Spirituality

I have to confess that there are many terms and concepts that I think I know, but I am not sure I completely understand.  Spirituality is one of them.  One of the tenets of religious observance is the enhancement of the spiritual.    My confusion begins with how to define spirit, especially in contrast to the physical.  There is the assumption that we are dual beings, made of physical and spiritual.  The physical come from the Earth, the lump of clay that became the body, and the spirit, the breath of life breathed into the clay, which gave it life.

Does that mean I can understand the role of the spirit by equating it with life.  Something within us is keeping us alive.  We, meaning our conscious mind, do not control our organs.  It is unconscious brain activity that directs those functions.  This pattern of life has been programmed into us by our DNA from our parents.  Part of this programming is an aging process and ultimately, death.  Since we assume that the spirit is not physical, it cannot die.   We still must live with the knowledge that death could come at any time.  

If we concede that there is a duality in our nature, then we have a spirit.  This leads me to two questions.  The first, does the spirit find fulfillment through "spiritual" activities?   I stated in the previous blog that spirit being non-physical, does not change, at least in the "spiritual" world.  Fulfillment implies a lack, so is the spirit imperfect as well as the body?  Do concepts like Beauty and Harmony impact on the spiritual.  Music has the ability to enter both aspects of our nature.  It is a physical sensation, taken in through our hearing.  At the same time, it seems to impact another part of us by absorbing us into the music.  Religious music was always meant to have that impact.  

Second, if we accept the idea that all living things have a spirit, can we conceive of a spirit both within our universe, but that is not physical?  There would be a spirit, then, that not only works on the individual, but on all of nature.  For Spinoza, that spirit of Nature, as well as nature itself, is God.  It is easy to see how ancient humans deified them.  It is easier for me to conceive of spirit as life.  And all life with spirit has death imposed upon it.  The physical dies.  Everything on Earth that died has decayed back into the Earth.   Does the spirit die with the body?  Or, if the spirit is life, it continues on, outside the physical, a concept that is difficult for me to. comprehend,

If, on the other hand, we concede that our intellect has come up with the concept of a spirit as a way to accept death, then the concept of spirit is a product of the intellect, something that is unique to humans.  We assume that we are the only beings on earth, and as far as we know, the only beings in the universe,  with the intellect to know that we are going to die.  A tree does not know when it is going to die because we assume the tree has no feelings.  But the tree will eventually die.  If we cannot accept the inevitable, then we tend to become neurotic.  Our spirit, our intellect, has to accept the reality that we age and die.  It is easier to cope if we think our spirit will leave the physical at death, but not die with it and live on.

As I stated, Genesis associates the spirit of life with God.  If we accept that life is not just a by-product of evolution, then, a spiritual world exists outside of our physical universe.  We feel spirit more than we intellectualize it.  If we limit spirituality with an attachment to God, then it is meant to be an emotional encounter, and that it why some many different religious groups try to attach themselves to God through different emotional experiences. 

How much must one abandon the physical to fulfill the spiritual?  That question is next.