Not really. The same thing seen in different contexts? Again, not really. But you have to describe a thing in a certain way, if you are dealing in words, and then lo and behold, the mind jumps to the certainty that because a word exists, the thing it purports to describe must exist, and usually the mind continues on, automatically, to say that the reality of the thing is X or Y and nothing else.
Only, four-value logic allows the for intermediate possibilities that a thing both is and is not X (whatever X may be in a given argument) and that it may be neither X nor Y.
You are not yet hitting on all cylinders. Attend to your switches?
Thought I had, but all right. [I set them again.]
- The reality may be argued various ways. Soul and spirit are two aspects of something.
- Spirit is the continuing aspect; in a sense it is the larger being’s attention, unchanged and undiminished, sustaining the body and soul.
- Soul is the aspect of spirit that is distinct from the larger being’s
Yes?
Words. Very difficult. Easy to say something, less easy to say it and not cause misunderstanding.
Breathing isn’t always easy, either.
No, we recognize. In fact, rather than attempting to present an abstract description that will wind up being distorted by people’s unpredictable unconscious associations to the words employed, let’s set out a picture that your minds can use to spark recognition.
So, you are in 3D in a body with its physical heritage, very stubborn. It leaves you vulnerable to certain things and invulnerable to certain other things, not that you necessarily are aware of those susceptibilities and immunities.
Now remember, the body – in that it is made of “physical matter” – is part of the “not-you” as you experience it. Like the external world in general, it is shaped and molded and affected by the rest of the shared subjectivity: As the Bible says somewhere, you don’t have the ability to add an inch to your height or – as you might say – you don’t have the ability to change the chemical composition, except indirectly, in the way you may affect other aspects of the shared subjectivity you experience as “real.”
What maintains that body, moment by moment? Nutrition and exercise? “Mind over matter”? Blind functioning of genetics in an environment? It may look like any or all of these, but of course it is none of them, not basically. Those are methods of treatment, you might say, not intrinsic.
What maintains the body is what is sometimes called the breath of life. It can’t be seen or produced or manipulated. It can be coaxed, sometimes, and that’s the factor you call “the will to live.” But it is beyond your conscious control, and hence it is the thing that preserves you in 3D, moment by moment. You might say it is a single-pointed flame, whose only purpose is preservation of the viability of the body. Ambitions other than that, it has none. That is spirit in its purest form, entirely unaffected by what happens to you.
At the same time, there is the part of you we are calling soul. We used to call it mind, to lessen resistance from Rita or anyone who might shy away from a word they would associate with religious beliefs that they would find close to superstition. (We were avoiding trip-wires, in other words.)
Soul is a different aspect of the animating spirit. It is spirit in its receptive mode, so to speak. It experiences, and willingly experiences, whatever comes, and each time it decides how to react to what the shared subjectivity is presenting to the personal subjectivity. It changes, because it is designed to change. Its mission is to change or not change, according to its will.
Soul does not come into life with a blank slate. Patterns are inherited, courtesy of the interaction of its comprising strands and the nature of the time and place they are inserted into. Some call these predilections, these existing reaction patterns, this attraction to certain events, this tendency to respond in certain ways, karma. Some call it heredity, or fate. It is never accidental or malign or in any way a punishment for anything. It is the soul’s purpose to live those conditions, to make of them what it can and will.
In both cases, you see, what we are calling (perforce) by two different names are actually one thing in two circumstances, or you might say in the same circumstance, but with different orientation. And 3D continually tempts you to add “body” as a third force, though close analysis will leave you puzzled as to whether to call it part of your personal subjectivity or of the shared subjectivity.
And as you say that, I get that it is both, which is why it is sometimes experienced as a battlefield between forces, or as a musical instrument being played, or as a bicycle being ridden, or as a diving-suit preserving us in an alien environment.
All or any of these.
So, some talk of the mind-body connection. In other words, they are saying, “The mind is us, the body is it, but we can learn to affect it better.”
I doubt that many mind-body people would be willing to sign off on that definition of their attitude.
Still, it is so, intrinsically.
You mean, implicitly?
That too. Nor do we mean to imply that this is a “wrong” or unhelpful way to think of things. But we do say, your attitudes toward what your bodies are tend to shift unpredictably and frequently. You identify with your body, but then if it is sick, what? You don’t necessarily identify with the illness (though, if it continues long enough, some come to do so), but illness is an “it” affecting what is “you.” Once you progress from thinking of life as an unending collision of unrelated forces, you realize that you don’t get sick “for no reason” any more than anything else “happens to you” “for no reason.” But then, in that case, what is happening when you get sick?
- Are you being punished?
- Is it the result of neglect of certain rules of health, whether through carelessness or because unavoidable?
- Is this illness something you “need” (or, another way to look at it), something that could be useful?
- In short, is it affliction or gift or merely the prevailing weather?
What are you hinting at? Seems to me, how you define the body will largely determine how you experience illness, as gift or affliction or merely what happens.
Next time we will continue to look more closely at this puzzling thing called a body. It changes on you, all your life, but you tend to regard it as mostly persisting as it was. Not so, and for the reason that, neither do you as soul. In fact, body and soul are inseparable in their way, as spirit and soul are inseparable.
Thus, the three are inseparable.
You see any bodies wandering around without soul or spirit?
What shall we call this session?
Maybe, “Definitions: Body, soul, spirit.”
Well, did we really define the body?
Implicitly. But all right, what about “Definitions of spirit and soul”?
Okay with me. Our thanks as always.