- Physical
- Mental
- Emotional
- Spiritual.
Although every element stands independent of the other, each one is still complimentary to the next. Some are more emphasized to conform to what society proposes is "sexy," while others are disregarded & ignored completely. Let's break it down, shall we?
The physical is palpable in each glance of oneself in the mirror, each foot hiked, and each bite took. The mental is stimulated through intellectual efforts in school, work, or personal educational endeavors. The emotional lies in the relationships with loved ones (the most significant being the relationship with oneself). And the spiritual is.. typically forgotten? How utterly depressing.
Living without spirituality means a life of superficiality.
I would a liken it to existing with your eyes closed, or more appropriate-- with the speed dial of your heart turned off. The spirit, is the vessel that connects the physical, mental, and emotional dimensions to the outside world. It pumps blood into your body, and makes this crazy ride called life completely worthwhile. Be that as it may, society suppresses this inner spirit with the empty and futile efforts it takes to succeed in this age. How sad a thought to entertain, that all our efforts are in vain... For the sake of my physical, mental, and emotional well being-- that just can't be the standard code of procedure. My little heart won't allow it.
(Author's Note: Ignoring the spiritual tigress inside of you does not take his voice away or make him extinct. It just muffles the cage he's trapped in. & You aren't a caged animal, are you?)
YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL LOVE! I wanted to go ahead and share my own views on it, but I think it definitely complements yours and both can be seen together maybe? :D
ReplyDeleteIt really starts at a basic but profound reasoning: we are human | beings.
There are 2 sides to us: the human and the being. The human is our go-to side. It's the ego side. It's the one that passes judgement, that plans ahead, that takes experiences from the past and patterns them into a response. It's the conditional. It's everything but the NOW.
That's where the 'being' comes in. The being IS now. It IS love. It IS happiness. It's whatever you are feeling at this exact moment. It's the "-ing" part of us.
I think where a lot of our struggles and problems come from is that many of us (including myself still) can't balance the two. We're human and ego driven nearly 99% of the time: When you wake up, you think of what you need to get done that morning before you get to school. When you walk, you see someone wearing something and think how much you like/don't like it.
It's particularly prominent in relationships. How many people do you know feel like they have "baggage" or are always thinking about what X means: "He hasn't texted me all day. He must be mad" or "My last ex acted this way before he broke up with me. I bet this person is going to do the same." That's why so many people feel that relationships are hard. Too many people enter them to make up something they feel they lack. We lack nothing!! If you look for someone because you want to be loved, you must realize that first, you must love yourself! Then you can share that with someone. The human part however doesn't want to see this. It's concerned with the future. It's concerned ahead - it looks at the other person as the solution rather than the self.
So I've talked a lot about the human part but I want to be clear that it's not the "getting rid" of the human part that is essential for us to be happy/loved/succeed in relationships. It's the ability to unite both the human and the being.
Like I said before, the human part takes experiences from the past and conditions them into the future. The human is always looking for the next thing because it is the ego. It never feels like it's happy because it's constantly searching. What's ironic however is that the very thing it's searching for is the being.
Again, like I mentioned before, the being is NOW. But what is now? Maybe a better way to approach it is "what is the future?" The future is 3 secs from now. But alas, the 3 seconds have just passed, it's now! Everything is now.
The human is always looking for the future, but the future IS now. If you follow this, then you can probably already see that the very thing the human part is searching for is the being.
ReplyDeleteThis is why we are so happy when we "be." The human is finally finding what it's always searching for.
Think about it: When we fall in love, our 'being' is thrown to the forefront. All the emotions we feel, we feel AT that very moment. In that instant, there is no future. There's only now. How elated are we?
Think of when you are just waking up on a day off and you grab a hot cup of chai or whatever you like, and you sit for a moment and drink it. Isn't there such a contentment?
Or even when you are at home with family after not seeing them for so long. When you get out of the car/plane and see them, you get a surge of emotions that bring the being to the forefront. For that moment as you run to hug each other, there is no worry about "what's for dinner" or "what are we doing later," you are just BEING.
I could go on and on about how we can bring that "being" out but I think this is already reaching ridiculous proportions of length :P
But yea, I just wanted to share my own thoughts on it :] I think it's easy to see how the four dimensions you described fall into it:
physical, mental, emotional: we all too often let the human part govern it. If someone ditches us when we made plans, we get angry. When we see someone "hotter" than us, we immediately feel inadequate. The human takes the societal norms and experiences of the past and conditions them into responses. But again that's just it, they're "responses," they aren't "now."
The spiritual I think then, is the ability to navigate and unite the two parts of ourselves. It's the ability to take whatever emotion we are feeling, and rather than producing a simple conditioned response that the human part would like, we can navigate our being to the forefront, accept that emotion in the now, and just let it be, let it dissolve.
It's our ability to be conscious of the human, but to always remember the "being" as well.
And in terms of God as far as spirituality, what is God? God is love.
Have you ever done something nice to someone randomly? Or perhaps you've volunteered and helped someone out. It can even be as simple as giving a homeless person some money. Why do we feel so good when we do this?
It's because when we do that, we are putting others before ourselves, putting our ego/human part in the background. We are shifting ourselves from the "human" to the "being" - again, the human part finds what it wants: the being!
Thus, everything the human wants is the now. The key to reaching the "now" is simply LOVE. Everything is now. Everything is love. If you can love others completely and fully, you yourself will be illuminated and awakened - your eyes opened (to go back to your description :] ).
But anywho, I think I've wrote a damn essay by this point haha. I want to see you again!!! Hint: we took bio1a together this summer AND I ran into you twice now this semester :] If that's not enough... note the ridiculous number of emoticons haha :p