The Spirit in All Things

[saphera]

'Free will' is a human idea. It involves the concept of judgement and choice in matters of living reality.
I came across a quote that I like to think makes sense of our choices and also has a feel good quality of 'acceptance of self'...from a complete picture of reality point of view.
The Present

"The present is the necessary product of all the past, the necessary cause of all the future."

-Robert G. Ingersoll, 1899

When I consider that... I feel that a 'free will' choice from a personal perspective is real as we see it, but from a view of total reality it is not a random choice...
We can worry ourselves sick about what to choose... but whatever we decide upon... it is the only choice we could make at that time and that place and in that circumstance....and furthermore... we just proved that it was the only choice for us to make... we chose it!
Like a jigsaw puzzle.. lots of pieces appear to fit in a place...but only one is the correct one in every way ...in that place in that particular picture.
saphera

[Davin Raincloud]

I Like this post. It touches on the murky idea of free choice.

I think sometimes humans extrapolate the idea of 'Free choice' too far and start thinking they are their own God etc.

It's like a form of excessive navel gasing.

Whereas perhaps we need to stop and breathe and notice the gasses we breathe in become a part of us, an essential part that without we cannot operate our brains to make choices.

Others, other things, other creature are a part of our existence, and man is not an island.

There is really no such thing as a self made man/woman.

So Free choice? Free Will?

[Druid Faqir]

All mystics (like, say, Ramana Maharshi and others) said that free will and fate are both absolute symultaneously. Strange when you put it that way, but in my experience and understanding it holds water. Why? Think of it this way: your will and your fate are as front and back. You couldn't have will and no fate. You are what you are because there is fate. Fate is the context in which free will is manifest; Destiny is general, free will is particular. That is to say, destiny is made up of all those things you can't prevent from happening or make happen, which you can't alter either voluntarily or involuntarily. Now, if we think this through, there are very few things that fit this, because we even modify climate albeit involuntarily. We go beyond gravity, voluntarily. And so on. Thus we find that Fate isn't what people think, i.e. an opressive freedom-depriving force that pushes us around contrary to our will. Will flows acording to fate, fate flows acording to will. It's one thing, not 2 things. If you will ask me what Fate is, I know, but I have no words for it. It's like when you have to say what color water has or what shape it has: none of its own; it is fluid, a background from whence all life came forth, just as fate is that indescribable background and fountain from whence existence came forth.

[Ithamar]

May the peace radiate also back to you!

Hey, nice topic, gotta say that first.

And I think I've got something to give to it: as of been studying Spirituality and its world traditions in the University of Theology.

Referred said, the things that usually combine the conceptions about the word "Spirit" in the traditions of the world's spirituality (transferred to this West European style of thinking and its concepts) are the next:

1. There is a consept of a Spirit, the Life-Soul, the Source of All Life, whose essence is seen through a spirit to be a Spirit. That experience flows from some core experience of beign alive - at least in your own questioning about yourself.

2. The "little" spirit then is a part of the Spirit. An animal, a plant, a rock, a human. Spirit with lil. s is a subject, more accurately said subject's deepest core of being (the being we can divide to several analytic sectors, like mind and so on, through our experience), in the web of spirits in a Spirit.

3. Then a Spirit-spirit duo and this dividing reflects a communication. Althought all Life is one in a Spirit, it lives in a dynamical way. And the result of that is a communicative experience of a spirit. Spirit/spirit is then a key result of the life's greatest mysteries - and its joys and faith.

4. Spirit is a living, communicative mystery of all Life. And that's the story even the etymology tells us. The English word spirit comes from latin, spiritus, and its primary meaning has been "breath". These days, even in my native language, Finnish, word "henki" means the spirit, and "hengittää" (which could be also "spiritize") means to breath. So there is a connection. And what does it tell us?

That spirit/Spirit is something living. We breath it in and out. Spirit with a spirit. And there we come to the term "spirituality".

5. Spirituality is then "breathing". Can you see the mystery behind that word? Yes: the physical is in connection with the spiritual. Breathing is same time both spiritual and physical, for they both are and reflect the same. Then spirituality is something to live with all life's sectors. To live in balance with the Natural breathing of soul and body. To inhalate the divine, listen to it, let it inspire you; to exhalate the unnecessary, even deadly to you, but which the divine can take. And it is something we need - that touches our deepest depths of life. It is the basis of our being. If you try to keep that spirit or "hengitys" too long, it forces you to breath, because you just need it.

And thinking about it. Where does our inhalation draw in our physical form? -From the TREES and the nature! And the physical was same time the spiritual too..

So Spirit and Spirituality...

... something to live through, not to define fully. We can't do it 100%, because we are a vital part of that process and inside of it. It is the Thing that the word Spirit refers, that defines us.

The thing we can do with it is to understand the discourses and meanings behind the contextual social situations, where people share their experience of a spirit or the Spirit.

"Language by it's nature, carries with it assumptions and walls that we do not even recognize which limit the ability to answer this question. Nonetheless, words are all we have on this forum." - like Paul said before.

That's why I call for the paradigm of understanding and empathy in these circles of social waves. There are no "truths" inside words - you can only try to get nearer to the experiences, just to find the same Source that you are trying to reach in your experience.

And I have left out the exeptions, which are quite a many in numbers. We have always to be careful with our use of language and its culture-mental traps. So, like many spiritual traditions say wisely: we should walk back from our cultural ideas to the source of feeling the experience of Spirit, Personality, whatever you name it. Not to speculate in ivory towers too much with our indo-european style of defining and chipchopping things.

Rather than that...

... let's go to the forest and FEEL the Unity!

To Breath with those TREES, my friends!

The final answer of mine: one of the symbols to refer to the feeling that we, as a part of something, join in the communication of One Life.

[FoxPhantom]

That was pretty interesting, so with unity, that one's spirit can be one with others?

[Ithamar]

That was pretty interesting, so with unity, that one's spirit can be one with others?

Yes - or at least something like that!

Like rivers filled with the water from the same ocean. And there the concepts of "river" (spirit) and "ocean" (Spirit) are born through our senses of existence. In the hindmost water it doesn't matter.

I mean, although we may feel our channels of river to be different, it is the water that unites and is the same life.

And what would a river be without water?

BUT!

To that I can answer from only my own viewspots. Because in the traditions of spirituality it varies alot! Some say our feeling of having a spirit is ultimate and that it is individual and autonomic - that the Source only is the same.

And others proclaim those ones to be blinded by their excessive trust in their thing-dividing reason. This (quite-a-clinched) "nothing can be said without taking everything within it, because everything is so relative - that's why in the ultimate being there is Everything in All that is One".

So the midway between them would be somewhat like this: one's spirit can be one with others at least by running its flows back to their same Source.

In my opinion that flowing only would change our feeling of oneness.

.. because the water is a chain after all.

[Frog]

I believe in Chinese circles this would be termed "following Dao" and this is what Mencius called "Destiny" (not to be taken to mean "Fate").

The most likely "Chinese Circle" here is Taoism.

I quite like their thinking for spirit and transmitted energies as the thinking also transfers quite neatly into the physics that we know about energy. If we are all made from the same base building blocks - atoms and energy - then it pervades all of us and everything around us - so the idea of an interconnected energy makes sense.

Similarly, if I bang two bricks together it makes a sound - which is energy. That energy disappates - and in doing so will change to a more subtle energy and (as everything uses energy) gets reused in another way.

So for me, there is spirit in all things because there is an energy in all things.

Blessings
Frog
/|\

[Ithamar]

Yes, that is a fantastic way to interpret the treasures of our empiria - I like it too, believing it telling the same story of same thing with words that even our rationality accepts. And use it quite often too in texts.

Respect to that then!

As the law of conservation shows, energy can neither be created nor destroyed: it can only be transformed from one state to another. So it really seems to be dynamic, living and eternal. Just like in the spiritualistic concepts of reality.

Just like in my Water-tale. There is one living web of energy (/water) that travels in states (forming oceans and rivers). Spirit, in my opinion, then goes well with that concept of state of energy.

Although stucking on empiria alone brings boundaries - and through that some people think the energy to be quite a bordered term. They proclaim that none of your feelings or empiria can be trusted - sceptisists I know usually keep telling me, that the way things seem to be has nothing to do with the way they are.

I respect their wisdom of caution not to rely on anything. But that kind of scepticism could lead to total proud apathy and sickly cynicism in its ultimate form.

That's why I'm comforting myself with the midway: although there might be no spirit or energy in reality, there really is something that they are relating. Energy, for example, or spirit then, has aspects behind our consciousness and rationality. For somes it has been hard to realize energy to be something MORE than just physical one.

Hmmm.. And if the evidence is enough for this state of One Lifes energy, then what is the problem? Why should we escape our "limits" when we can turn them to "possibilities"?

I mean, wouldn't it be quite limited only to stare outside the limits?

What would a feeling of freedom be without a feeling of chains!

Blessings!