Spirit and Spirituality
Part of the general nature of your existence is spirit. The
spirit is not a thing in you it is you, potentially. Think about what you are
and what you possibility can become, view it as a whole person. The possible
you, is a complementary part of the actual you, there cannot be one without the
other. You exist in the present with the possibilities of your future self in
your control. Think of your present self as your spirituality or soul and your future
self as your spirit. Your spirituality or soul is everything that you are and your
spirit is everything you can possible become. In this sense soulful or spiritually powerful people are those who have a definite spirit of who they will be in the
future. With that in mind, we have an immediate and practical reason for
defining and understanding the nature of spirit and soul.
Let’s
start working on our definition of spirit by say that spirit is not a
substance. A spirit is general types of possibilities of a person for future
realization. In that sense the spirit does not choose what way these future
realizations will occur, that is in the power of your present soul, but
only that the future realization shall have a general character. We will define soul as some kind of condition without which a person would not be who
they are.
However the spirit does determine
what kind of activity is proper for bring about a general character or future
realization. That is to say, the spirit specify which kinds of soul
advances the realization of a general character. We may now define spirit in
relationship to soul, provisionally as spirit is general types of
possibilities that tend to realize themselves by determining the processes of a soul. Spirits are not future events, but are general possibilities of
general character that may be realized in the future.
Suppose for the moment that you want
less stress in your life, this is a possible future realization, a spirit of whom
you want to become. Now certain kinds of activities can bring about this
realization or not. Let’s say you can choose between accepting more
responsibility at work, which give you more stress (not a way to advance), you could choose
less responsibility, which gives you less stress (a one way to advance) or the same
responsibility and learn some stress reliving techniques (another way to advance). Note
that there is more than one way to achieve the realization, the possibility of
less stress do not tell you which to choose but it determines which ones will
allow you to achieve your goal to some degree. This is important because it
identifies the first symptom of spirit; that the end state or soul can be reached in different ways. The second symptom of spirit is that
the process is irreversible (you can’t reverse time to undo it). In this sense
the spirit of a less stressful life governs the whole process of achieving that
realization, spirit is an effectual part of life.
To this point we have talked about
spirit in a general way as some possibility for the future, which affects the
present. But what about spirit and soul in union, as something actual at this moment, the spirit
of the soul at this present moment is freedom or spontaneity, in that we ourselves are a
source of freely occurring possibility. This can be understood as self-determination
by a spontaneous reality or the inner spirit of life in the present. You might
ask “How do you know this to be true?” My short answer would be; if the
universe is totally deterministic, then the variety and diversity that it has,
would not continue to occur as it does from moment to moment. None the less, we
will continue under the assumption that we have the actual freedom within us at
this present moment, as a spirit of our soul. This does agree with our definition of
spirit; “spirit is general types of possibilities
that tend to realize themselves by determining the processes of the soul.”
The possibility of freedom or spontaneity as a spirit would realize itself in
you by your ability to choose freely (as a process) between different futures
or simply by an act of your own free will. Another way of identify the actuality of spirit
is that it has purposefulness. A thing or
person has spirit if it has its own purposefulness to guide its reality. What I mean by self-purpose is that the thing
or person can act independently of its surrounding conditions, it is its own reality
to some degree. The spirit is that which
purposes itself. This does not disagree
with our general definition of spirit but it does assign to spirit a specific characteristic within the soul. The general possibilities and the unique
actuality of self-purpose is a defining mark of spirit.
I think
there is a profound difference between the old idea of spirit as self-moving
reality and spirit as a self-purposing reality.
The self-moving reality is its own source and the self-purposing reality
is its own guide. The self-moving
reality is not part of the general reality but a self-purposing reality can be
part of general reality. That is to say,
self-moving reality was seen as a different substance
from the substance of reality in general.
But a self-purposing reality can be seen as a unique part or particular
function of the substance of reality in general.
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