Life’s Colorful Analogy
Each life is a unique blend of common physical ingredients powered by common spiritual energy. Life is a blending of the physical realm and the spiritual world.
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Consider this colorful analogy illustrating the physical and spiritual sides of life. Our physical world is like paint on a canvass with many ordinary colors derived from blending the primaries of red, yellow, and blue, and then black resulting from blending all of the colors together. Each painting is a unique work of art, but pictures can’t be seen in the dark, and spirit is an illuminating light that allows a picture to appear. Dimly lit pictures will slowly come into focus as evolving life gains spiritual energies. Early life appears with vague shapes in shadows of black and white that gradually brighten into sharp and clear images of fine detail and vivid colors. This illuminating light seemingly has no color until dispersed, such as in a rainbow, and then we discover the primary colors of light are red, green, and blue, and blending all of these colors together emits white light.
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As ordinary evolving life gradually gains awareness of the pervasive spirit within themselves and within all life around them, evolving life learns to focus loving energies and amplify spirit. Life’s picture brightens as colorful creations become incredibly precious.
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Innate spirit is within all life, but instinctual struggles can distract attention from spiritual love to physical needs. Infants can be loving angels until distracted by hunger or other physical discomfort. Adults become so preoccupied with physical needs, fears, and desires that they become neglectful of their loving spirit.
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Optional: Try pondering this question, “Can I brighten my picture?” Then choose to make an extra effort to shine your positive spirit on others.
“this little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine.”
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Shared spirit drives life at all ages and stages. Evolving life learns the power of a loving spirit, which strengthens and is strengthened by moments of joy, gratitude, and empathy.
Rock, Paper, Scissors
Life shapes environments and environments shape life. Life evolves within environments and evolving life influences environments. Physical beings are competitively reactive, spiritual beings are cooperatively proactive, and we are an evolving blend.
Physical force can be thought of as hard power and spiritual strength can be thought of as soft power. Evolving life can be compared to the game; rock, paper, scissors, where rock is hard physical power, paper is soft spiritual power, and scissors are in the middle functioning as an intelligent intermediary. Scissors functions somewhat like a mind between body and soul, which adapts to changing environments. Sharp scissors keep the game going in any environment by finding an intelligent balance. However, scissors are most effective in a balanced environment and become dulled from over-use in a primitive environment or rusty from under-use in an evolved environment. Rock has the physical power that tends to dominate a primitive environment. In caring environments that are highly evolved, the soft power of love outnumbers, overwhelms, and rules.
As life and environments develop over time, evolving life tends to require animal instinct to survive, but gains intelligence as developing life gradually becomes more spiritual. At the same time, environments tend to progress from physically dominated, to intelligently controlled, to spiritually ruled. Only the strong survive in a primitive environment, but cooperation becomes essential for growth in an evolving environment. Ability to trust the character of another becomes valuable as evolving life tends to gradually become more thoughtful and united. Primitive beings tend to be instinctively reactionary while evolving life becomes more reasoned in gaining awareness and knowledge, then the highly evolved wisely overpower instinct with compassion and empathy. “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, our world is at peace.” Evolved life ultimately overcomes primitive life with the more spiritual creating evolved environments, but does this game really end here?
Unfortunately, self-serving instincts tempt and even the highly evolved are vulnerable to temptations. Power tends to be a corrupting influence that tends to bring out the animal as absolute power corrupts absolutely. “The path of least resistance will cause rivers and people to be crooked.” Success can stimulate over-confidence with a sense of entitlement, which sows the seeds for future failures. Regardless of superior talent, powers fade with age, leaders die, and even the most benevolent will have successors that didn’t face the same struggles and usually lack equivalent talents. Also, new life is always emerging, primitive predators will threaten, and highly evolved life is still vulnerable to degeneracy, egoism, and corruption. Environments can devolve along with individuals within ecosystems.
Thus, our Rock, Paper, Scissors game continues.
Growth Strategies
Identity begins with how we choose to be. We have more control over how we choose to be than we have over what we choose to become. However, success in being as we choose is influenced by the health of the environment. A positive environment is more accepting as individuals feel part of something bigger than themselves. A negative environment will make positive growth more difficult. Worthy efforts for progress may first require the struggle to repair unfairness and unjust power imbalances within the environment or a move to a different environment. Primitive environments with animals competing for scarcities are likely to favor brute force with unfair rules. Even as spiritual love grows in abundance as it is shared in positive environments, a devolving environment can collapse into unacceptably low levels of negativity and hostility.
Assuming a generally positive environment, we try to regulate how we think because our thoughts are the seeds that grow into our reality. A positive approach is essential to pulling ourselves and pushing our environment in a positive direction. Our lives tend to move in the direction of our thoughts as individuals with differing attitudes experience the same events differently and these differing attitudes will influence future outcomes differently. Maintaining a positive attitude tends to generate positive outcomes, which is worthwhile for spiritual growth and becomes easier with practice.
Maintaining a balance promotes healthy growth. Like in sport, a balanced system promotes healthy competition with caring relationships among players and fair rules. A positive environment with just rules frees individuals to enjoy the game with a positive approach to individual growth as well as favorable feelings toward others within the environment. Winning is consequential but fairness to all is valued more than selfish notions of winning at any cost, otherwise resentments will emerge. A positive environment makes it easy to look at the bright side, find the silver lining, and be grateful for opportunities to try again after setbacks.
We are the creators of thoughts with the intention of pursuing a positive vision while keeping negative thoughts under control. Honestly acknowledging the negative is worthwhile and working to fix problems is worthwhile, but pursuing negative intention is counterproductive within a generally positive environment. We tend to find the good when we look for the positive, but also the reverse is true. Therefore, life becomes more about choices. Evolving beings can purposely pursue positive thoughts and learn to efficiently handle negative thoughts with understanding, compassion, and grace. We can remind ourselves to focus on positive thoughts created in our spiritual mind and to limit attention to negative thoughts reacting from our instinctive physical mind.
Self-serving instincts emerging from our physical mind are meant to be protective and helpful, but often lack the wider understanding that develops within an intelligent mind or the compassionate empathy of a spiritual mind. Instincts are valuable, but lack wisdom. Instinct often needs to be intelligently acknowledged and managed. For example, our instinct to reproduce begins at puberty with hormones that stimulate sexual desire. However, an intelligent mind helps determine when sexual desire is untimely or inappropriate. A spiritual mind helps determine when sexual desire will enhance a caring relationship or is only a physical drive requiring control.
The ingenious spiritual mind creates a positive vision capable of manifesting into reality until the protective physical mind, with self-serving instincts, begins to formulate the negative reasons against spiritual proaction. Obviously, protective arguments against action can be reasonable and legitimate, but negative arguments against action can also be excuses that needlessly stall legitimate actions, which then leads to regret. Often it could go either way and a greater understanding of the choices will lead to better decisions.
As we regulate our thoughts creating a positive vision capable of manifesting into reality, look at both the spiritual truths and the physical truths. Brilliant ideas met with inaction becomes regret when obstacles are primely physical, but this same inaction breathes a sigh of relief when the obstacles are spiritual. Be honest with yourself in respect to truth and do the right thing, even when nobody will notice because hiding from the truth will backfire sooner or later. Brilliant ideas compatible with spiritual truth will attract allies to overcome physical obstacles. Face the truth in choosing positive pursuits or working to change negative truths into positive truths. Appropriate truth considers the ability to influence positive change, even as change constantly occurs in different ways and at different rates.
People become attached to notions of how things have been and use it as an excuse, instead of considering how things can be. People can be glued to a self-identity; which they define by the way they have seen themselves in the past instead of defining themselves by a positive vision of who they can be in the future. We must define ourselves as the person we are striving to become and can honestly visualize ourselves becoming. Defining ourselves correctly can help us overcome the negative. For example, a smoker trying to quit will likely lead to many failed attempts, but an ex-smoker is more likely to avoid a single puff regardless of persistent physical cravings. If we can honestly visualize ourselves free of the smoking habit, then we can define ourselves as an ex-smoker, even while still struggling with the cravings of addiction. We can define ourselves by the image we create in our minds and break unreal limitations created by negativity. If we can honestly visualize ourselves in a particular way, then pursuing our vision might require a refusal to go along with others trying to define us differently. We can define ourselves as the people we are honestly working to become.
Set goals and create plans. Write goals and feel the emotion of visualized achievement. Visually rehearse goals in our practicing mind. The more well-defined our vision the more likely it will manifest. Thoroughly plan because nobody plans to fail but some people fail to plan. Mentally practice the steps in the mind and visualize ourselves accomplishing the steps to reach our goals.
Plan reasonable protections from harm. While overprotective can stifle growth, we don’t need to take unnecessary chances. We can learn the correct techniques, wear the proper protective gear, and take some proper precautions. Plans should include reasonable protections whether it requires a helmet, a lawyer, insurance, contracts, an alarm system, or whatever the vision entails for sensible protection. Being safe will help quiet the protective physical mind.
During quiet moments, mentally rehearse the actions required in our plan. Visualize the steps to accomplishing the plan and visualize the fulfillment of our plan. When we create a fully formed vision in our mind, that vision will influence decision after decision until thousands of small decisions lead to manifesting our vision. When others believe in our vision, they will support it also. However, visionaries often see things others don’t, so fulfilling this vision most likely requires a disciplined effort to be thoughtfully realistic when the good-intentioned try to talk us out of it and the narrow-minded belittle our ideas. Competitors will try to fight against our vision and steal our ideas.
Negative attitudes can easily manifest if you let them. We often reach roadblocks because of lessons we need to learn, so these seemingly negative obstacles are actually positive opportunities to learn and grow. Often such roadblocks are something we need to learn how to handle and become assets once we understand them. Sustained positive pursuit may require disciplined effort that is easier when you can enjoy healthy struggles. Before joy reaches agony we should consider accepting compromised flexibility by rehearsing various scenarios in your mind, from the best case to other likely possibilities. We don’t fail until we accept defeat and quit. However, failure is not an identity, it is an event to learn from.
Choosing to get upset by impediments is a bad choice because instead of growing from the challenge, we accept the negativity. Remember that anger is a fleeting instinctive reaction to a threat that is only appropriate when an immediate physical fight is unavoidable. Otherwise, anger is counterproductive to problem solving. An old proverb says: “anger is like throwing a rock into a wasp’s nest.” Proactively utilize intelligent and spiritual methods to overcome instinctive reactions in efforts to avoid a fight whenever possible. Humor is an intelligent transition to positivity and empathetic love is a spiritual transition to positivity.
Maintaining a positive spirit is worthwhile regardless of the other’s demeanor. When dealing with others, our spirit tries to connect with their spirit and our reactive physical mind defensively looks for threats regardless of the other’s intentions. We can remain open to a future connection of spirits, even while retreating from animal aggressions oozing from the other. An ethic of reciprocity found in many religions, aka the golden rule, recommends treating others as you want to be treated.
Our intelligent in-between brain must assist our cooperative spiritual mind to resist the competitive physical mind’s negativity. We must encourage ourselves with positive self-talk because the protective physical mind is quick to find reasons to quit or turn back. We must visualize success when we hear the physical mind prematurely declare “I can’t “, because if we honestly believe “we can’t” then indeed we won’t be able to. Replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts. Replace “I can’t” with “I can try” to avoid prematurely ending efforts. The limitations we honestly accept become part of us. The longer accepted limitations are part of us, the harder they are to change. Instead of “I’ll believe it when I see it”, know that our thoughts do manifest and “we will see it when we believe it.”
Developing GOOD HABITS is key to reaching goals with higher levels of physical and spiritual health. A good habit must be both physically and spiritually healthy. Behaviors that you believe are physically and spiritually beneficial should be repeated regularly. Also, healthy habits of keeping a clean and well-organized environment are a worthy investment of effort that provides physical and spiritual benefits. We can’t always control how we feel because we must be honest with ourselves, but we can try to behave better by regularly pursuing positive healthy habits and limiting negativity. Positive habits strengthen positive feelings.
If we have made good choices and set goals that require discipline in order to achieve them, then push on. Don’t focus on the large goal in the distance that may seem insurmountable, but focus on the small current step in the direction of that goal, which can be accomplished with efforts of the current moment. A regular series of small steps in the correct direction will take us much farther than the occasional, but inconsistent, grand gestures. Even when it seems difficult, remember that everything gets easier with practice and if success came too easily then we might value it less or take it for granted. Also remember that perfection becomes the enemy of the good if we get frustrated or quit. Steady progress is the most one can hope for, even though most will encounter many challenges and setbacks along the way.
Continue to monitor self-talk and anticipate that our protective physical mind will come up with reasons to quit. We can be ready with a plan to quiet the physical mind and maintain a focus on spiritual goals. We already know that negative thoughts are often just lame excuses that should be ignored. On those days that we might feel like shirking but we want the discipline to act, instruct the positive spiritual mind to act before the negative physical mind can react to stop us. The proactive spiritual mind creates visions before the reactive physical mind comes back with excuses, so we can start moving immediately before the excuses begin. When you have already started to move, continuing might be easier as you keep visualizing success, rehearsing your goals in your mind, and rejecting the inevitably arising excuses. If you already decided upon a plan, then take that first step and just keep moving.
Our physical reactions to nervous excitement and fear are very similar with a racing heart, fast breathing, and energized muscles. When healthy achievement entails overcoming nervous excitement, we must use self-talk to reassure our physical/spiritual brain. We need to remind ourselves that we are experiencing good excitement and not unhealthy fear. Our instincts cannot tell the difference, so we must remind ourselves that this physical response is actually a good thing to help us perform better. Remembering this truth will add to our confidence.
If efforts seem painful then we must determine if potential injury will occur or will continuing cause good pain. Good pain will make us stronger. If it is a natural pain that will pass after resting, easily recover with time, and actually build strength after recovery, then have the discipline to keep pushing. Push past obstacles whether it’s the pain of muscle fatigue or painful periods in a relationship or the painful period of an emotional crisis. Good physical pain and soreness is natural after a hard workout but might require some stretching, revitalizing nutrition, and rest for recovery. At higher levels, good physical pain may need massages, ice packs, and whirlpool baths, but positive vision pursuit will continue after recovery. Good spiritual hurt and tenderness are natural during difficult times, but these experiences reinforce love and can enhance spiritual growth as responses may require humility, tolerance, empathy, and a greater positive focus to push ahead. However, BAD PAIN means we must stop, reevaluate our technique, make appropriate changes, and rehabilitate. We must protect ourselves from lasting damage from bad pain, physical or spiritual.
Approaching obstacles seem to grow larger, but obstacles in the rearview mirror shrink out of sight. We might find it hard to believe in the early stages, but after taking many regular small steps in the right direction, we begin doing it automatically as it becomes a habit. It not only becomes easier but we might feel uneasy on days we skip this healthy habit. Big goals might appear to be overwhelming and unachievable at the beginning but habits become hard to break and GOOD HABITS lead to the achievement of big goals.
The physical/spiritual brain has neurological pathways that are like a path through the woods. Hiking trails can begin by chance as one hiker chose to go around a tree on the left side by chance for no apparent reason. The next hiker went around that same tree on the left side because a slight path of bent over brush and broken tree limbs made that side easier to track. After that same terrain is trekked by more hikers, that slight path becomes a defined trail. Similarly, circuits in the brain build from paths and trails, which can continue to strengthen into roadways and networks of highways.
The reason that GOOD HABITS become easier with practice, is the same reason that bad habits become increasingly difficult to break. Breaking bad habits can be done, but it is seldom easy and often necessary before we can create a good habit. Bad habits develop easily but are difficult to live with, while good habits can be harder to develop but are easy to live with. An essential ingredient to breaking a bad habit is willpower. Mark Twain said, “a habit cannot be tossed out the window, it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.” Breaking a bad habit may require a good plan, exceptional effort, and supportive assistance from others. The plan might require the right timing in the correct environment. However, habits function on a ‘use it or lose it’ basis. The neuro-pathways in the brain weaken without use in the same way as a pathway through the woods gradually becomes overgrown. A well-defined highway will take more time and greater effort to return to its natural state.
Our current reality was manifested from the visions created in our blended mind as whatever we settled for. The attributes others define us by are the habits derived from the verbs we practice. We can choose to practice spiritual verbs. Caring is an action verb, something we do and may become part of our identity. Creative is something we become by practicing creativity. We can practice love, empathy, motivation, gratitude, focus, or whatever visions we choose to pursue. First, we make our habits and then our habits define us. A wise choice is to build positive habits and it’s never too late.
“We can try.”
Percentage Game
Playing this game could be entertaining when considering various life forms. If you had to define your mind as more of an animal mind or more of a spiritual mind, which would you choose? The more spiritual tend to be caringly cooperative and the more animal tend to be instinctively competitive. Obviously, we are both, but do you think you are more animal or spirit?
For example, play the percentage guessing game with a pet dog that you know. Is this dog more of a competitive animal or loving spirit? Dogs have evolved from wolves in our interdependent and cooperative world based on building trust and love. While wolves hold fast to instinctual motivations, dogs embrace the spiritual side of life. Even though trust and love are not always earned, man’s best friend illustrates the physical, intellectual, and spiritual changes that can evolve from a changing environment with caring relationships. Their joyful greetings and heartwarming love make them valuable family members. Dogs continue to increase in number and variety in an expanding civilized world where veterinarian and dog grooming services are big business. Greater dependence and vulnerability to neglect are risks to pets living in this tamed world. While a dog’s life might seem like heaven or hell depending upon the relationship and trustworthiness of the ones depended upon, dogs tend to be more lovingly cooperative, while less instinctively competitive than wolves from which dogs evolved.
Humans are just spiritual animals, some more spiritual and some more animal, but all are both and each has value. Each individual mix will guide how we relate to the world. It will shape our opinions. Our particular mix will affect how we define ourselves and others. These identity notions can impact every aspect of our life; from our basic temperament to all of our choices. Also, choices will determine how others regard us. Each individual mix can be expressed as a current percentage, an average, or a range. Choose a number to characterize your blend ratio? What is your mix?
Obviously, 100%, either way, is purely physical or purely spiritual, but not alive. Life is a mix, but neither size nor movement necessarily proves life, as spinning molecules and spinning planets are just physical. Change doesn’t necessarily prove life because water can change into steam or ice, but isn’t alive. Spirit, truth, and love can be like a charged battery still in the package that isn’t alive until it is connected. Life is a blend of the physical and spiritual, which can move, change, learn truth, and feel love. What is your mix? What mix do you want?
Blended Identity
A third element of identity results from blending the other two. However, which is a blend of the other two; body, mind, or soul?
Many people would guess soul is imagined, believing that soul is all in the mind. However, soul consists of spirit that is the power source energizing the mind. A mind without spirit is like a computer that is not plugged in. In our physical/spiritual dichotomy, the mind is a hybrid of body and soul with instinct and spirit driving reasoning and emotions. Inherited instincts descend from the physical side inasmuch as each new life carries the relay baton passed from ancestors, while spirit provides the fuel and also guides the spiritual side of each balanced mind.
Instinct aids survival and spirit makes survival meaningful. Body without spirit is not alive and will decay. Body with minimal spirit is alive and operates primarily on instinctual physical reflex, but has potential to evolve. Spirit without body is unleashed, but is not alive and is incapable of physical activity. However, living blends of body and spirit gradually grow, evolve, and learn to live, amass physical abilities, and gain loving spirit.
Our soul is the relatively tiny amount of spiritual energy resonating within a blended being at any given time but is actually part of the vast spiritual energy that we learn to tap into. This limitless spiritual energy with the power of love is within all life and beyond. Our developing brain constrains consciousness, it doesn’t create consciousness. Each life is a speck of God, which is a realization that adds meaning and responsibility to life.
The physical/spiritual mind is influenced from both directions. Often the mind must choose between conflicting information or concoct a blended response. Our physically driven thoughts are instinct-based and typically self-serving while guardedly scanning for threats. Our spiritually driven thoughts are typically positive and creative while primarily concerned with the caring connectedness of loving and feeling loved.
The instinct-driven mind is passed by particle from ancestors along with compulsions to physically survive and grow. The spirit-driven mind is powered by a wave of spiritual energy that life can learn to surf for greater love, more empathy, and higher purpose. The instinct-driven mind pursues self-serving growth from a singular inside-out perspective, while the spirit-driven mind attracts spiritual energy from the outside-in to brighten an aura of love.
Physically we are one and spiritually we are part of all. Physical beings are like solitary entities experiencing countless interactions and spiritual beings are like dear members of a huge family making individual connections, and we are both. Life is a valuable, yet temporary, opportunity with privileges and responsibilities. Each life is a unique occurrence that expands from the blending of eternals, which creates singulars in time.
Life is an evolving blend of physical particles and spiritual energy. Life’s blend evolves, develops beyond primitive, grows in complexity, and supersedes primal instincts with spiritual awareness. From common particles and collective spirit, life navigates individually unique lives through circumstance, chance, and choice. Physical lives are often measured in time, but immeasurable spirit is timeless and estimated by reverberant love. Spirit can echo and reverberate through time like expanding ripples of a splash, reignite like a blaze from a floating ember, and grow like a rolling snowball through time.
Life is both physical and spiritual; often more of one than the other. Naturally, tendencies may depend upon the current environment because blended beings might choose physical directions in one situation and spiritual directions in a different situation. Evolving beings may act more like physical beings at certain times and spiritual beings at other times. Evolving beings display different aspects of their nature and often at the same time. Like two sides of the same coin, life is body and spirit, physical and spiritual blends that are always changing.
Mindful
Epictetus (50 – 135 AD)
“No man is free who is not master of himself.”
“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
“A man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.”
“Happiness and freedom begin with the understanding that some things are within your control and some things are not.”
“If you seek truth, you will not seek to gain a victory by every possible means; and when you have found truth, you need not fear being defeated.”
“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
“Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.”
“He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.”
“Circumstances don’t make the man, they only reveal him to himself.”
“In prosperity it is very easy to find a friend, but in adversity it is most difficult.”
“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
“Practice, for heaven’s sake, the little things; and hence proceed to greater.”
“Don’t explain your philosophy, embody it.”
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We are physical/spiritual blends with creative blended minds. The instinctive physical brain reacts defensively to protect the self, while the caringly spiritual brain interactively pursues love and joy. Learning about our natural duality can provide insight to help us formulate better techniques for negotiating life’s decisions as successful life learns to survive and grow, thereby gradually evolving from more physical to more spiritual.
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Primitive life is dominated by instinct, often running on automatic pilot provided by inherited DNA instructions. Our instincts reveal the protective survival strategies of animals from which we have descended. Our animal brain continues to direct survival and growth within the constraints of our environment and times.
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However, the blended mind is driven by both instinct and spirit to influence growth. Instinct is within the seed of each individual. Instinctual focus begins with self and spreads outward to family, friends, and group identities like circular rings from a splash that loses intensity as they expand. Spirit is the shared energy that radiates from the outside in, like sunlight. Our spirit drives feelings of love and emotional connection toward higher levels of caring and sharing.
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Spirit pulls blended minds over lifetimes and generations from instinctually self-centered physical beings toward lovingly altruistic spiritual beings. Understanding instinctual and spiritual drives behind our thoughts will help blended beings negotiate diverse stimuli from the obvious physical influences to the softly subtle spiritual influences. Blended beings can evaluate the root drives behind thoughts and actions to improve abilities to make choices, live in the moment, and plan for the future. We can learn to recognize when physical goals conflict with spiritual purpose during growth. Evaluating past choices as more instinct-driven or spirit-driven will reveal our levels of evolved development.
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Conflicts can often be resolved by simply realizing two truths usually exist for every issue. Both can be true at the same time because our instincts and spirit can have conflicting notions at the same time. Physically-based instinctual thoughts are competitive while spiritually-based thoughts are cooperative. Choices by our instinctual mind are often unfair as only the strong survive, whereas our loving spirit values fairness and all life. Our reactive instinctual mind may fear differences while our proactive spiritual mind appreciates both differences and commonalities. Our competitive instinctual mind tends to compare while our cooperative spiritual mind seeks to lovingly share. Instinctual beings may seek to grow at the expense of others while spiritual beings grow through mutual benefit. Fear and sexual desire are driven by physical instinct while compassionate love and joy are spiritually shared. Physical beings respect victory and conquest while spiritual beings want to be caring and accepting. Our physical mind tends to be fearfully suspicious while our spiritual mind tends to be caringly curious. Instinctual beings tend to value independence while spiritual beings value unity. Every idea and concept have both physical and spiritual components.
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Typically, the instinctual parts seem obvious and taking an extra moment to consider the spiritual side of issues becomes very helpful. The spiritual side often relates to caring about the relationships. Primitive decisions only consider self, but the spiritual component considers impact on others with empathy and care for others. Understanding that two truths exist will solve many conflicts that only require acknowledgement of the other point of view. However, weighing the various instinctual/spiritual blends of two truths can complicate things.
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Evolving life struggles to replace ignorance with truth. There are physical truths that build knowledge to overcome physical challenges and spiritual truths that builds emotional strength and grows love. The same facts can lead to opposing viewpoints simply because one looks at the physical truth and the other looks at the spiritual truth. Arguing about right and wrong is senseless when one prioritizes the physical truth and the other prioritizes the spiritual truth, but understanding dualities can resolve conflict. Also, understanding dualities will help prioritize choices and build trust as the measure of confidence in predicting one’s truth.
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Our duality can be illustrated by sport. Animal instinct motivates both by fear and desire, which becomes interpreted as a desire to win by any means and at any cost. Spirit motivates by comradery, joy, and love of the game as winning or losing are inconsequential. A preferred balanced blend is a good sport trying to win, but winning is subordinate to the push for physical and mental discipline in pursuit of healthy growth while enjoying caring relationships with both teammates and competitors, and respecting the rules of the game. Sport can reveal the evolved character of players as they are categorized as: a balanced blend, more to the animal side, or more to the spiritual side.
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Balance is often essential to life. Identity balance is determined by growth methods chosen by each individual as instinctual needs and wants must strike a balance with healthy spiritual growth. Environment plays a role as primitive competitions that threaten survival often require instinctual methods while spiritual methods thrive in environments with cooperation among caring individuals. Individuals are both instinctual and spiritual, therefore intelligence built from awareness should influence each decision to take an instinctual or spiritual approach depending upon the situation.
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A balanced approach usually leads to healthy growth. A balance method is both competitive and cooperative. Competitive drive to outperform another that is matched with for caring respect for the other will stimulate healthy growth for all. Competitive drive to outperform at the expense of another is unbalanced, at least temporarily, as longer-term opposition mounts for a victor who tends to be distrusted and characterized as a devious predator, while the defeated often learns from failures and grows stronger in the long term. The cooperative individuals lacking competitive drive are more spiritual, but can become easy targets by predators.
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Are we individuals? When we talk of balance among individuals within the environment, we primarily refer to degree of competition verses cooperation. However, balance among individuals need not be with the same species or even the same category of plant or animal. Additionally, individual is somewhat of a misnomer because everyone is made up of many cells that are physical/spiritual blends with individual growth, reproductivity, and longevity. Also, most animals like humans have many trillions of bacteria living inside the digestive system. Bacteria has also been discovered in the brain. The gut microbiome aids digestion and effects general health by influencing hormones and epigenetic triggers. Certain bacteria have been identified as bad bacteria, but the overall balance that is strongly influenced by diet can be healthy or harmful in this interdependent life. A vegan is encouraged physically and spiritually. Along with shared spiritual energy, in many ways we also have questionable physical individuality. Seeking balance is justified for many aspects of life as even our basic identities are both as individuals and as components of a system.
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Balance is essential for much of life. Environmental balance is mandated for long-term survival of environments, planets, and life as we know it. Economic balance is best represented in a system that balances competition and cooperation. Excesses of a socialist system leads to greater economic equality at lowering levels of wealth and growth. Excesses in a capitalist system leads to greater economic inequality with unconstrained booms and busts. A balanced economic system encourages both competition and cooperation with rules and taxation to promote growth and limit inequalities. Economic fairness can be measured in the treatment of the disadvantaged. A caring society is evaluated by comparing the lifestyles of the affluent with that of the elderly, handicapped, poor, destitute, and deprived. Compassion requires sensitivities to others in a just system where opportunities are not reserved for the advantaged or determined by inherited wealth, power, or privilege.
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Balance within political systems is required for long-term stability as power is given to leaders and must be appropriately employed to benefit the public. Healthy growth within political systems require balance when leading and serving in an all-for-one-and-one-for-all manner. Tyrannical leadership is often unbalanced and unfair with massive inequality as forced unity dominates. Democracies are often messy, but are usually better at expanding representation and pruning corruption. Healthy political growth requires accountable leadership.
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We are hybrid beings, both physical and spiritual, with a blended mind that resolves conflict and pursues goals by making choices. Understanding dualities within our self, within every choice, and within all life will improve choices. Evolving life that prevails over physical challenges will next focus more energy on spiritual growth. Hybrid beings tend to make better choices as they evolve during life and over generations. We grow spiritually when we choose to open our hearts to our blessings, to compassionate love, to life, and to others with gratitude and grace. I believe physical truth and spiritual love grow somewhat in tandem as choices that require effort.
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A positive lesson or a negative reaction can result from the same event, but a wise mind helps the positive spirit overcome negative instincts. Choices are often either derived from positive or negative thoughts and actions, but nourishing positivity usually leads to growth and a devolving style of negativity can be harmful. Negative habits are often destructive and hard to break. A simple agreement to disagree is often a balanced way to easily resolve conflict while maintaining caring trust. As evolving beings understand the dualities of identity, we improve our ability to understand issues and resolve conflict. Recognizing if a current thought or idea emanates from the instinctually-based animal side, from intellectually-based blended notions, or from the spiritual side of the mind leads to a greater understanding to improve coping strategies. As evolving beings better understand ourselves and the nature of issues and conflict, we can better pursue appropriate resolution and growth.
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Challenges change but never end as blended beings evolve over generations, from simple to complex and from primarily physical to highly spiritual. An innocent infant is a spiritual being that is distracted by challenges of the physical world. Physical needs can overwhelm spirit. Spirit shines through as blended beings gradually learn to manage physical obstacles.
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The physical mind tends to dominate early stages with selfish purpose as development often occurs from instinctively reacting. We learn to negotiate needs and fears through trials and tribulations of learning difficult lessons and by testing of limits. The growing child builds security, satisfies wants, and gains understanding through experience. As basic needs become ably handled and evolving minds shift to challenges with ever-higher levels of learning, communicating, and understanding; the more evolved minds learn to be more caring and outwardly focused. The very evolved pursue even higher states of compassionate love, gratitude, empathy, and grace, while looking for opportunities to serve as opposed to self-serving motivations. All levels of evolving life face challenges while seeking healthy growth, as even the highly spiritual beings are occasionally vulnerable to predators or susceptible to setbacks.
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Many difficult challenges of change are best handled by sleeping on it. Giving yourself time to think while avoiding rash instinctual reactions is a wise strategy. An old Danish proverb says the best advice is found on the pillow. During sleep, our biological computer processes our physical reality using more of our spiritual mind. Our spirit is free to explore unrealistic options in our dreams, trying to reconcile physical and spiritual truths, and often comes up with solutions that would have evaded our distracted awake mind. Dreams occur every night but often fade out of reach when awake.
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Growth entails going through various stages that often include learning from mistakes. Failure is only an event to learn from, not an identity. Anger is only a reflexive instinctual impulse that can be quickly overcome. Allowing someone to anger you is usually a bad choice and seems particularly foolish when directed at someone who just didn’t know any better, thereby earning contempt and missing an opportunity for mutual benefit. Anything beyond a momentary reflex is an indulgent choice. If the enraging offense was intentional then an angry reaction might seem more difficult to suppress, but would still be counterproductive because intentionally negative motivations manifest from unmet needs or unevolved ignorance. A positive or negative reaction says more about the person reacting than it reveals about the provocation. How one handles adversity reveals evolved character. Evolved beings learn compassion with tolerance for ignorant actions of the less evolved. Blended reactions might cleverly solve the problem while also being self-serving. Even though a primitive environment may demand primitive behavior for survival, efforts to build trust and increase the frequency of loving kindness is a sensible policy that will enhance relationships and help environments positively evolve.
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Replacing fear and anger with love and forgiveness will resolve many a conflict and forgiveness becomes much easier when you understand that the offense was likely generated from primitive instinctual motives. When realizing truth dualities cause opposing views, anger becomes more easily mitigated and transformed into disappointment, or sympathy, or caring empathy. Growing love greases the gears of positive change. Loving and feeling loved increases shared spiritual power with good feelings as it radiates positive energy. Gaining compassion and empathy while sharing truth and love continues the spiritual evolution, which is an adventure, challenge, and worthy purpose.
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Looking for the good is productive and healthy, while negativity and defensiveness can stimulate instinctual responses such as fight-or-flight reactions, which are stressful and unhealthy. The negative tends to be glaringly obvious, while the good is often subtle and easy to miss if you are not looking for it. Relationships are enhanced with positive energy and damaged with negativity, so be mindful to look for the positive. This is particularly true for parents with children that prefer negative attention to feeling a lack of attention. Feelings of neglect can motivate negative behavior as an easy way to gain more attention, but this can cause a downward spiral. Downward spirals come in many forms, but hate and revenge lurk at the bottom if worsening persists. Recalling our duality and choosing a loving spirit makes it easier to stay positive, which has a beneficial impact on relationships.
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Some parents get stuck reacting negatively time and again, instead of developing positive proactive habits. Negative behavior tends to quickly grab attention while positive behavior is generally expected and often taken for granted, but all relationships and particularly loving relationships are happier and easier to maintain when we look for proper opportunities to reinforce the positive. Caring can be silently communicated through smiling eyes or a loving glow. Proactive interactions from a simple smile or kind word to major efforts to help and assist can result from spiritual awareness. Acknowledging positive efforts and looking for proper opportunities to share positive energy is an easy and worthwhile endeavor. Overlooking others while preoccupied with self or simply taking the positive for granted is also easy, but counterproductive. Complementing the positive in others can grow positive energy for all concerned, but compliments must be honest and sincere because puffery becomes counterproductive. Positivity is worth the efforts as everyone generally likes receiving genuine smiles, honest compliments, and positive energy.
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Life is a transition with purpose. From the moment loving spirit bonds with physical form, life is confronted with a challenging physical world. As surviving life advances, primary intentions for growth tend to evolve from physical, toward intellectual, and then to spiritual. Each individual’s primary focus seems to move between belly, head, and heart. As life evolves, style gradually shifts from physically reactionary to spiritually proactive with an overall objective of healthy balanced growth. Individual sense of purpose moves from instinctual survival to intellectual growth, to spiritual growth as we successfully progress. Making successful progress provides opportunities for greater contribution to bettering the world.
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As individuals struggle for progress, we owe gratitude and appreciation for the struggles of those who struggled before us. Much of the prior accumulated progress of forerunners is bestowed in our DNA, with instincts and physical framework that initiates current opportunities. Literate life also has information recorded in books, audios, and videos. We owe thanks to the many ancestors who furnished us with a chance to pick up where they left off. Whether intentional or by accident, we benefit from prior efforts, successes, and failures of our treasured trailblazers.
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Quality of life as well as longevity gradually improve as beings evolve. What would a prehistoric cave dweller think of our lifestyle after riding in our air-conditioned auto to our well-lit and abundant grocery store? The average human life expectancy was under thirty for over ten thousand years and it didn’t change much over time until the late nineteenth century. Life expectancy has more than doubled since 1900 and now the worldwide human life expectancy is over seventy years old. However, more spiritual growth is required to balance the unsustainable physical progress that has come at the expense of mass extinctions of life, pollution to the planet, and climate change.
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The spirit within life drives toward a more heavenly existence within lifetimes. A short-term perspective can conflict with long-term goals as life manipulates the physical environment with varying degrees of spiritual conscience. The verdict is still out regarding physical and spiritual growth for current and future evolutions of life. Instinct pushes and spirit subtly pulls life toward ever higher plateaus as successes and failures reveal glimpses of both heavens and hells.
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Life’s major purpose is spiritual growth and thereby bringing more love and kindness into this life, future lives, this world, and future worlds? All lives, past, present, and future possess bits of the same spirit with aspirations for growth. Each life is blessed with fleeting opportunities to live, love, and learn to advance spiritual energy. We can simultaneously pursue individual progress while promoting all life and advancing life’s climb for a better world. We live in the moment with gratitude to forerunners and a mission to invest in the future. We should feel grateful for this opportunity to pay back, by paying forward and celebrate the physical and spiritual truths that we cultivate and pass along. Balanced evolving life pursues healthy and happy growth.
Wet Soul Analogy
All life has spirit as all life is a physical/spiritual blend. Spirit intensity seems to vary day to day, among species, among individuals within each species, and during individual lifetimes. The spiritual energy resonating within an individual is referred to as their soul. Having a good day seems to imply a joyful spirit loving life.
An individual’s soul is not physical but can be compared to water in the body for the sake of analogy. Human bodies are said to be 60% water. Infants have a higher water percentage at around three-quarters and this percentage drops to about two-thirds by age one. This water is not owned by the individual but is swallowed and absorbed before it is released through urine and sweat. The percentage of water in the body remains within a fluctuating range even though the quantity increases as the body grows. The body seems to maintain an amount of water in a similar way that it seems to hold spiritual energy. Spiritual energy fluctuates due to circumstances with overall increases as individuals gain consciousness, awareness, and a caring conscience. Spiritual energies seem to be at the highest levels with caring feelings of love, joy, gratitude, and empathy. Evolving life can try to hold and grow spirit, but similar to water it must be replenished because spirit is not owned, it only passes through.
Our identity is an impactful choice. One wouldn’t define themselves by the water held within the body at any particular moment, but reminding ourselves of our spiritual nature is like irrigating the soul. Choosing to define ourselves as spiritual beings invites spiritual growth. Reminding ourselves to make spiritual choices is like reminding ourselves to drink water. Healthy exercise for the spirit can be as simple as looking for opportunities to feel love and making efforts to show love. Exercise can include sincere prayer envisioning positive outcomes and recounting the many reasons we can feel grateful. Religions can be valuable for spiritual hydration, but the specific religious details are less important than the healthy caring habits in a spiritual environment. Spiritual growth may require compassion, empathy, and forgiveness. Joy, laughter, and comradery may feel spiritual as true caring builds for one another. Valuing the spirit within all life, including the spirit within ourselves, is easier when we define life as spiritual.
The amount of water held within our body is minuscule in relation to that held in clouds and oceans; similarly, the amount of spirit within an individual soul is minuscule in relation to all spiritual energy. This totality of spiritual energy can be called many things, but regardless of labels, it is worthy of esteem and depictions would be impossible to paint on chapel ceilings.