March 9, 2018 | Jon Mostad
I ask myself: «What does it mean to live a spiritual life?» I daily meet the term «spiritual» and I meet «spiritual people», but what does it mean to live a spiritual life? Let med do some reflections.
In the coming week no 11-2018, my Instagram posts will reflect on living a spiritual life. I do the reflections through quotes and captions, linked to illustrative images. Feel free to follow me on https://www.instagram.com/mostadjon/.
First let me taste the concept of spirituality. What can this word mean?
The essence of the word spiritual is spirit. When I live a spiritual life, is it so that my life is filled with and influenced by spirit? May be, but I seek a deeper understanding. Let me therefor try som reflections from a slightly different angle. In my conversations about spirituality, I often meet a complex combination of the relationship with paranormality, spirituality and religiousness. To me it seems that the concept of spirituality is contained in both the term paranormality and in religiousity. As such, I get somewhat confused.
Why?
Let me try to explain what I understand by the term paranormal. The word «para» is often used as an obscurity to another word to describe a phenomenon or an object that says «beyond» what the main word means. An example may be the word paramilitary, which means a military force outside the military itself. Paranormal may mean a kind of normality that «stands outside of» the normality? What are so the norms for normality? To be discussed in its entirety, the term needs a larger format than this blog allows. We may find a clue by understanding our human senses. The paranormal looks, often hears and understands performances and objects that are beyond the sense of the normal. The bat's view in the dark is able to see mosquitoes that are invisible to the human eye. The elephant can hear deep sounds that are too low for the human ear and the family's best friend, the dog, can understand our intentions even if they are not fully thought out. Animals sense outside the normal frame of the human body and, as such, we can say that animals have paranormal sensory experiences to humankind. Some people also have these abilities to see what's out of shape, hear what does not sound and understand what's not yet thought of. We accept that beings have paranormal abilities. They can see, hear and understand what we can not. Some more than others. I often find that these qualities are found in people who appear as messengers, healers, shamans, etc. We know them as paranormal and often classify them as spiritual. He or she is more or less spiritual based on the ability to be paranormal.
Let me also try to explain what I understand with the term religious. The word religious is linked to the term religion. We use the term religion as a common term for different belief systems and cultural patterns of action, which assumes that reality includes more than the physical. Religions often present answers to human existential wonder. Religion usually includes faith in one or more God/ Gods. The word religion is derived from Latin, the meaning of which is related to respect for the holy and fellowship that shows respect for the gods. I perceive the religions like codes for how I can understand and adapt my affection to a definite explanation of the unthinkable notion of a transcendental creative force.
Finally, let me try to explain what I understand about the concept of spirituality. The word spiritual is usually used as a description of the balancing of the relationship between the physical body and the soul that has a stay in the body. The soul rises from the Spirit and takes residence in a physical body. The Spirit is the physically most concrete manifestation of the Trinity as Creator, as it is explained in the monotheistic religions. Inspired by the Theosophy, I explain the immanent creative force in the three perspectives; Imaginaton, Movement and Consciousness. The Imagination is the masculine power that needs the Movement, the feminine power, to put itself into reality and the result becomes the Consciousness, the child of the two. Body without soul is a dead body. Soul without body is a non-incarnated part of the Spirit. Spirituality is the source that brings together and balances body and soul.
Where does this lead me?
In my imaginary world, our paranormal abilities are not necessarily spiritual. They are short and good paranormal physical characteristics or skills we are either born or trained into. You and I are no more or less spiritual depending on whether we can see mosquitoes, hear low-frequency sounds or if we are able to interpret our closest intuitively. Nor do you or I necessarily be spiritual if we choose to accept the religious performance images that code how to understand the creative source and worship it. On the other hand, we are spiritual beings when we open to the Spirit's balance of the relationship between body and soul.
As I see man, we are more or less spiritual. Everyone is spiritual, but we are more or less. The more we open the Spirit's influence on the interaction between body and mind, we are more or less spiritual. I meet people who, in language and action, show me greater affinity to the material world than other people I meet, which show a greater affinity for the spiritual world. People can be paranormal and spiritual, but they do not have to be. People can be religious and spiritual, but they do not have to be. I meet spiritual people who are not paranormal nor religious. These classifications are not qualities of ourselves that hold us stuck, life out. We humans are dynamic and we make choices. We can very well move in and out of these descriptions. Luckily.
Well, what does it mean to live a spiritual life, as an end of my reflections?
We live a spiritual life when we let the Spirit balance our physical and soulful life. My physical life is the prerequisites for me as a soul in a human incarnation to live for my life purpose. My soulful life is the prerequisite for my physical life. The soul leaves the body when life is to be ended. The physical body is sensualized and constructed by instincts, emotions and social learning. The soulful body is ruled by the purpose of the incarnation. We live a spiritual life when the purpose of the soul achieves the space and direction that the body's premises allow for.
We live a spiritual life when we let the Spirit balance our physical and soulful life. My physical life is the prerequisites for me as a soul in a human incarnation to live for my life purpose. My soulful life is the prerequisite for my physical life. The soul leaves the body when life is to be ended. The physical body is sensualized and constructed by instincts, emotions and social learning. The soulful body is ruled by the purpose of the incarnation. We live a spiritual life when the purpose of the soul achieves the space and direction that the body's premises allow for.
Jon