BODY CONSCIOUS

Oh, the Language We Use

  In my previous Post I asked my Readers a question regarding the use of antonym's and synonym's to evaluate a series of quotes from well known Authors and determine if they were using the language of eternal matters or temporal matters.  the answer is - each one of the quotes used what seems to be eternal language, but can only have temporal meanings.  This same issue occurs in religion through Speakers, Writings, and Doctrines.  One can only imagine the confusion created over the years by countless repetition of many of these same teachings.

  If wellness of the body, the mind, and the spirit are to be understood and applied to our lives we must sift through the vernacular, the articulation, the doublespeak, the gibberish, the lingua franca, the synonyms and the antonyms to get to the facts.

  Every living human being has a spirit.  Every living human being has a soul.  At the point of conception a living spirit was created with eternal life associated within it.  Also at the point of conception a living soul was created, which is also eternal in nature.  The soul is at the very center of our being.  When the human spirit and the soul are combined they form what is described as the heart.  The soul is developed through our life experiences - good and bad.  Over years of training we become soulish people, that is to say "ruled by the soul".  It is the soulish nature that has control over our actions.  How we think, and how we act out is determined by vears of soul conditioning.  There in is the problem - as the soul grew in authority the spirit failed to thrive.  It is the immature spirit that suffers the consequences.

  Soul life is the result of life experiences which in turn will determine our reaction to those experiences.  We continue to build upon those experiences until our reaction become automatic.  When the soul becomes the controlling factor of our actions (or lack of actions) we have become soulish in nature.  On the other hand we have a spirit.  When the spirit is suppressed or overwhelmed by the soul it will render the spirit to an almost anemic state.  Starving for input the spirit suffers from a lack of nutrition while the soul consumes everything that comes its way.  Therefore the statement, "The spirit is willing, but the body is weak", becomes just the opposite of our true condition which is - "The body is willing, but the spirit is weak".  The soul has become the controlling force of the action or lack of action of the body.  With the soul constantly seeking gratification through the body we are in a controlled state, controlled wholly by the soul.

  Controlled by the soul the body, the mind, and the spirit have no reason to exist other than to gratify the selfish and sometimes destructive desires of the soul.  The concept of total body wellness is foreign to its very existence and thus it will fight the spirit for control.  Total body wellness requires that the spirit (as weakened as it is) take control back from the soul with a sense of urgency.  A fully charged spirit can and will take control of the soul.  The soul that is controlled by the spirit will desire wellness as a way of life for the body, the mind, and the spirit itself.

Is it an Antonym or a Synonym?

According to the American College Dictionary the definition of antonym is a word opposed in meaning to another; “good” is the antonym of “bad.”  Random House Dictionary states the definition as a word opposite in meaning to another.

According to the American College Dictionary the definition of synonym is:  1. A word having the same, or nearly the same, meaning as another in the language.  2. A word or expression accepted as another name for something.

Whether it an antonym or a synonym must be determined - when moving from temporal language (pertaining to time) to eternal language (time not pertaining).  We use the words soul, heart, and spirit without regard to considering the application.  Below are quotes regarding the soul, the heart, and the spirit, see if you can determine if they are temporal or eternal in their meaning.  Left to be considered were the intentions of the author of each quote.

 

Soul

Until you know that life is interesting – and find it so – you haven’t found your soul. ~ Geoffrey Fisher

Good for the body is the work of the body, but it usually bypasses the soul ~ Mignon McLaughlin

A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways – by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognize that the same thing happens to the soul. ~ Plato

Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul. ~ Mark Twain

What is soul?  It’s like electricity – we don’t really know what it is, but it’s a force that can light a room. ~ Ray Charles

 

Heart

A flower without a stem, is beauty waiting to die.  A heart without love, is a tear waiting to cry. ~ Octavio Paz

A kind heart is a fountain of gladness making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles. ~ Washington Irving

Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all. ~ Aristotle

Find the seed at the bottom of your heart and bring forth a flower. ~ Shigenori Kameoka

Go to your bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know. ~ William Shakespeare

 

Spirit

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit. ~ Helen Keller

There are only two forces in the world, the sword and the spirit.  In the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence. ~ Plato

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination. ~ Harry S. Truman

 

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Does Cold Exist – Does Darkness Exist?

To ask if cold exists is a question to consider when one contemplates eternal matters.  Cold does not really exist; according to the law of physics, what we consider “cold” is really the absence of heat.  Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy. Heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy.  Absolute zero (-460 degrees F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature.  Cold does not exist.  Cold is a word we use to describe the absence of heat. 

 

    It is also true that one should consider if darkness exists at all when discussing eternal matters.  Darkness does not really exist.  Darkness is in reality the absence of light.  Light we can study, but not darkness.  In fact we can use Newton’s prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color.  You cannot measure darkness.  A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it.  How can you know how dark a certain space is?  You measure the amount of light present.  Darkness is a term used by mankind to describe what happens when there is no light present.

 

 What term does one apply when speaking of eternal matters?  Since we live and have our existence in a “temporal” world we attempt to use temporal words to describe eternal matters.  It is no wonder we are confused about the location of the spirit.  In our effort to locate the spirit (eternal matter) we use temporal descriptions to identify and locate something that is eternal.  In reality we need to apply the same principal as was used with heat and light previously; the absence of either is the determining factor for identifying cold and darkness, and so it is with eternal.  To locate and clearly identify the eternal spirit that for centuries has been accepted by literally every culture and peoples the world over, we need to “think outside the (temporal) box” and start thinking eternal.  The eternal spirit that each and every human being has is identified and located by measuring the absence of temporal spirit.  Of course that is easier said than done because we want to revert to temporal methods of measurements. We need a new vocabulary of eternal words to find and locate the eternal spirit just as in heat and light.  If indeed the wellness of the body – the mind – the spirit must be equally enhanced in all three to have true wellness we have some work to do on eternal identification.

 

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Science and Faith - are they Compatible?

With gratitude to TIME Magazine’s series on the Human Body – The Brain, Jeffrey Kluger has compiled some interesting information titled The Biology of Belief.  Among others Kluger cites Dr. Andrew Newberg www.andrewnewberg.com/bio.asp who has spent more than 15 years studying how the brain reacts to religion and spirituality.  Newberg reports, “When people engage in prayer, it’s the frontal lobes that take the lead; that makes sense, since they govern focus and concentration.  During very deep prayer, the parietal lobe powers down, which is what allows us to experience that transcendent sense of having loosed our earthly moorings.  The frontal lobes go quieter when worshippers are involved in the singular activity of speaking in tongues – which jibes nicely with the speakers’ subjective experience that they are not in control of what they’re saying.  If one prays and meditates enough, some changes in the brain become permanent.”  People who describe themselves as highly spiritual tend to exhibit an asymmetry in the thalamus (remember, that is the area of the brain responsible for appetite and gratification).  Better-functioning frontal lobes help to boost memory, according to Newberg’s research.

 

When psychologist Jean Kristeller of Indiana State University www.indstate.edu/psychology/cshrs/oasis.htm recalled an earlier work exploring patient-centered care and the success achieved through doctors asking questions then being quiet and listening to the answers, it prompted her to develop a plan to add questions regarding religious beliefs and the role faith may play in recovery.  A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that faith may indeed bring us health.  People who attend religious services do have a lower risk of dying in any given year then people who don’t attend.  People who believe in a loving God fare better after a diagnosis of illness than the people who believe in a punitive God.  Dr. Gail Ironson www.psy.miame.edu/faculty/gironson a professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Miami who studies HIV and religious belief states, “Spirituality predicts for better disease control, even accounting for medications.”  Ted Kaptchuk OMD, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School states, “Religious belief is not just a mind question but involves the commitment of one’s body as well.”

 

What we are learning from science is that faith matters!  There seems to be an activity within us that speeds recovery from medical treatment or illness called faith.  It would also seem that science is discovering that those with faith in general are not as ill as often as those without faith.  Could this component be the activity of the eternal force within us that we seem to know so little about?  Why do we struggle with something that seems to be of such great value in relation to our overall wellness?  Is it merely lack of information, or the confusion caused by religion?  Perhaps if we could find the location of the spirit we could examine it in detail and get answers straight from the source.

 

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