Identify Yourself - The Spirit Being

Identifying one’s being

Many people, if not most of us, believe that one’s being is the sum total of one’s body and mind. Leading on from a poem I wrote entitled ‘Who am I – and - Who are You?’ I have thought at length about the identity crisis that most people grapple with. This goes without mentioning the identity crises experience by most young people today.

We all are aware of the link, or a vague attachment between one’s [Spirit and/or Soul] being somewhat linked to one’s mind/brain/body. Or perhaps the mind is the soul, or a soul’s link to the brain? Strange thoughts may spring to mind as one shuffles these objects around in one’s mind.

Many philosophers and Eastern masterminds have made impressive statements on this topic, and I surely have been aware of them. However, only since I wrote the book ONE Life-Love-Energy and became a Reiki practitioner have I fully realized how wrong most of us have been; except for the Eastern peoples.

Alarmingly, the Japanese, the Tibetan, Chinese, and Indian peoples have known for thousands of years, from tradition and legend stated in ancient documents, about what Western Scientists and quantum physicists only in recent years have discovered about energy, atoms, matter, and many other vitally important matters pertaining to creation, God, mankind, the Earth and the Universe. All their religious, meditative and ritualistic practices are based on these ancient principles. In fact their entire existence is based there-on.

Recently I was approached by a friend who asked me to hear her personal problems and to council her. She had been terribly treated by her most recent employer, who fired her for something she had not done. She was experiencing emotions like hatred, resentment, and harbored a strong feeling of revenge toward the employer. She had until recently worked at a privately owned orphanage for two years, caring for the home and especially for the children; with whom she had developed a strong bond of motherly love.

My friend had been experiencing sleepless nights, with memories and past events replaying themselves continuously in her mind whilst trying to fall asleep. She was deeply distraught with grief and she didn’t know how to cope with all the emotion. I asked her whether she believed that she could control her mind, and whether she was aware that she was allowing these disturbing thoughts and pictures to enter her mind. She said, “No, it just happens, they flood into my mind, no matter what I think or do; I can’t help it and I feel totally helpless.”

I told her of my belief that no matter what happens in one’s life, one has to first think something before one can / or will perform it or speak it out. Therefore, everything takes thought. Thought precedes all action and speech. Now, based on this statement, the question arises as to “who” is doing the thinking; the brain alone or the emotions which prompt the brain? Or is it the being to whom the brain and mind and body belong? Yes, the latter is the truth in personification. You and I are independent and unique spirits, pure beings made up only of energy, arising from the Universe (heaven if you wish).

In the world of today the mind and body dominate the spirit to such an extent that we loose our spiritual identity completely – until we die, of course.

Rene Descartes figured this complex matter out in his Cogito statement: ‘I think; therefore I am’.On Descartes' own terms, how "clearly and distinctly" do we understand the relationship of the mind to the body? How can a completely non-physical thing interact with a completely physical thing? To ask Mark Twain's insightful question: How come the mind gets drunk when the body does the drinking? Why does my mind react to what happens to my body with such intensity if it's not part of my body?

Descartes claims that he can clearly demonstrate the existence of the body through reason, and since reasoning occurs in the mind, it indicates that the mind and body are separate. From this perception it is also clear that the body is merely an extension. Arising from these thoughts, he perceives himself just to be a “thinking thing” and that the mind is non-extended, thereby proving that he (the mind) is distinct from his body and can survive without it. As the body is an extension, it could not exist without the mind.

Imagination and sensory perception are modes of thought, which Descartes regards as unessential to him, but affirms that they could not exist without a mind to contain them; as there are other modes of extension, which could not exist without a body to contain them. However, he insists that the mind must be intermingled with the body, because the mind reacts in confused modes of thinking when experiencing sensations, and it would not be able to survey any sensation, like pain, in a disinterested fashion.

Interaction between the mind and the body offers a challenge in understanding. According to Descartes there is definite interaction. He states that in order for the mind to experience the body’s sensations, there must be an interaction between the two entities. Intermingled is the word used by Descartes; an intermingling of physical and non-physical beings. Only in this way could the mind fully experience the sensations of the body; sensations such as being drunk for example. The mind is not drunk as such, the body is, and the mind experiences the effect of the sensation.

The sharp distinction between mind and body is known as “mind-body dualism”, which has made a vast impact to philosophers over the past century. If sensory experience is in the mind and the bodies that cause our sensations are in the world, the question arises as to how the two can causally interact. This question is still being investigated.

I am pleased to state that the mind and the body are linked to, and controlled by, the spirit being; the life energy that one actually is. One uses one’s mind to think and experience everything in conjunction with the body’s natural functions and senses. If I were to ask myself which I think I am, I cannot say that I am only a mind, a brain and a body; they all belong to me. Therefore I use and control them. But in the greater scheme of things and in the modern world, to most people, the question remains: who controls who; spirit, mind/brain, or body, or what combination of these? And who takes responsibility for the thoughts and actions of the person?